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at home, in the provinces, abroad, his enemies could pose a threat only in association. Their disunity was his opportunity: to sur- vive he had to concentrate overwhelming power on one front at a 11

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dents were the nearest. They were mainly an ideological opposition, illl

partly unitarians and partly younger reformists; their resistance came III'

to a head in an abortive conspiracy in 1839 and continuedate from its base in Montevideo. to oper- II,,, III 1111

A second focus of internal opposition was formed by the land- owners of the south of the province. As the justice of the peace of Chas-

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comus reported, "Commandant Rico was at the head of a consider- able armed force in support of the insurrection led by Don Benito Miguens and Don Pedro Castelli. A number of hacendados were ac-

I, , complices in the rebellion. . . . The whole extent of the country as far as Bahia Blanca was roused to the insurrection."l The rebels issued a 'I

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, statement to the French admiral Louis Leblanc, upholding the princi-

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ples of liberty and the cause of Lavalle and the Argentines against the tyranny of Rosas and appealing to the French alliance in the common

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struggle,but not for French conquest and occupation, as Rosasalleged.2 Opposition stemmed not from ideology but from economic interest.

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Already harassed by demands on their manpower and resources for the Indian frontier, the southerners were particularly hit by the French blockade, which cut off their export outlets and for which

,i,I,11 they held Rosas responsible. But the rebellion of October 1839 did nOt synchronize with the political conspiracy, and it too was crushed.

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. I. Finally, there was external opposition to the regime, partly from "I,ll other provinces and partly from foreign powers. If this opposition

could link with internal dissidents, Rosas would be in real danger. To 1IIIili 1 oppose Rosas, of course, was a crime for which there was no

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'1 reprieve. He lived in personal anticipation of danger, and in 1839, 11111::1,, fear of assassination was a daily obsession. One of his secretariat

reported: II' 1", The dictator is not stupid: he knows the people hate him; he goes in con-

stant fear and always has one eye on the chance to rob and abuse them and the other on making a getaway. He has a horse ready saddled at the

'" IIIII111111 door of his office day and night; I am not exaggerating, there is an Indian 1l1li1 appointed solely as his bodyguard. . . . From rising to retiring Rosas is 1I'llI, spurred, whip in hand, with hat and poncho, always ready to mount his

horse. He strikes me as a man who while murdering someone to rob him is constantly looking round at the slightest noise.3

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State Terrorism IIIIII

Rosas did not rest on defensive measures. He counterattacked. He 111111111 used terror as an instrument of government to eliminate enemies, "'

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II discipline dissidents, warn waverers, and ultimately control his own

I supporters. Terrorism was not popular, spontaneous, or indiscrimi- nate. Such a tactic would have been uncharacteristic of the regime,

,,,,::"'I which prided itself on maintaining law and order. As to personal III security, observers agreed, Buenos Aires was one of the safest places

in the world. So terror was not anarchic. Nor was it a delegated !I II power, fashioned and applied by subordinates. The agents of the ter-

ror were not its authors; they did not make the policy or choose the victims. In this regime the government was the terrorist. That was why the machinery of terror could be turned on and off with such precision. Terror was not massive or continuous but limited and spo-

::]!!II"' radic. And it was not an instrument of class. Within its essentially

political objectives, there was a certain class bias, for the principal victims were the unitarian elite; but this policy was strategic rather

~I: than social, intended to destroy a rival ruling class. Terror was applied to people and groups carefully selected by the government. It was considered pointless to kill poor and insignificant people. And the terrorists did not touch foreigners,even during the French and

The Terror

Anglo-French blockades. Usually the victims were directly or indi- rectly, rightly or wrongly, linked to the unitarian cause, and when the terrorists could not lay hands on unitarians, they took, in effect, a substitute or equivalent for the demonstration value. Apart from unitarians, some of the targets were political and administrative groups that Rosas could not dispense with but in which he had lit- tle confidence. Terror was also a sinister warning to others in the regime from a ruler who sought unconditional docility in his ser- vants and who was determined to dominate his movement and destroy factions.

Terror also had a military dimension; it was applied on the bat- tlefield. Armies were exterminated; prisoners were rarely taken or, if taken, were then killed; fugitives were hunted down, their throats cut, their heads exhibited. Savagery was cultivated as a deterrent to

frighten off potential opposition; terrorism became an accompani- ment, sometimes an alternative, to battles. Terror, therefore, was not simply a series of exceptional episodes, though it was regulated according to circumstances. It was an intrinsic part of the Rosas sys- tem, the distinctive style of the regime. It marked the vengeance and the power of Rosas; it was a punishment for the past and a warning for the future. Terror was the ultimate sanction of the Rosas state, the final coercion.

Terrorism flowed from the extraordinary powers vested in Rosas. Alternative methods were available, for the normal machin- ery of justice still existed. But Rosas bypassed the law's process and dispensed summary justice, especially during times of internal cri- sis and national emergency. He could never forget that he had the sole power of life and death, that he could judge the accused with- out trial, that his word was sufficient to send a man to the execu-

tioner. Foreigners such as the British minister John Henry 'Mandeville were astonished by the extent and the application of his personal sovereignty: "What I blame him for is, his having them [the executed] shot by soldiers, when the executioner ought to be the performer, authorised by the sentence of the proper tri- bunal, which he, since I have been here, has in all cases dispensed with. Some are shot onboard a little ten gun brig lying in the roads, some in one barrack, some in another, without any of them ~s I am informed, going through the ordinary forms of justice or Judgement."4

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Cases concerning political security and rural order were the par- ticular business of Rosas and came directly to him. A typical month, November 1835, provides a number of examples. Gregorio Barragan, a unitarian who became violent in prison, was sentenced to be shot at 10 o'clock one morning in the square at Navarro. Toribio Gonzalez, twenty-five years old, was sentenced by Rosas to be shot at 10 o'clock in the morning in the square of Lobos. Santiago Carvajas, thirty-five years old, accused of robbery in a pulperia at Lobos, was shot in the main square. Through such pun- ishments, Rosas ruled the south of the province, which he regarded as an extension of his private estates. Elsewhere his administration of justice was hardly less informal. From Santos Lugares, Antonino Reyes, his chief secretary at headquarters, sent him lists of criminals, unitarians, and deserters, and Rosas simply wrote "shoot him" or "flog him" and so on down the list. Some of these cases were purely political; others were criminal matters of vagrancy, robbery, assault, and murder. In either category a man could be shot without trial, and the unitarian delinquent was almost certainly doomed. In these prosecutions, a combination of political witch-hunting and main- taining rural security, there was no sign of police evidence or any judicial process. The executive was judge and executioner, acting by virtue of his extraordinary powers.

The penal system was bloody in Argentina, whatever the regime. To Sarmiento, intent on depicting Rosas as unoriginal as well as uncivilized, the difference appeared one of degree: "Rosas invented nothing; his talent was only to copy his predecessors and turn the brutal instinct of the ignorant masses into a cold and calculated sys- tem."5 Cruelty is difficult to measure, and in the writings of the time, propaganda often prevailed over precision. Nevertheless, the rule of Rosas left an ineffaceable impression of bloodshed and death. The prisons were probably more oppressive and the executions more gruesome than those of his predecessors. In the south of the province some of the prisons were really private hacienda gaols. The most notorious prisons were in the capital: the Cuartel de Serenos, ruled by Colonel Nicolas Marifio; the Cuartel de Cuitifio in the calle Chacabuco; the Cuartel de Restauradores on the corner of the calles

Defensa and Mexico; and of course Santos Lugares, the military headquarters of the regime. For many people, to enter these doors was to enter a death cell.

The Terror 99

The modes of execution, however, were not invented by Rosas and were not peculiar to one side. The knife and the lance were part of the cultural heritage of Argentina, ingrained in creole and gaucho tradition. Rosas inherited his modes of execution in part from the rural environment, in part from prevailing laws. There were three

principal methods: shooting, lance thrust, and throat-cutting. The most characteristic procedure was throat-cutting; this was the favored punishment and the most valued technique. The knife was the gaucho's weapon and to cut a throat, his delight. As Hudson recalled: "The people of the plains had developed an amazing feroc- ity, they loved to kill a man not with a bullet but in a manner to

make them know and feel that they were really and truly killing."6 But what may be attributed to a cultural flaw in a primitive creature of the pampas becomes an abuse of power in the hands of the state. Sarmiento was probably correct in suggesting that Rosas carried this practice further than others: "Execution by cutting the throat with a knife instead of by shooting, is the result of the butcher's instinct II.

which Rosas has exploited to give executions a more gaucho-like II III form and more pleasure to the assassins; above all, to change the

!IIIII legal punishments recognised by civilised societies for others, which he calls American."7

"IUThe terror of this regime was extraordinary even by the stan- ill

dards of the time. The diarist Juan Manuel Beruti recorded an inci- ,'I~I

dent of particular savagery: "Benitez, a man of over sixty, did not have his throat cut; instead he was left alive but incapacitated. For

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the throat-cutter, Alem, staked him out on four posts, face upwards and about half a yard off the ground. He then placed a brazier of fire underneath him and burnt his testicles and intestines. . . . All this I

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have copied from the public records, and it is only an extract."8 The 11111atmosphere of terror that prevailed served the regime almost as "

much as the killings themselves. During the peak of terrorism in October 1840, headless bodies were found in Buenos Aires every morning; for the terrorists the demonstration was as important as the deed. It was common practice among the military to stick the heads of victims on long poles and display them in public squares. Violence was reflected in the language of the time. Degollar,degol- lador, these were among the commonest words in the vocabulary of rosismo, and they were used with a depraved pleasure by ruler and followers alike.

100 Argentine Caudillo

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"Ii]i The Mazorca

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The agents of terrorism were members of the Sociedad Popular Restaurador, a political club and a parapolice organization. The

Ii ;1II society had an armed wing, commonly called the mazorca. TheI 1

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.. word "mazorca," meaning "a head of maize," symbolized strength I:l

through union, but it really gained currency because it sounded the same as "mas horca," or "more hanging." According to some, it had an even more horrifYing connotation: "The Mashorca, or secret

II affiliation in support of Rosas' government, derives its name from1IIIIIil

III the inward stalk of the maize, when deprived of its grain, and has been used by the members of the club as an instrument of torture of which your lordship may have some idea when calling to mind

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'I! ,II the agonising death inflicted upon Edward II."9 At patriotic feasts federal fanatics would jump to their feet and cry out against a uni- tarian, "Here is a toasted maize; let us put it where he deserves it."

The Sociedad Popular Restaurador first emerged as an organiza- I'

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nIIi tion for Rosas during the struggle against the federal dissidents in 1832-1833. Under the patronage of Dona Encarnacion its leaders

111 ii', were placed on the state payroll and specialized in intimidating political adversaries. A squad of activists would ride through Buenos Aires, fire shots at houses, frighten off enemies, and drive out dissi-

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111111'1 dents to Entre Rios or Uruguay. At the end of April 1834, intimi- dation increased: Rivadavia had returned to Buenos Aires, and the

II ill activists sought to expulse him with pressure and violence. The soci- r ety was born, therefore, as a pressure group for Rosas and an instru- ,IIIIII

I ment of political extortion while he was out of office. It then became II 1.11 a terrorist agency, a kind of vigilantes group, when he returned to

office. But it was not a wholly private organization. It was part spon- !llil' taneous, part official; in a sense, it institutionalized terror and con- 11'!1 trolled violence, thus avoiding the things most abhorrent to Rosas- Iii

anarchy, mob rule, and personal vendetta. It is doubtful that it was 1111 genuinely popular; it had no power of its own independent of Rosas, III and it shared none of his sovereignty. It was not a committee of pub-

lic safety, Jacobin club, or political party, descriptions that it has III 1'1" sometimes received. It was essentially a paramilitary or parapolice

organization. It was a select and exclusive body, difficult to enter because qualification for membership was by services rendered, not by a passive federalism.

The Terror 101

The leader of the society, Julian Gonzalez Salomon, claimed a special relationship with Rosas, a confidential one in his own view, an obsequious one by any objective standard. In September 1840, he described the Sociedad Popular Restaurador, in language as vio- lent as that of its followers, as "the strong support of the cause which

Your Excellency so worthily sustains," dedicated to "exterminating" the savage unitarians and any other opponents whom Rosas might indicate. Rosas's reply demonstrated his close link with the society: "That is very satisfactory in my view. . . . In due course I will ask you to come and talk, meanwhile get in touch with Manuelita for advice."lo

Not all members of the Sociedad Popular Restaurador were active terrorists. There was a functional division into two sections, the majority of the society and the mazorca. The society was the brain, the mazorca the arm. The society helped to compile the lists of suspects; the mazorca were the activists who hauled them in. The society demonstrated for Rosas's policy; the mazorca applied it. The elite of the society, upper-class members who often joined simply as insurance, urged or tolerated terrorism but did not themselves gal- lop around Buenos Aires cutting throats. That was left to the shock troops, the mazorca. The mazorqueros were the true terrorists, recruited from sectors lower than the rosista elite and forming armed squads that went out on various missions. They conducted house-to-house searches, destroying everything blue and intimidat- ing the owners; they acted on police reports such as "he has not given any service to the Federation and dresses like a unitarian"; they arrested; they tortured; and they killed. Nothing was sacred. The mazorca even terrorized the assembly: "The mazorca bran- dished their knives in the very galleries of the House of Representatives, and their fierce and sarcastic threats could be

heard everywhere."l1 It was difficult to evade the system, for it had many eyes and a long reach. The society supplied, in effect, a net- work of spies, agents, and informers as well as the death squads. It was the guardian of pure federalism, the shield of the regime and its knife.

Who were these militants for Rosas? There was no secret about

the membership of the Sociedad Popular Restaurador. It consisted in 1842 of some 200 people whose names were proudly published in the Gaceta Mercantil They were, according to the historian

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Adolfo Saldias, "fanatical supporters, military of all ranks, men well known in society, in the administration, in letters, and in the law."12 Not surprisingly, they included members of the House of

In Representatives and other elite groups who joined as much out ofIII1

fear as conviction. The president was Julian Gonzalez Salomon, a 11111111 native of Buenos Aires, owner of a pulperia, a man gross in body and

11;1111' mind. This society was the political side of the movement. The mazorca, the superterrorists, were recruited from lower social groups, often from the police and the serenos(corps of nightwatch- men), and they included professional cutthroats and delinquents.

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they could also raise and manipulate a mob, another of their func- tions. The Buenos Aires mob was not a spontaneous or independent force. It too was a creature of Rosas, as outsiders appreciated: "[The mob] must not be understood here in its usual sense, but as hirelings of the police."l3

The Sociedad Popular Restaurador and its armed wing were cre- ated, sanctioned, and controlled by Rosas. The mazorca was a force

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bally by Rosas; so Cuitifio later claimed, and there is no reason to I~II doubt it. However, although the mazorca was a creature of Rosas, it " was more terrorist than its creator. Like many such death squads, it III

acquired in action a semiautonomy, and once it was on the streets, it was not amenable to absolute control in every detail. It would be

, 1"1 untrue to say that Rosas had unleashed a tiger he could not control. But although he gave precise instructions for executions and chose the victims carefully, he could not curb every killing beyond the offi- ciallist. Still, if he did not personally order every act of terror, he could have stopped excesses. He seems to have known that the mazorca went not against but further than his orders. He believed

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The Terror 103

Stages of Terror

Cruelty had its chronology. The incidence of terrorism varied according to the pressures on the regime, rising to a peak in 1839-1842, when French intervention, internal rebellion, and uni- tarian invasion threatened to destroy the Rosas state and produced violent countermeasures. The peak of 1839-1842 was not typical of the whole regime but rather an extraordinary manifestation of a gen- eral rule, namely that terrorism existed to enforce submission to government methods in times of national emergency.

Terrorism began during the first administration of Rosas, when the killing of Captain Juan Jose Montero became a cause celebre and set the style of government to come. Montero was a tough and tur- bulent Chilean officer of Indian origin, a veteran of the liberating expedition across the Andes and subsequently of the Indian frontier, where he served in the garrison of Bahia Blanca. At the beginning of 1829, when the agents of Rosas were raising rural contingents for war against the unitarians, Montero preferred to lead his Indians to Lavalle's support and subsequently resisted Rosas's orders to bring himself and his Indians into the federal camp. Rosas did not forget, and when he was elected governor, he had an opportunity to settle the score. In 1830, he summoned Montero and gave him a letter to take to Colonel Prudencio Rosas, who without trial or explanation had the officer shot. The letter carried by Montero contained the order for his execUtion.

The Montero case might be considered an isolated incident were it not for two aspects that gave it a wider significance. First, it had macabre and sensational features that were to become the hallmark

of rosista terrorism. Second, it drew from Rosas an explanation of his power as he interpreted it, for the killing undoubtedly embar- rassed his friends and outraged his enemies. Rosas became aware that he was acquiring a reputation as a killer, but he rejected the imputation. He maintained that Montero was executed not for his political opinions but as a criminal, and he justified the action by virtue of his extraordinary powers, giving in the process an interpre- tation showing how they could be invoked to justify terrorism: "The law which gave me aUthority is the law which ordered Montero to be killed. It will be said that I abused the power. If this is so, it will be my error but not a crime to cause me remorse. Because when I

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was given this hateful extraordinary power I was given it not on con-

dition that I always had to be right but to act with complete free- dom, according to my judgement, and to act without restrictions,

for the sole object of saving the dying country."14 What he described was a terrorist's charter.

At the beginning of Rosas's second government, between 1835 and 1839, the executions could be described as normal routine. For the most part, due legal processes were observed; in cases of assassi- nation and robbery, sentences were severe, but they were given by the courts and applied by the police. Yet there were premonitions of the terror to come. In May 1835 three military personnel, alleged con- spirators against Rosas's life, were executed without trial, an inaugu~ ral sacrifice, as it were, that temporarily satisfied Rosas. There were Indian victims, too, some seventy or so Araucanians brought in 1836 in chains from the frontier and shot ten at a time in front of the Buen

Retiro barracks without the semblance of a trial. Violence against frontier Indians was regarded as warfare, not terror, and in the exe- cution of prisoners of war, Rosas did not discriminate between whites and Indians; anyone taken in battle was at risk. The assassination of Facundo Quiroga drew a measured response from Rosas. He asserted his interprovincial prerogative and brought the Reinafe brothers and other accused to trial in Buenos Aires. They were sentenced to death and executed on October 25, 1837, and their corpses were hung under the arches of the cabildo, leaving an image of the regime for art and letters to record. Yet in retrospect, these were tranquil years, ago- nizing for some, no doubt, but secure enough for those who kept their heads down. Terrorism lurked but was not yet rampant. The year 1838 was the turning point, the time when external shock was followed by prolonged reverberations within.

The French blockade of Buenos Aires from March 1838 to October 1840 created classical conditions for terrorism. Economic

stagnation, an official austerity program, and political tension severely tested the Rosas state and produced strains at various points. As the weak links appeared in the capital, in the south, and in the provinces, the government struck back hard to repair the damage. The first target was in the provinces. Rosas believed that the most immediate danger came from the governor of Santa Fe, Domingo Cullen. First, Rosas instigated a rebellion against him in Santa Fe and drove him out, then he extracted him from the sanctuary in Santiago

The Terror 105

del Estero provided by Governor Felipe Ibarra, and finally he had him brought back. At the end of the long road, on June 22, 1839, Cullen barely had time to write to his wife-"They have just told me I have to die"-and bid her look after their twelve children.15Then, at the foot of an ombu tree in Arroyo del Medio, the escort bound his eyes and shot him; the orders came from Rosas, and there was no trial.

The conspirators in Buenos Aires felt at one with Cullen and were sympathetic observers of his fate. They themselves, an under- ground group of young reformists who planned to overthrow Rosas in alliance with dissident military officers, were already under obser- vation by the dictator, and in his own time he pounced. The mazorca moved into action, whipping l,1pits mob to intimidate any- one suspected of belonging to the unitarian or French party and to attack Dr. Manuel Vicente Maza, president of the House of

Representatives and of the supreme court of justice, a former sup- porter of the ideas and actions of Rosas but now linked to the con- spiracy through his son Colonel Ramon Maza. Instead of a trial and a great repression, Rosas decided on summary justice against a few. The father was assassinated by the mazorca in the House of Representatives on June 27, 1839. The son was shot without trial in the prison patio on the following day. The widow committed sui- cide. Rosas disclaimed all responsibility for the assassination of the father but regarded the execution of the son as a legitimate action of government. These sombre events inaugurated a great fear in Buenos Aires, and the streets became silent and empty.

The third focus of rebellion lay in the south, and it too failed. The defeat of the hacendados was followed by a hard but concen- trated repression. Pedro Castelli was hunted down and killed while resisting arrest. He was then decapitated, and on the orders of Rosas, "so that his colleagues might see the condign punishment sent from heaven," his headwas sent to Dolores and stuck on a pole in the main square.Excesseswerecommitted by the government troops in the south, following their victory. Many captives were brought in chains to Buenos Aires and led through the streets to prison. Most of these were spared, however, some on the intercession of the British minister. On the whole, only the leaders of the rebellion were executed. A similar distinction was made in the following year in the execution of prisoners from Lavalle's invading army.

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Lavalle did not synchronize his invasion with the internal rebel- lions. He led his forces into the province of Buenos Aires on August 5, 1840, but lost his nerve and withdrew on September 6.

II Fiasco though it was, the invasion gave Rosas a shock. He decreed

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terrorist's knife to deter defectors and to eliminate the enemy within. l 11::11::1I

III The first victims at hand were the invaders, or the stragglers among them. Rosas gave instructions that those who wished to join the fed- eral forces, especially the poor, should be accepted. "But His Excellency says that this does not apply to the rich or to those called decent, for none of these are good; therefore all those who belong to this class of savages should be shot or have their throats cut imme- diately."lG

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'" The Great Terror: 1840 III

II " During 1840 with an enemy army still at large and a traitor imagined in every barrio, Rosas ordered out his death squads. In Buenos Aires,

ii, I III killings increased in numbers and in virulence as the government

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hunted its numerous targets. To seek safety in flight was taken as admission of guilt, and those who fled were seen as the enemy or as potential recruits. On May 4 a group of men with reason to believe

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they were on the mazorca's list attempted to escape to Uruguay. They lill"II

1111/'" were Colonel Francisco Lynch, Carlos Mason, Jose Maria Riglos, and 1111'"

I Isidoro Oliden, and they had arranged to have a boat ready at night in a place near the British minister's house. But they were watched,

II and as they approached the embarkation point, they were surrounded by a mazorca squad and their throats were cut. According to Cuitifio,

11 the orders for these executions came verbally from Rosas to Colonel Parra. The killings continued sporadically and eventually reachedrll their peak not during the worst of the emergency but after the with-

III drawal of Lavalle'sarmy. By then the Maza conspiracy had been erad- icated, the rebellion of the south defeated, Lavalle outmaneuvered,

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and the French brought to the peace table. But if the worst of the cri- sis was over, the worst of the terror was still to come.

Iii What, then, was the explanation of terrorism? Was it a means of !!:!,II

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The Terror 107

the emergency, or was it a calculated vengeance once the emergency had passed? Was it imposed by the logic of events, or was it the cruel choice of its creator? Was terror a defense against the enemy, or could it be employed with impunity only when the enemy had with- drawn? The terror of Rosas contained an element of all these things, without a simple rationale. But however peculiar the timing, the intention was clear enough-to destroy those whose loyalty was sus- I,iIII" ",

pect, to strengthen the security of the state, and to ensure political 1'1 ' !' subordination.

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I,ll! IThe terror of 1840 was presented as a popular and spontaneous II explosion. In fact, it was officially inspired, and it was administered l

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by a small group of men directly or indirectly in the pay of the state, If

mainly police and the mazorca. Moreover, terrorism was carefully iIII~I

measured and the victims were precisely chosen, for an indiscrimi- li:r", !

nate massacre might well have provoked a mass reaction. The prime 1111,targets of the terrorists were unitarians, real or alleged, and a num-

ber of people within the federal ranks who were regarded as a secu- fl rity risk. Guilt was retrospective and anticipated. It was also fatal. According to General Antonio Diaz, "The bloody scenes of October

Iitlill'"i 1840 have their origin in the threats and protests of vengeance issued (according to General Rosas) by General Lavalle; but we r believe that the true object was to ensure by means of the terror the 111'111"' loyalty of those of his subordinates whose determination he thought

I11I1he could see weakening at the approach of Lavalle, including even his own brothers."I? Many unitarians were helplessly incriminated by the simple fact of having relatives in Lavalle'sarmy, as the British minister noted: ''Although there is not a general rising in favour of Lavalle, he has a strong party in his favour, and the misery and dis- 'i

tress occasioned by the blockade are daily making. . . enemies fillagainst the present government. The town is compressed with terror II II

and appears like an abandoned city, for most of the labouring peo- 1'111ple have been forced to join the army, and many of the middling ,I

and upper classes, having relations in General Lavalle's army, fear to 111111

I1I1leave their houses and appear in public."18 At the peak of the crisis, Rosas was in his military headquarters

1111: Iat Santos Lugares, as though to remain aloof from the city, whose government he delegated to Arana. The chief of police, Bernardo Victorica, reported regularly to Rosas; acting under orders, he and his squads hunted down unitarians throughout the city. Numerous

' . 108 Argentine Caudillo I,!li"I, 'I

I I

suspects were detained, some 250 at the time of Lavalle's invasion. For five weeks, from September 23 to October 27, 1840, Buenos Aires was at the mercy of the terrorists. People kept to their houses, shuttered their windows, and locked their doors, and the streets of

11111111111'

1!llilll the capital, sombre at the best of times, became yet more lifeless, silent, and deserted. The only movement in the streets was that of

JlIII

the terrorists, groups of mazorqueros in red ponchos, some in high- crowned hats with a federal band, some in peaked caps, and all

II armed with guns or knives or truncheons. They hunted their quarry through the streets or invaded houses. And each morning neighbors asked each other, how many throats cut, how many corpses? People, had to guard their speech, especially in front of their servants, for to be denounced was like a death sentence: !a tirania estaba en !os de

abajo.This was the pattern of events, not a massacre but a succession of individual assassinations.

In addition to killing, the terrorists also attacked the property of unitarians; on the pretext of searching for fugitives and arms, they burst into houses, beating up the inhabitants, robbing, and destroy- ing. The correct forms were not entirely discarded: one of the pro- cedures, whereby the police asked a judge for a search warrant'" authorizing the mazorca to enter houses in pursuit of unitarian fugi- tives, clearly illustrated the link between officials and terrorists. And behind it all was Rosas, distant yet present, the prime mover and the first terrorist. He subsequently described the terror as "the laudable

,II! " and ardent expression of vehement patriotism" and a manifestation of "popular excitement." But his own officials, Victorica and Cuitifio, stated that Rosas made the decisions and gave them their

~II III' orders. This was state terrorism.

In due course the British minister protested. Mandeville was sympathetic to Rosas and usually gave him the benefit of the doubt,

"1111

which perhaps makes his evidence of the terror the more convinc- ing. The immediate reason for his intervention was the increasing proximity of the violence, but he took the opportunity to generalize and to warn Rosas of the dangerous level of terrorism. On the pre- vious night, he wrote on October 9, "a group of people broke the windows of a number of houses in the block next to the one where

I live; they then attacked the house opposite mine, and shouting !lliI'I death to the inhabitants broke the windows and tried to break down

the doors with rubble and stones." He reminded Rosas that this was

I~-The Terror 109

II~III

"the residence of a foreign minister, representative of a nation friendly to his country, which should be immune from a wild mob II!/:il

rampaging in its immediate vicinity." He had been advised, more- over, that his own life was in danger and he should not go out at night. 19

Rosas replied immediately and at some length. Although he promised Mandeville adequate guard for the legation, he was unre- pentant, indeed defiant, about the terror. He justified the conduct of the mob by reason of "the extraordinary circumstances in which

II~" I' this unfortunate country has been placed through the cruelties of its barbarous enemies." He also implied that the British were not

1111Iblameless, as the minister was known to have made special pleas for II

individual unitarians and his compatriots to have helped others to 11/1,1'111

I'escape. Rosas argued that he could not go beyond public opinion, could not stop the federal fury; otherwise he would alienate the very supporters whom he needed to govern and to prevent anarchy. "Do 1111111I" not imagine that I have sufficient power to remedy here and now these misfortunes. . . . Such measures would only cause greater I1II ::~ ,I resentment." And as long as the English were hostile, was it surpris- ing if the people turned nasty? "If this happens, I will not be able to answer for the security of property and persons, not even those of

III'III " the English. "20

In his letter to Mandeville, Rosas gave the impression that the III~III

events of October 1840 were the natural and spontaneous reaction II

of the popular masses against the savage unitarians and that to stop this upsurge was more than his government dared do. This was the iill

official version of the terror. It was also, in a sense, true, but it was not the whole truth. There was always a danger of anarchical terror. II~

Any government that creates and uses an illicit instrument of vio-

lence has to give the monster its head and allow it to prowl freely.As I,III

he believed that he could not govern without terror, Rosas had to give scope to the terrorists. But in the final count the terror of Rosas

was directed and controlled from above, starting at the top, through :11

the mazorca, and down to those whom it cared to mobilize. As

Mandeville concluded, "There is an occult power more powerful ,I/Iii

than the Government, but which can be controlled by the hand that directs it, if interest or inclination prompts it to do SO."21Rosas did

11111,1 I

not have to issue personally a continuous series of directives in order to control terrorism. He simply had to remain at a distance and do

h

110 Argentine Caudillo III ~'I: II

11"11' II' II! nothing to stop it until he was ready to do so, the normal method '11"1 "

I of sanctioning operations of this kind. There is no doubt that he

1

1111/ approved of what was done: "It is necessary to purge the Republic of In II

such traitors. . . . They must feel the consequences of their iniquity '

in their persons and their property."22,,,lilllll~1 .

I !IIIII~III The killings lasted about a month, ending on October 27 and

I

I claiming some twenty victims, not all of them unitarians. On 1,1 1111'

October 29, Rosas signed the convention that reestablished relations 111111111

with France, and it was ratified two days later. On the same day, I1III1II October 31, Rosas issued a decree justifying the terror and also end- il ing it. The popular anger caused by the invasion of Lavalle, he. lill

l

explained, had erupted in "natural vengeance" that was impossible to restrain without impugning the patriotism and loyalty of the people.

illill Now there was peace with France and greater security. The decree,

illl therefore, imposed the penalty of death for robbery and assault and 1111

11II,I classified as disturber of the peace "any individual, of any class, who ~IIII attacks the person or property of an Argentine or foreigners, with-

out the express written order of the competent authority." This II'

measure curbed the killers and proved not so much that Rosas could III suspend the terror if he wished but that he could suspend it when he

II judged the time appropriate. And terror was not extinguished in Argentina; it merely shifted its ground.

In 1841, Rosas's position improved. Peace with France restored prosperity to Buenos Aires: the port was again crowded with vessels,

II, I' and exports revived. The defeat of the League of the North in the

1I course of 1841 placed the interior of the country at the mercy of 'III Rosas. His army under Manuel Oribe imposed in one blow the reign

of terror that in Buenos Aires had gradually built up to the peak ofII~~I

1840. Hitherto the interior provinces had not experienced terror on ,:! I this scale; now it was inflicted on them in a bloody, barbarous, and . II,'II!I

remorseless campaign by a rosista military applying a policy sanc- tioned by its master.

';11

The Great Terror: 1842I Ii

'" I, In the course of 1841, terror remained in abeyance in Buenos Aires.

III But Rosas continued to intervene in the judicial process and to dis- pense summary justice; the police files for the years 1840-1842 con-

The Terror 111

tained many more personal orders from Rosas than previously, such as "shoot him," "imprison him," sometimes with cause given, some- times without. Moreover, two developments were ominous for the future. The first was an alleged assassination plot against Rosas, comic in its details though seriously eXploited by the regime. On March 23, 1841, a mdquina infernal was discovered; this explosive device was sent in the guise of a gift from Montevideo and was intended for Rosas but opened by Manuela. According to official descriptions, it consisted of a large box filled with loaded pistols arranged to fire when opened; if these reports were true, the con- traption would have killed its makers before it ever reached Rosas. The conspirators were alleged to be Jose Rivera Indarte and other unitarians. Skeptical observers claimed that the incident was too stu-

pid to be taken seriously, but the regime denounced it as a danger- ous and criminal act. It was the occasion for an extraordinary session of the House of Representatives, where the "horrible event" was condemned, and for public ceremonies celebrating the safe deliver-ance of Rosas.

The second development was the announcement by the unitar- ians of a hard-line policy that was just as uncompromising as that of the federalists. There had always been a terrorist element in the uni-

tarian camp, and it too had contributed to the growth of organized violence since 1810, culminating in the deposition and killing of Governor Dorrego in December 1828 and a year of mutual reprisals. This outrage was the real beginning of terrorism, which mounted as each side practiced calculated retaliation. In the cam- paigns of 1840-1841 the unitarians executed federalist prisoners. In Entre Rios, Lavalle proclaimed, "It is necessary to cut the throats of them all. Let us purge society of these monsters. Death, death with- out pity." These sentiments were not confined to the soldiers. From Chile, Sarmiento wrote: "It is necessary to employ terror to win the war. . . . All means are good." The message of the comisionargentina in Chile to the chief of the League of the North was equally chill- ing, urging the killing of all those who took up arms on the side of Rosas: "All methods of achieving our ends are good. . . . The great- est truth in politics is that the means are alwaysjustified by the end." The next step in the argument was inevitable, and Rivera Indarte took it: "It will be a great and holy action to kill Rosas."23 Terror now fed upon itself as each side responded inexorably to the other, The

1111

lill~ ,I

I1111 ; II I

I I

illl I

1111

112 Argentine Caudillo I~" I I

' i' .. unitarians called the federalists barbarians; the federalists called the i III.

unitarians savages. The scene was set for a new wave of terror. :1111

As 1842 advanced, so did terrorism. With enemy troops under" Rivera and Paz in Entre Rios and alleged conspiracies against the life of Rosas in the capital, executions began to increase both in

I0'ili ~

town and at Santos Lugares in the course of February. A numberDIIII

of prisoners of war and civilians were executed, and depression set- 111'111

tled over Buenos Aires once more. Yet the position of Rosas, though dangerous, was not desperate, and again the timing of ter- ror was not self-evident. The immediate threat came from Uruguay and its unitarian allies in Santa Fe and Entre Rios; this time there. was not a powerful European backer, but diplomatic hostility from Britain and France was part of the picture. The federal forces, how- ever, converged on Santa Fe, and in the course of April 12-18 they defeated the unitarians; Entre Rios rose against Paz on April 4 and

~il forced him to retreat. So the coalition of Rivera, Paz, and Ferre was III

already in pieces when the terror reached its peak during April 11-19. The pattern of events was not so obvious to Rosas; the uni- tarians were defeated but not destroyed, and he was aware of Anglo-French hostility and possible intervention in the future. He therefore decided to launch a preemptive terror, to purge the body politic and strengthen security in advance. This decision is a pos- sible explanation of the terror of April 1842. Another was advanced by General Diaz: "No one could see any object or reason in the executions of April 1842, until one night Rosas himself asked one of the persons for whom he had some regard if he had

, ~ read a decree of the governor of Corrientes stating that for every II unitarian killed in Buenos Aires, ten federalist prisoners would be I'i shot. 'Now you see what those savage unitarians are; they kill and

then they are afraid to die; now they will see what I think of their 1IIII

threats; let them make decrees and I will answer them as they deserve.' "24

The terror now reached its climax. In the last days of March each morning at dawn, corpses were found with their throats cut in vari- ous parts of the capital, and this carnage continued into April. Many of these killings were surrounded by mystery and committed at night. Others took place during the day. Two or three men would walk up to a victim in the street or in his house and shoot him at point-blank range or seize him and cut his throat; they would then

The Terror 113

leave unmolested while those nearby averted their faces. Assassins operated with impunity at dances, in homes and offices, and on public thoroughfares.

By the third week of April the city was petrified; the streets were

empty after five or six o'clock, and the terrified inhabitants kept to their houses while outside the death squads ruled. But the killing was not indiscriminate. Mandeville, who was unable to explain the terror in a time of relative security and who appeared to be more complacent about it than previously, reported a visit to Government House: ''A few nights ago I was at the Governor's house, and I asked one of the Secret Committee of the Mazhorca Club, now called 'SociedadPopular,'if! had not better have one man, at least, with me

at night, as I live at a remote part of the town, and seldom stay at home at night. He replied no, you are as safe as Dona Manuelita, the Governor's daughter. Perhaps so, I said, when they know me, but they could make a mistake- 'Nunca se equivoca' was his answer-there is never a mistake. "25

If the victims were carefully chosen, they were also carefully treated; they were not usually robbed, for the terrorists wished to make it clear that these were political assassinations and not delin- quency. It was a frightening lesson, especially for anyone who had had the slightest connection with unitarians. Mandeville thought that this time the intention was to drive the unitarians right out of the country and confiscate their property. But beyond the unitar- ians many federalists were at risk too, and apart from the federal- III

ists, others were suspect simply because they were apolitical. III

Soldiers, officials, leading citizens, and ordinary people were all at risk. A mute hysteria possessed Buenos Aires in April 1842, and III

IIIthere was a danger that terror might produce not security but instability. Foreigners were arming themselves, European consuls IIIIII threatened to leave, Mandeville and other representatives protested. At this point, on April 19, the government ordered an end to the killings, and the chief of police was instructed to estab- lish patrols to apprehend and imprison assassins. It was noticed

that included in some of these patrols were men who had previ- ously been in the death squads.

The existence of terror could not be denied; only the responsi- bility was disputed. Official spokesmen stated that "not thousands, nor hundreds, but forty or so" had been killed, the victims of "an

~

114

II

115 Argentine Caudillo B'II

indignant people. "26Rosas claimed that he had no idea of the extent1'1':' of the excesses. His order to the chief of police ending the terror spoke of his "deep disgust" at the recent assassinations; he declared!~ that no one was authorized to exercise such license, even against

, unitarians; and he rebuked the police for their inertia and derelic- I' R tion of duty. Yet in 1842, as in 1840, Rosas bore the ultimate

responsibility for terrorism. The evidence from Mandeville's con- versation with terrorists at Government House points unmistakably to official sanction. But Rosas felt that once he had activated the terror, he must allow it to run its course. There was a sense in which he had to condone excesses beyond what he authorized. In a reveal- ing interview with Mandeville, he explained his power and its delineations:

It is only by going along with my Party, at times, that I retain my influ- ence with them, and that I can govern them. When the murders were going on in the frightful manner you witnessed in the month of April, at two in the afternoon of one day I issued the Orders which my Aide de Camp General Corbalan brought to you-Well, they could not be made known in every part of the town at once, and what happened, Victorica, the Chief of Police, fell upon a band which had been at work, many escaped, but the chief was taken, and hung up instantly, and another shot the next morning. The people saw that I was determined to put an end to these excesses, and they yielded, but more from respect to my wishes than from fear of me, who know not fear and fears nought but God. . . . There is no aristocracy here to support a Government, public opinion and the masses govern.2?

Prime Terrorist

The termination of the terror of April 1842 did not put an end to "', the repressive tendencies of the Rosas state. Mter 1842, terror and

extraordinary violence became uncharacteristic of the regime, though it was still possible to draw swift retaliation for the slightest political offense. In 1846 the mazorca was disbanded and its mem- bers returned to legitimate posts, as the diarist Beruti recorded: "1 June 1846. From today the sociedadpopular restauradora,alias the mas-horca,which has caused so much harm and so many tears, has been dissolved, and its members have been ordered to join the active-service and reserve militias, as may be appropriate."28Rosas no

The Terror

longer needed a special agency of terror: internally, if not abroad, he had overcome his enemies. Nevertheless, the regime was still based on violence, even if it was used less frequently. As Southern remarked: "The force of the government here is terror: and as the governor occupies himself with the pettiest details of daily life, is the vigilant chief of his own active police, never forgets the smallest cir- cumstance, or forgives it, if considered an indication of hostility. Your Lordship will easily understand that we live here as it were in a great prison. By the extraordinary powers given by the Hall of Representatives, and which if not given would be taken, the gover- nor has sole power of life and death without trial."29These views were recorded shortly after the most singular exercise of power in the whole regime.

The story began as melodrama and ended in tragedy. Camila Q'Gorman, the nineteen-year-old daughter of a French immi- grant, became acquainted with a young man from the interior, Ladislao Gutierrez, who was persuaded by his family to enter the priesthood. He was assigned to a parish in Buenos Aires, and there, in the narrow social life of the time, it was easy for the couple to fall in love but difficult to hide it. When the hopelessness of their situation became apparent, they decided to elope and seek a new life far from the reach of church and state, perhaps even in the United States, where, they believed, "priests may marry." They fled on December 12, 1847, and reached Corrientes, hoping to live there for a time in decent obscurity as schoolteachers. Meanwhile, the church was scandalized, Rosas was furious, and the unitarians

were delighted. Although later generations were impressed by the romantic appeal of the lovers' flight across the plains to the distant north, the opposition press in Montevideo and Chile eXploited the elopement to taunt the regime for its want of morals. Rosas now

suffered loss of face as well as an affront to his authority. But his reach was long. As soon as he received intelligence of their where-

'II

abouts, he had the couple arrested and brought back to Buenos !I:,/II,Aires. They were imprisoned in Santos Lugares, and to the aston-

ishment even of hardened officials and in spite of Camila's plea ::lllil

that she was pregnant, they were immediately sentenced to death. They were brought before a firing squad together on August 18, 1848, Camila standing tragically in white, and there they wereshot.

III

116 Argentine Caudillo

::,111

So in the dawn, the drummers beat the call Iii Jim,!! And these poor children, wakened to be killed,

II 1111 Were taken out and placed against a wall Facing the soldiers, then the bell was stilled That had been tolling, and a minute's space Was given for their farewells and last embrace.

;~II Then hand in hand they faced the firing squad, Who shot them dead into their waiting graves.3o

III,

The savage sentence was the responsibility of Rosas alone. The higher clergy and the lawyers seem to have urged severity, but he subsequently denied that he was influenced by any outsider: "No one advised me to execute the priest Gutierrez and Camila O'Gorman, nor did anyone speak to me on their behalf. On the contrary, all the leading members of the clergy spoke or wrote to me about this insolent crime and the urgent necessity to make an exem- plary punishment to prevent similar scandals in the future. I thought

'III il,

the same. And as it was my responsibility, I ordered the execution."3! Rosas was curiously proud of his judgment. Yet it was a new cause of alienation from his regime. According to Southern, "A panic seized the population of Buenos Ayres, and the imaginations of men were occupied in devising what would be the next act by which Rosas would mark this eventful period."32 The diarist Beruti reflected the disquiet that the execution caused in Buenos Aires:

These deaths caused shock and sadness among all the inhabitants of the city, for an offence which was not thought to deserve the death penalty

"iilll

but simply detention for a time to clear the scandal they had caused, in a :::11111 simple affair of love which harmed no one, only themselves. The most

lamentable aspect was that she was eight months pregnant. The governor

. 1 was informed, but this gentleman ignored the innocent creature in the 10"III!

womb, did not wait for the mother to give birth, and ordered her to be shot. Such a thing had never happened in Buenos Aires; by killing two, three died.33

People were overcome not simply by sympathy for the victims but by the fear that at the very moment when normality and pros- perity appeared to be at hand, Buenos Aires was returning to the ter-

UI ror of more barbarous times. They were reminded dramatically of

The Terror 117

the limitless power of Rosas and their own helplessness. This knowl- edge counted more in people's minds than the relatively few execu- tions after 1848, mainly cases of delinquency, though desertions too drew swift retribution. Rosas defended his severity to the British minister, employing basically an argument derived from alleged socioracial differences between Europeans and Argentines:

His Excellency then declaimed against the idea of governing in these countries by European notions; and by analyzing the character of his countrymen, that extraordinary mixture as he called it of the Spanish and the Indian character, endeavoured to convince me, that none but the severest punishments had any avail, and rarely even those: that the executions he directed were not even with the view of punishing the cul- prit, and scarcely in that of deterring other criminals, but simply to pre- vent them from again inflicting injury on society.34

By this time, whatever he said, the damage had been done. Rosas would go down in history as one of the cruelest of rulers as well as one of the most powerful. The subject, no doubt, has been distorted by propaganda and prejudice, but there remains an irreducible ele- ment of truth in the reputation of Rosas as a terrorist. And he earned his reputation not only from the gruesome nature of his terrorism

I'

but also from the number of its victims and his personal responsi- '1111

bility for their fate.

It is impossible to quantify the terror under Rosas. Contempo- raries attempted to do so, but the results were flawed by bias and error. The so-called tables of blood compiled by the journalist Rivera

" 1/1

Indarte listed 5,884 victims of terror and 16,520 killed in military action. These "opposition" figures are probably too high and fail to discriminate between delinquents and victims of political persecu- tion, between legal punishments and assassination. In refutation the

II~GacetaMercantil published what might be regarded as official fig- ures: 500 executions in fourteen years, 1829-1843. Of these, it was II,

III

argued, 250 took place in the provinces by order of their own gov- III

ernors, and a further 100 were of hostile Indians; this left 150 cases of execution, and these were unitarians guilty of conspiracy and

II!

other crimes. Other sources were less partisan but also less complete, III being based on anecdotal or temporary observations. After his defeat and exile, Rosas was tried in his absence by the courts of Buenos II Aires. It was a political exercise, by no means impartial, but some of iil

118 119 Argentine Caudillo The Terror

I , Iii" II:the evidence for the period 1829-1852 was drawn from police Rosas's trial. This motive hardly applied, however, to Cuitifio, as heT archives, and the figure there of 2,354 victims, some of whom were

1111111111111

condemned to the army rather than the firing squad, may be quoted if only to give an alternative impression.

~11~llil Political executions, then, claimed a large number of victims, more than 250, less than 6,000, and perhaps in the region of 2,000

Jill for the whole period 1829-1852. Ifhistorians are unable to measure the terror, they may nevertheless draw some conclusions. These were not mass murders. The targets were precisely chosen and carefully identified. Their impact, however, is not to be measured by quantity alone but by the suffering they inflicted on the victims' families and

1II1I

Illil

by the fear they instilled in the whole population. It can be assumed that Rosas calculated the amount of terror needed to produce results

1I111il'l in wider circles beyond the victims. If ever a regime ruled by the principle of fear, it was his. Rosas acted according to a pure Hobbesian belief that fear is the only thing that makes men keep the laws. In political terms his methods worked. Terror helped keep Rosas in power and the people in order for some twenty years; it

jll'll served in this regard as one of a number of factors in 1829-1832 and 1835-1838, as a major instrument of government in 1839-1842, and as a latent threat from 1843 to 1852. In this sense, terror served

II its purpose. But who was the prime terrorist? Rosas was responsible for the terror: contemporaries affirmed it,

III11I111

'illllill and historians agree. As Mansilla remarked, "Whether Rosas ordered the throat-cutting or simply permitted it, is all the same to US";35if

:1 ~IIIII'II he failed to exercise his power and stop the killings, even out of fear, then he was responsible. But his role was more positive. According

IIIII1 to his officials, he gave the orders. Felipe Arana, minister of Rosas and deputy governor during the terror of 1840-1842, disclaimed all responsibility for the decisions of that time: "Rosas, from Santos

',. I1'II1 Lugares, issued the orders for those assassinations, without any par- ticipation at all by me or by the police or by the agents themselves."

"II The chief of police, Bernardo Victorica, also denied responsibility and any duty to investigate. The reason he gave was that he knew that "the highest authority was aware of all those crimes and I was confirmed in this conviction because the government did not give me any warning" -until the decree stopping the terror, when he was

II

blamed for lack of vigilance. No doubt testimony of this kind was suspect, for they were all trying to save their own skins during

II! II

was unrepentant and prepared to go down fighting. Cuitifio /llllm

declared to the court that the order to cut the throats of Colonel

Francisco Lynch, Oliden, Mason, and the others "was received by Parra directly from Governor Rosas verbally" and that Parra 11'1

Ireported directly to Rosas afterward at Government House; and in II

his own prison, Cuitifio had shot and cut the throats of detainees on 11':11'1

the order of the government.36 His testimony was probably true. One way or another, Rosas obtained unqualified obedience. He

1/1" 1III

destroyed anarchy, but he created a great fear. He wore down the opposition by irresistible force. Mter two memorable decades, he was still there, irremovable and apparently impervious not only to internal threat but also to foreign intervention.

,III

'IIII~

1," I.

1

,"

II

II

II'" 11'111

1""1'

Ililll,

I'll 1111 , II

11111111 , , 111

11111

III

I ililill I""d

iil

III

III/.. I

34 Argentine Caudillo

Had rosismo prevailed it would have held Argentina in an economic straitjacket. But the model was finally undermined from within, first by sheep farming, then by the agrarian revolution of the 1880s. Nevertheless, the Rosas regime left an indelible imprint on the agrar- ian structure of Argentina. The countryside was given its social and economic form before Argentina received its mass immigration, underwent a revolution on the pampas, and became a major exporter of grain and meat. Before modernization even began, the system of landholding, the size of estates, and in many cases the per- sonnel had all been permanently implanted.

3

PATRON AND PEON

The Social Divide

The structure of society was simple and its scale was small. Argentina, so full of cattle, was empty of people, and even in the

1850s its population density was not much more than one inhabi- tant per square mile. Moreover, the population tended to extreme concentration; over one-third of the total was to be found in Buenos Aires and Cordoba. Yet Argentina underwent considerable demo- graphic growth in the half-century following independence, as the official statistics show (see Table 3.1). The gap between 1825 and 1857 can be filled by the estimates of Diego de la Fuente, director of Argentina's first census (1869), who gives a total of768,000 for 1839 and 935,000 for 1849. In the thirty-two years from 1825 to 1857, almost coterminous with the rule of Rosas, the population of Argen- tina roughly doubled itself Growth was due essentially to a fall in the mortality rate in a period of improving conditions and freedom from major epidemics. There was only moderate immigration under

Table 3.1 Population Growth, Argentina 1800-1869

.rear TOtal 1800 300,000 1816 507,951 1825 570,000 1857 1,180,000 1869 1,736,923

Source:Data from Ernesto J. A. Maeder,Evoluciondemogrdficaargentinade 1810 a 1869 (Buenos Aires, 1969), 22-26.

37

1 1

I I 1

,

1

I1II1

I 1111

I 11111

I I II , 11'11

:11111.

III '

I, II

I :~: 11'1

Ii

III

1:

11

1

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I Iii

, 'I!

I

36 Argentine Caudillo

Rosas, though a number of Basques, French, Italians, and British entered Buenos Aires in the years between or after blockades.

The greatest population upswing was registered by the littoral provinces, which increased their share of the total from 36.0 percent in 1800 to 48.8 percent in 1869. Buenos Aires grew under Rosas but not spectacularly, and the historian of the period is dealing with a very small community. Rosas himself commissioned a census of the

province in 1836; this was carried out successfully and gave a popu- lation of 62,228 for the city and 80,729 for the countryside, a total of 142,957 (see Table 3.2). The figures in Table 3.2 show that the countryside was steadily redressing the demographic balance as cat- tle and sheep farming drew increasing numbers to the rural sector. Official housing figures for Buenos Aires reflect the principal inter- ruptions to economic activity, namely civil wars and blockades, but not the growth characteristic of a dynamic city.

The social structure was founded on land; it was the large estancia that conferred status and power. Among the eighty or so people who were members of the House of Representatives between

1835 and 1852, the assembly that voted Rosas into power and kept on voting for him, the majority (60 percent) were landowners or had occupations connected with land. The administration, too, was dominated by landowners. The closest political adviser of Rosas, Nicolas Anchorena, was the greatest landowner in the province, by 1852 having accumulated 306 square leagues (1,836,000 acres). Juan N. Terrero, economic adviser of Rosas, owned 42 square leagues (252,000 acres) and left a fortune of 53 million pesos. Angel Pacheco, Rosas's general, had 75 square leagues (450,000 acres).

Table 3.2 Province of Buenos Aires, Population 1797-1869

.rear

1797 City Countryside TOtal

1822 40,000 32,168 72,168

1836 55,416 63,230 118,646

1855 62,228 80,729 142,957

1869 90,076 183,861 273,937 177,787 317,320 495,107

Source: Dara from Ernesro J. A. Maeder, Evolucidn demogrdfica argentina de 1810 a 1869 (Buenos Aires, 1969),33-34.

Patron and Peon

FelipeArana, minister of foreign affai:s, had 42 squ.areleagues. Even Vicente Lopez, poet, deputy, and presIdent of the hIgh court, owned

12 square leagues (72,000 ~cres). At a local level, of course, power consisted onl and III the Countr SI e an owners ru ea. As justi~ce or military comm.?n4~~_.5:~ancier~~!:_.t ~ir

cl1eiitsQomi1lli~d~ 10~~.,K~e£E:!!l~1];!;._Oft_~nilliEe£~~~aEd 11~:r~2' i~L- educated, these auiliQJJj:Ies n~1:<:;.rrb.d~ss-p.oss.e.sst:dJ:.h~.el.~nn&~!J.a1~- ifitauons of landQ~l1~J§h!tLgJJ.d)Qyalty=to_Rosas.andJe.q~!~j§.m~ Therule of' ~as,Jh …J:;.t~£Qre"'''s a w the .,cre.,a.tiQQ .o£.a '.m'~ itiv.Pn -~,,!JJJiPg ~fa s~'~"

, , , ., , . , , , , .in thUQ.WJ1(y.side..,,!b~t :was YirtuaUY-~J:he,_same_ilstb..e..lQcal

,' , , JaQd.~~", , , 1

Class;its mel!!Qers g~g;1n..byserving Rosas,"but.,sl1.£s~e~jngregi~~~-too, fouq..sLthe.PJjlldisl1eQ~.g,blt:""""".~

'~ olarization of socie was absolute. There was an upper classof Ian own rs an t eir associates an a lower class composing the rest of the population. There were some ambiguities, it is true, and some social margins were unclear. Both before and after the rev-

olution for independence, commerce was economically important and socially respectable. In the Hispanic world wholesale trade had never been a barrier to social status, and in the Rio de la Plata even retail trade was acceptable. There were many businesses situated in the center of Buenos Aires whose owners were the ancestors of some of the principal families of Argentina. But the urban elite of the

early nineteenth century did not acquire a separate identity or become an independent middle class. Faced with insistent Br' . competition in the ears after . ~usin~smen began to Ivert t eircapital into land and become estancieros. There wereno °she~ ~mY-the –~middle~rilllJi:i..':" ~ -.

It there was little prospect of a native middle sector in the towns, there was even less chance of one emerging in the coun- tryside, wbcre an immense gulf separated the landed proprietor fr.,<::>m It is true was a sizable group,the landless peon. that there perhaps one-third of the rural population of the province, that did not work directly on the land bUt found employment as traders, artisans, and carters or found delight in unemployment. But these were drawn into the prevailing polarization. William ~acCann did not doubt that rural society was deeply divided: . There i~ as vet no m!MJe class; the owners of land feeding h – —-Immense flocks and herds form one class, their herdsmen and

s epherds form another."! He thought that the immigrant farmers

7:_~ I rcJlV'V" I

~ f?

I

39 111111

i111"II .11 I

I

I I

I I II

i I I 11111

I III III

:llllli

IiiII II

Ii

38 Argentine Caudillo

were beginning to form an intermediate class of small flockhold- ers, a variant of the English yeoman. This prospect was only par- tially fulfilled, however, and in many cases the early immigrant either dropped out or was integrated within a generation or two into the estanciero class.

The homogeneity of this class was not absolute. Not all traders were plebeians; not all estancieros were great landowners. Some were owners of truly immense land concentrations, but there were some

whose estates were relatively modest. The former were often capital- ists of urban origin with some education and aspirations to higher standards of living. The latter were more likely to come from gener- ations of country dwellers and were little removed in culture from the gauchos around them-illiterate, indifferent to material com- forts, and investing little in improvement. The difference between the two was not entirely one of wealth. It was also determined by cultural levels and social expectations. Sarmiento defined it in terms of civilization and barbarism. ..,, – fu in spite of differences in income, culture, and social style, the

estancieros were as one compared with the peons on their estates and the gauchos on the pampas, and they had more in common with each other than with the rest of society. There was a great deal of group cohesion and solidarity among the landed class. Rosas himself was the center of a vast kinship group based on land. He was surrounded by a closely knit economic and political network linking deputies, law officers, officials, and military who were also landowners and related among themselves or with Rosas. Even when he was out of power and far from Buenos Aires, he had considerable political influence through Felipe Arana, the foreign minister; through his brother-in- law Lucio N. Mansilla, the police chief; and especially through the Anchorenas, his cousins and collaborators. Rosas used his extensive patronage to bind this small oligarchy even closer.The Anchorenas in particular were able to extend their urban and rural properties with his direct assistance, making a profit from their alleged services to the state. Rosas subsequently argued that as governor, he had advanced their interests and increased their fortune immensely: "I served them with notorious favoritism in everything they asked and needed." Tomas de Anchorena thanked Rosas for exempting his son from mil- itary service and from mixing in the barracks with common people. And Rosas himself admitted that he had deliberately exempted the

(~ Patron and Peon

Anchorena estancias from state demands for peons, cattle, and horses, "a privilege which at that time was of supreme value to them. "2

The values of the estanciero class were conservative, and most

of them took it for granted that continuity was superior to change. Their social and in some cases their political ideas betrayed a basic affinity with the colonial order; for many of them the years before 1810 had indeed been a golden age, when in monopoly conditions their families had made their first fortunes. Tomas de Anchorena was such a type, though no doubt an extreme one. Friend, relation, and associate of Rosas, he lost no opportunity to extol the past and denounce novelty. His hostility to foreign influences amounted to xenophobia. In the House of Representatives in 1828, he fulmi- nated against "that plague of corrupt foreigners which infests our

countryside," arguing that the country had made more progress before the British invasion of the Rio de la Plata in 1806 than after-

ward and that Rivadavia had admitted too many immigrants. He went on to claim an innate superiority in the prerevolutionary gen- eration: ''Asfar as enlightenment is concerned, I have observed, and no one will deny it, that generally the men of most capacity and credit in the country are those who were formed before the revolu-

tion and those whom these have since brought up in the old way." Men like this were opposed to the slightest modification of the

colonial social structure. Tomas de Anchorena was a harsh oppo- nent of social disturbance and subversion and a constant critic of anarchy and insecurity in the countryside, though even he had to admit, in his contemptuous way, that there was an order in the Countryside that had not been changed: "The coarseness of our common people and country folk is not so striking as that of the same class in Europe. Although they lack manners, they are gener-ally docile."

The views of Tomas de Anchorena were too extreme even for many of his elitist contemporaries, but his influence on Rosas was considerable. According to Mansilla, "Only one man, an Anchorena, had any real influence on him. And it was certainly not good for the country, though the person in question was a man of sound repute. But he belonged to the group of hacendados whose great remedy for everything was to prescribe a 'strong govern- ment.' "3Rosas depicted himself as removed from class interest, an

: illlill I I

r 40 Argentine Caudillo

honest man of the countryside called to restore the laws. In contrast, he expressed a social solidarity with his class that embraced even his political enemies: "I believed it important to accustom the people always to regard with respect the upper classes of the country [las primeras categoriasdel pays}, even those whose opinions differ from the prevailing ones. This is the reason why all my punishments were reserved for the scoundrels and rebels, for the whole pack of officials and ambitious leaders."4

Rosas was a man of conservative instincts, a creature of the colo-

nial society in which he had been formed, a defender of authority and hierarchy. In spite of his overt populism, he stood for the preser- vation of the traditional social structure in its entirety. His political thinking was not profound, but it was consistent. His favorite model appears to have been the absolute monarchy of the old regime, his great aversion the spirit of revolution. He opposed change in Argentina and abhorred it in Europe. Mter 1852, pessimistic and powerless, he could only observe the events of contemporary history. In 1871, horrified by the advance of democracy, he wrote from Southampton: "When even the lower classes increasingly lose respect for law and order, and no longer fear divine punishment, only absolute powers are capable of imposing the laws of God and man, and respect for capital and its owners."5These are no doubt the views of conservative old age, influenced as much by convulsion in Europe as by change in Argentina, but they also summarize a life- long philosophy.

Gauchos and Peons

At the end of the colonial period the pampas were inhabited by wild cattle, frontier Indians, and untamed gauchos. The gaucho was a product of race mixture; the components have been disputed, but there is no doubt that there were three races in the littoral: Indians, whites, and blacks. By simple definition the gaucho was a free man on horseback. But the term was used by contemporaries and by later historians to mean rural people in general. Yet many country people were neither gauchos nor peons; they were independent families liv- ing on small ranches or farms or earning a living in a pulperia or a village. Greater precision would distinguish between the sedentary

Patron and Peon 41

rural dwellers working on the land for themselves or for their patron and the pure gaucho, who was nomadic and independent, tied to no estate. Further refinement of terms would identify the gaucho malo, who lived by violence and near delinquency and whom the state regarded as a criminal. Sarmiento established his own typology: the Tracker, the Pathfinder, the Singer, the Outlaw. Whether good or bad, however, the classical gaucho asserted his freedom from all for-

mal institutions; he was indifferent to government and its agents, indifferent to religion and the church. Social marginality for the

gauchowas a desire as well as a condition. As Sarmiento observed, I"He is happy in the midst of his poverty and privations," for he most I

valued complete independence and idleness.6 He did not seek land; he lived by hunting, gambling, and fighting.

The nomadism of the gaucho had many social implications. It prevented settled work or occupation. Property, industry, land, habitation; these were alien concepts. So too was the gaucho fam- ily. The upper sector of society enjoyed great family stability and drew strength from ties of kinship. The lower sector was much weaker institutionally. The cultural division was partly an urban- rural one, but it was also a feature of the social structure. Whether we interpret it in terms of town and country, civilization and bar- barism, or landowner and laborer, the difference in the degree of family stability was a fundamental feature of Argentine society. Among the gauchos and peons, unions were temporary, and fam- ilies were only loosely joined. Marriage was the exception, and it was the unmarried mother who formed the nucleus of the rural

family, for she was the only permanent parent, the one who kept – " together those homes that survived the rigors of ruraIII.fe. Even if

.

the father was not prone t~ho nomadism,l1e usual* ~ .

b~ economic resources to~main and sustain a tami~!:QJ.ij2; . .. . .~o selInis laborwherehe-C.0-LllcLQLelse ~he~as-1:~cruit~- ~

Into armies or montoneros. Lack of domesticity meant that the gauc os I aga e hem;r as a lamily group or pre- serve their identity t roug enerations. Con ltlons were a ainst. t em; t ey were cast a ri t on the plains, homeless and hunted.

e gauchos and the country tolk III general were victims of gov- er~ment policy and the new economy: "Victims of the trimestrial leVIesfor irregular warfare, they have no incentives to steady work and cannot, in fact, root themselves. At all times and by all parties

42

43

r Argentine Caudillo

they are hunted out, to fight or run away, disband or be disbanded, but to be hunted again; with none to share a home, with no home to be shared, driven to roam, they have no belongings and they do not propagate. What would it avail them to form homes or create

surroundings as long as a press-gang incessantly dogs them, or they crouch and hide like hunted deer among dense scrub or thistle beds?"7

The ruling class in the countryside had traditionally imposed a system of coercion upon people whom they regarded as m~zos vaJ!:os y m.alentretenidos,vagabonds without employer or occupation, idlers whb'sat in groups singing to a guitar, drinking mate, gambling but

apparently not working. This classwas seen as a potential labor force. and was therefore subject to all kinds of constraints and controls by the landed proprietors-the obligationto carryproof of identity and ,..

permits to leave the estancia, imprisonment, conscription to the Indian frontier, corporal punishment, and other penalties. The unfortunate gaucho might escape beyond the frontier, fleeing from crime or adversity, to become a gaucho alzado; but to live among the Indians w~~, ' the worst possible stigma, signifYing nonwhiteness, delinquency, and apostasy. No doubt there was much chronic law- lessness in the countryside and an identifiable criminal element: rob- bery of estancias, murder, gambling in pulperias, illicit sale of hides and other products, and traveling without a permit were not offenses

invented by the authorities. However, legislators further sought ~ identifY vagos y mal entreteni~iUliIlai class oydetlnmon a~agrancy Itself as a crime. In practice, ro be poor, une~yed,

, aii:d1aTewas equated -WIth bein~ a gaucho. }.he first ollje~erancUP' : antivag y leglSlation was to Impose law an d order in the coun-

. . ..

I .:0~ tryslde; the. second was to provide a labor pool tor hacendados; t~ {I?. wra, to produce conscnpts tor me army. Tl1:e.mlfltia became, in

I' ~.t e ct,. an 0 en ITsffirint6 wnich t1lemostmiserable part. o~ .J'5-r ruralJ?opulation"~s orablYheided. By no stretch of the imagina-

.t1onwer~~l!@l militia~sI2on~neousor 0 .ular . orce ~ For the gaucho the years after 1810 were, if ..nything, harsher than those before. During the colonial regime the' free and nomadic gaucho traditionally had access to ciJ?larrones(wild cattle) on the open range. But this tradition came to an end as the estancias were

implanted and endowed and began to extend private property in the pampas and app~opriate all cattle to themselves. Now the landown-

/

#

Patron and Peon

rs with the support of republican governments, began to prevent illi~ithunting, slaughter, and trade in hides and to defend their land nd cattle. There was a prolonged stru Ie between the hacendado

:nd the gaut 0.. n. tImes 0 tur u ence and civi war the margilli!J people of the countryside revived the communal r . s of the

past an once more too catt e, ut w en or er returned, the hacen-j dadOSreaffIrmed the nghts ot properrv. This did not mean that ciillarrones no longer roamed the range. Now the peons of the estancia, not free gauchos, caught the wild cattle and took them tO their masters; otherwise such ap~ropriation was rustling. J

Coercive controls and the horror of life among the Indians drove the gaucho into the hands of the hacendado, but as a hired ranch

hand, a wage earner, a peon de estancia.It is true that labor scarcity gave the peon some advantage, and an active labor market and job mobility coexisted with repressive rural codes; at the same time, col- laboration between estancieros and army deserters resolved many of the problems of labor shortage. The rural regime was not entirely unfuir row.trd the worker, and on many ia., Ir pr

ovided a stable j/. .lving and jo secunty 1 t at was w at tea orer wanted. But for the .,

gatiCIiothe price was s@Joss of freedom. He became virtually the property of his patron; if the estate was filS sanctuary, it was also his prison. An estanciero needed personal as well as institutional power. He had to be as tough and talented a gaucho as his own peons, if not more so. He had to have enough skill and resources to beat the

Indians and to resist the authorities if necessary.He had to be a fighter as well as a proprietor, a man who could protect as well as employ.

The relation of patron and client was the essential bond, based on a personal exchange of assets between these unequal partners.

The landowner wanted labor, loyalty, and service in peace and war. ) The peon wanted subsistence and security. The estanciero, there- fore, was a protector, the possessor of sufficient power to defend his dependants against marauding bands, recruiting sergeants, and rival hordes. He was also a provider who developed and defended local resources and could give employment, food, and shelter. Thus a

pat~~n recruited a peonada that followed him blindly in ranching, . polItICs,and war. These individual alliances were extended into a social ramid as atrons in turn became c ients to more ower u ~

tnen Until t e eak 0 ower was reac e and the all became clients 0 a superpatron, t e cau i o. osas was t e archetypal cau illo, the

45 44 Argentine Caudillo

embodiment of personal power in a society that responded to patronage rather than politics.

I

Rosas: Populist or Patrician?

ilill

Did Rosas have a mass following among the gauchos? Was he a true III

11111 populist? old he, as contemporaries implit:J and hiStorians asserted, represent the rural masses against the urban elites? Rosas's view of the popular classes was c~ditionedJ?y his economic interests and social position. It was a predICtably conservative and authoritarian view but was based not on an attitude of cruelty or contempt but, in the beginning, on apprehension. Soon after taking possession of his estancia Los Cerrillos, he wrote to the government in 1817, com- plaining of the terrifying insecurity and anarchy in the region of Monte, which was infested by hordes of vagrants, idlers, and delin- quents who respected neither property nor persons but who inso- lently roamed the countryside defying the authority of magistrates and landowners alike: "Only a month ago I was attacked in my own estancia because I tried to stop ostrich hunting, in which dozens of men helped themselves to my animals. I had to defend myself in a knife attack; and since then my life depends on striking back at idlers and delinquents."8

The gaucho as delinquent was a familiar interpretation. It was the lawlessness of the countryside that first impressed Rosas. And this vivid awareness of incipient anarchy bred in him a determina- tion to conquer it, first in his own environment, then in the politi- cal world beyond. There was a period, in the late 1820s, when he seems to have genuinely feared an autonomous movement of protest from below, a movement that he sought to capture and control. This is the context in which occurred his often cited interview with the

Uruguayan envoy, Santiago Vazquez, on the day after he took office as governor in December 1829. Then he claimed that unlike his predecessors, he had cultivated the 'people ''ileZasclasesba 'as"and

a gauc erize imse in or er to contro t em. Previous govern- ments, he argued,

acted very well towards educated people, but they despised the lower classes, the country people, the men of action. . . , It seemed to me that

r-

Patronand Peon

in the crisis of the revolution the governing parties would be displaced by the lower class who would impose their rule and cause worse evils. As you know, the dispossessed are always inclined against the rich and the powerful. So from then onwards I thought it very important to gain a decisive influence over this class in order to control it and direct it; and I was determined to acquire this influence at all costs, I had to work at

~:;:..) ::..it relentlessly,sacrificingmy comfort and fortune, in order to becomea <,,~ '

.gaucho like them, to speak like them, to do everything they did. I had ~~Ir .-

spareto protectno them, neglectrepresentno meansthem, guardsecuretheirtheirinterests, In short I had to ( i/'- "2f?..) cJ" effort, to allegiance.9

Rosas, therefore, identified culturally with the gaucho. He brought up his son to feel the same. Rosas's idea of a joke while rid- ing with his followers was to lasso a man suddenly round the neck, . pull him off his horse, and drag him along for a distance. The crude and obscene jokes, the presence of a court jester, Eusebio, and the violent horseplay and clowning all displayed what one observer

, described as "su genio y caricter gauchesco."lo Some of this behav- ior had a positive effect. Charles Darwin evidently heard the stories current about Rosas's gaucho sympathies and talent" and could see that even his iron discipline drew a grudging respect from his men. He was impressed by his horsemanship and all-round proficiency in rural ways: "By these means, and by conforming to the dress and habits of the Gauchos, he has obtained an unbounded popularity in the Country, and in"consequence a despotic power."11Darwin was further struck by a ce~tain egalitarianism in Rosas's social relations. Rosas'senemies made much the same point, though with bitter dis- approval. Accordin to Andres Lamas, a spokesman for the emigres in Montevi eo, Rosas was a social danger w 0 too rom t e rich ana aveto the "ViCIOUSand Idle," basing his power exclusively on die i educated an ruta lze part 0 SOCIety,glvIllg an outs to the lower orders, aITowlll them to take revenge on their superiors, an.- IIIgener a III a' olic of ee SOCI ivisiveness.12.

0 I entify culturally w ,h the peop e of the country was not the same thing as uniting with them socially. To behave like a gaucho Was not necessarily to represent or elevate or save the gaucho. Subsequent rosista historiography claimed that Rosas identified totally with the gauchos and that they rose spontaneously for him. ~ ?~mber of contemporary observers spoke in the same way. 1:b£-

fltlsh ~nisters invariably reported that the lower classes of town – ~

46

47

Argentine Caudillo

Patron and Peon

and country supported Rosas, and they gave the im ression of gau- I!II! I cho or es ri mg to t e caplt m t e cause of their saVIOr. 1i ~, I II Yorke Gore reported: "The Gauchos, or innabita~~11,~o~ntry

districts, are ardentl attached to General Rosas, to whom, as their

acKnowledge chief and benefactor, t ey ave ong looked up with

an inq:~ dcvuLion.." Rosas, hImself explainedtO]Ol1nY~ry MandevIlle that "there ISno anstocracy herefCf'support a gQvern- .rnent, puEUc opinion and the masses govern. " Henry Southern

4elTeved, "ItTs~the secretofhiSpOWer that he taught the Gaucho of the plains that he was the true master of the towns. It was on the basis of troops of his own cattle-breeders and drivers and horse tamers that he first established his authority which he has main- tained to this day by a cunning and dextrous use of the same arm."13

These impressions, however, are distorted or at least open to misinterpretation. In the first place, the core of Rosas's forces were

,111,II,

his own peons and dependants, who had to follow him in war as they worked for him in peace. Who were Rosas's peons? They were

IIII!/iiI composed, first, of gauchos, previously "wild" and nomadic, now tamed and ti~o hTh-esrancIa,where tIley worked as ranch hands inI!!II,

"II return for pay and protection. Second, they included "friendly" 1"11 Indians. Some of these worked for him as peons; others simply lived 11111.

in the zones near his estancias or camped on his land, collaborating I 'If1I1I1II with him against incursions of enemy Indians or against politicalI foes in return for the atrona e of a o~ertul caudillo w1iO-

'I impressed them and spoke their language. T ir , t e Rosas esr;mcia~" II

h~~ored a nU~r of outlaws. He deliberatefy recruited ~- .11 quents, deserters from the army, escaped prisoners, and encouraged

diem to seek refu e on his estates, partly as a response to the labor s ortage, partly as a contro measure agamst anarc y. Rosas, of

r c6urse, 1 not to erate 0 enses agamst property. sSarmiento

pointed out, he made his estancia "a sort of asylum for mllt:d~n~~s," but as a landed proprietor, ile did not extend his protection to rob- bers.]4Otherwise he cast his net fairly widely, as General La Madrid

noted: "In spite of the severity with which he forced them to obey, Rosas was the hacendado who had most peons, because he paid them well and joined in their horse-play during breaks from work, and he patronized all the villains and deserters who made for his estancias and no one could touch them."15Gauchos, Indians, delin- qU~nts, whoever they were, Rosas's peons were his servants rather

than his supporters, his clients rather than his allies. When Rosas aid to his gauchos "Adelante!" it was an order, not a political speech.

s These surges of the rural populatiou, moreover, occurred iu times of exceptional crisis, rebellion, or war, such as in 1829, 1833, and 1839. In 1828-1829, as has been seen, Rosas deliberately exploited rural unrest to assemble popular forces to COUnterthe uni- tarian rebellion.16One who knew him then reported: "He estab-

lished a camp, which had all the privileges of a sanctuary, for every malefactor,in everydistrict from BuenosAyresto Upper Peru."17 He used these marginal elements as part of his "popular forces." In 1833, waiting in the wings during the Desert Campaign, he instructed his wife to cultivate the poor as a base for a political comeback: "You have already observed how valuable is the friend- ship of the poor and therefore how important it is to cultivate it and not to lose any opportunity of attracting and keeping their sympa- thies. So do not lose COntact.Write to them frequently; send them gifts and do not worry about the cost. I say tbe same about the mothers and wives of the pardos and coloreds who are loyal. Do not

hesitate to visit those who are worth it and to take Nlem on outings in the COuntry,also assist them as far as you can when they are in trouble. "]8 And Dona Encarnacion, agent of rosismo, "heroine of the federation," patronized the popular elements and the people of color, calling in black women to receive her favor, sending them Out as clients. Her patio was like a club for the populace. Rather than politicization, this was a primitive and personalist form of political manipulation. There was no organization: Rosas, his wife, and a fewfriends held all the strings.

. On all these occasionswhen Rosas needed to make a critical political push, he enlisted the gauchos in the Countryside and the mob in the city. They were the only manpower available, and for the mOment they had a value outside the estancia. The normal ag~arian regime however, was very different. And as Sarmiento POInted OUt,the gaucho forces lasted only as long as Rosas needed ;'hem. Once Rosas had the apparatus of the state in his possession, rom 1835, once he Controlled the bureaucracy, the police, the

;azorca, or paramilitary squads, and above all the regular army, he Id ~Ot need or want the popular forces of the Countryside. He

~eCru1ted, equipped, armed, and purged an army of the line, etachments of which were used against the Countryside to round

v

49

r 48 Argentine Caudillo

up the levies. It was the army camped at Santos Lugares that gave him his ultimate power.

The gaucho militias, furthermore, were popular forces only in the sense that they were composed of the peons of the countryside. They were not always volunteers for a cause; nor were they politi- cized. Methods of military recruitment in general were crude and often violent. The British minister, William Gore Ouseley, took a cynical view of spontaneity. He described the brutal activities of General Prudencio Rosas while raising levies in a village near Buenos Aires, where he gave a man 200 lashes for remonstrating against forced conscription. The severity of the punishment killed the man, but General Rosas thought it set a good example. "This mode of raising troops," commented Ouseley, "is described in late numbers of the Gacetaas the 'spontaneous and enthusiastic rising of the peo- ple in their own defence against the aggressions of the savage Unitarians.' "19As for the militias, they were officered and led by the justices of the peace, by regular army commanders, and by estancieros. The fact of belonging to a military organization did not give the peons political power or representation, for the rigid struc- ture of the estancia was also built into the militia, where the estancieros were the commanders, their overseers the officers, and their peons the troops. These troops did not enter into direct rela- tions with Rosas; they were mobilized by their patron, which meant that Rosas received his support not from free gaucho hordes but from estancieros leading their peon conscripts, a service for which the estancieros were paid by the state. Rosas himself was from the beginning the most powerful estanciero, and his peonada was the most numerous and best equipped. But that did not make him a populist leader.

Even the use of the word "gaucho" was ambiguous in rosista ter- minology. It had two meanings, according to the situation. In pub- lic, it was used as a term of esteem and perpetuated the idea that the g~ucho, like the estanciero, was a model of native virtues…a.n.dthat the interests of both were icfemical. Rosas, too, he¥d to propagate the myth that the estanciero understood the gaucho and was con- cerned only with his welfare; this was one of the themes of the dic- tator's propaganda and was incorporated into popular songs of the times. In private, however, especially in police usage, "gaucho" meant "vago, mal entretenido, delinquent." The first usage repre-

Patron and Peon

sented political propaganda. The pejorative meaning expressed class

distinction, social prejudices, a~economic attitudes; it was used by the landowner, short of I bill, confronting the countryman who wished to remain free. cording to William MacCann, "The term

Gaucho is one 0 sive to the mass of the people, being under- stood to me a person who has no local habitation, but lives a noma' lfe; therefore in speaking of the poorer classes I avoid that

"20

The poorer people, of course, were a heterogeneous group, not a unified class.They were peons on estancias, dependants subject to a patron, free laborers, farmers and tenants, small ranchers, and the marginal population that was almost professional montoneros. Uneducated, illiterate, ignorant of public issues, these groups could not participate in even the crudest political process; they were inca- pable of autonomous action, of organizing themselves, or of responding to political leadership. The history of populism, of course, contains many examples ofleaders who offer benefits to apo- litical masses without necessarily incorporating them into politics or basicallychanging society. Did Rosas do this? Did he improve con- ditions for the rural population? Did he deliver economic and social benefits?

The domination of the economy by the estancia was continued and completed under Rosas, as has been seen. No land was granted to the gaucho; no property was allocated to the peon. It is sometimes argued that under Rosas the rural laborers were free men, respected ~~d defended; yet there is no eviden~e that Rosas ever queried the eXlstmgsociar structure. He inherited from previous regimes a dis- criminatory social legislation and a political system designed to exclude participation. The electoral law of August 14, 1821, which r~mained in force throughout the rule of Rosas and beyond, estab- hshed direct elections and universal male suffrage; all free men from the age of twenty had the right to vote, and all property owners over twenty-five had the right to be candidates for election. This was the law, and there were no literacy or property qualifications for voters. But in practice the illiterate gauchos could not vote as free men. The syste~ was a fraud and a farce: the government sent a list of official candIdates, and it was the task of the justices of the peace to ensure t~at these were elected. Open and verbal voting, the right of the jus- tIces to exclude voters and candidates whom they considered

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unqualified, the intimidation of opposition; these and many other malpractices reduced the elections to absurdity. Rosas frankly admit- ted that elections had to be controlled, and he condemned as

hypocrisy the demand for free elections. His government, he told the assembly in 1837, "has sent many worthy residents and magistrates throughout the province lists which contained the names of those citizens who in its opinion were fit to represent the rights of their country, in order to favor their election, if so they wished."21 In prac- tice the Rosas lists were an absolute order, and those gauchos who went to the polls did so as voting fodder.

The politically defenseless gaucho was attacked on all sides by harsh labor laws that classifiedas a vagrant anyone who did not have a recognized employment or occupation endorsed by an employer. To inhabit or to move about the provincial territory, a man had to have a papeleta de conchabo,a certificate stating that he was working for a known proprietor and, ifhe was on the move, the date when he would return to his usual place of work. If he was found without this certifi- cate, he was considered a vagrant and liable to be arrested and sent to the army. In this way the gaucho lost his freedom and civil rights and became a peon dependent utterly on a patron; if he wanted to keep out of the army or prison, there was only the estancia. The only indi- viduality the peon retained was his particular occupation on the estancia, and some were more skilled than others. Thus the estancia became a closed sociopolitical reservein which the peon had no rights.

The severity of these sanctions reflected the emptiness of the pampas, the very low population density, and the ruthless search for labor in a period of estancia expansion. For these reasons, Rosas could not be expected basically to alter the discriminatory legislation that he inherited. He simply elucidated the law, defining more pre- cisely the crime and the punishment of vagrants, robbers, deserters, and other delinquents without granting the poorer classesany means of legal defense. If anything, the application of the law became harsher, and there was a tendency toward shortening criminal pro- ceedings. Rosas continued to apply the existing regulations against vagrancy, and although his local conscription levies simply contin- ued from previous administrations, the incidence of recruitment increased as his wars increased. In 1830, he decreed that militiamen could not travel about the country without their documents duly signed by the local magistrate. A militiaman could not change domi-

r Patron and Peon

cile without permission and without informing his commanding officer. In his speech at the beginning of the legislative session of 1836, he reported the strong action taken against vagos y mal entretenidos and the increased numbers conscripted into the forces.

Corporal punishment in the army ~as severe; the recruits were vir- tUalprisoners, kept under guard untIl the actual moment of march- ing; and the army canteens and pulperias robbed them of their small allowances. Conscription was not the only punishment for rural delinquency. The lash and various forms of torture, punishments characteristic of the colonial past, were continued beyond inde- pendence and into the Rosas regime. On the estancias, proprietors still punished their peons by putting them in stocks or staking them out like hides in the sun. It was a seigneurial regime in which the peons were deprived of full civil rights and the countryside was ruled by an informal alliance of estancieros and militia commanders who were often the same people. They were joined by a third oppressor.

The key agent of control in the countryside was the justice of the peace. The office was established in 1821 to fill the gap left by the suppression of the colonial cabildo, but its original judicial and administrative functions in a given district were soon extended to include those of commander of militia, police chief, and tax collec- tor. In a sense the office grew up with the estancia. In the years after 1821 the colonization of the empty countryside was accompanied by the creation of a new officialdom, and it became a convenient instrument of caudillo rule. The justice of the peace was not a con- stitUtional official but a political agent, a servant of state centralism. Rosas was quick to see this advantage, and he took control of the justices in the campaign of 1829; from then on they were his crea- tures. He scrutinized their appointment and monitored their every action. "From an administrative point of view, Rosas regarded the COuntrysideas an immense estancia, divided into stations; in charge of each was a justice of the peace, a kind of feudal lord dependent upon the seigneurial power established in the capitaI."22

The justices both administered the rural labor laws and policed the population; they pursued criminals, deserters, and vagrants; they rep~rt:d on properties and their owners, and also on their political a.ffihatlons;they took censuses of the population, applied confisca- ~Ions.of property, presided over elections. Yet in general the admin- IstratIon of justice was defective, and there was a kind of official

52 53

r Argentine Caudillo

delinquency just as bloodthirsty as gaucho delinquency. Most jus- tices of the peace were uneducated and ill qualified for their office; some were totally illiterate. No doubt there were exceptions, a few worthy officials who tried to shield their districts from the worst excessesof government power and to protect individuals from polit- ical vengeance. But in general the justices of the peace were either willing accomplices or helpless instruments of a policy expressed in arrests, confiscations, conscriptions, or worse and directed against anyone who could be branded a unitarian or delinquent. '

Some observers, however, were impressed by the rough justice administered in the province and by the law and order imposed by Rosas. The crime rate appeared to have dropped, personal security to have improved, property to be better protected. The evidence, moreover, comes at different times from various sources, some of them British: "Since Rosas's administration there has been little to

fear from them [the gauchos]: I do not say that their love of plun- der, the natural propensity of a savage, is extinct among them: but as the Captain General invariably shoots them, or makes them food for powder by making soldiers of them if they indulge in this propensity, a robbery, to my knowledge, by violence, is unknown."23 This observation was made in the mid-1830s. A

decade later William MacCann observed on the security of even remote properties since Rosas had established the rule of law in the pampas: "I have been assured that such was not the case before the ascendancy of General Rosas; but it being well known that, owing to the system of police established under his government, all, whether rich or poor, who were implicated in the violation of the established laws of the country were sure to suffer the extreme penalty of their crimes, robbery and outrage are almost unknown."24

This was the classic defense of Rosas, that his rule was the only alternative to anarchy; it was propagated by Rosas himself, and it particularly appealed to foreigners. But not to all of them. A French observer had other views: "In the Argentine pampas there are men more dreadful than the bad gaucho and who do more harm, with- oUt however being forced to flee from the law, because they them- selves represent lawful authority and justice. They are the officials honored by Rosas with his favor and confidence: the military com- manders of the countryside and the justices of the peace."25

Patron and Peon

Rosas and the Blacks

In spite of the May Revolution, the liberal declarations of 1810, and the subsequent hope of social as well as political emancipation, slaverysurvived in Argentina, fed by an illegal slave trade. The trata de negrosof the eighteenth century had produced a sizable slave population, most of it employed in domestic service or the artisan industries. The abolition of the slave trade within the United Provinces by decrees of April 9 and May 14, 1812, reduced the source of supply; and the treaty of February 2, 1825, with Great Britain obliged the United Provinces to cooperate with Britain in the total suppression of the slave trade. The abolition of slavery itself, however, involving as it did rights of property and scarce labor, was more difficult to achieve, and the institution long sur- vived the May Revolution.

At the end of the colonial period the Rio de la Plata contained aboUt 30,000 slaves oUt of a population of 400,000, or about 8 percent. The incidence of slavery was greatest in the towns, and after 1810 the people of color continued to concentrate in Buenos Aires.A breakdown of the population in Buenos Aires from 1810 to 1838 appears in Table 3.3. In 1810 there were 11,837 blacks and

mulattos in Buenos Aires, or 29.3 percent of the total population of 40,398, and over 77 percent of the blacks were slaves. In 1822, of the 55,416 inhabitants of the city of Buenos Aires, 13,685, or 24.7 percent, were blacks and mulattos; of these, 6,611, or 48.3 per- cent, were slaves. In 1838, people of color constitUted 14,928 out of 62,957, or 23.71 percent.

. Although slave numbers declined, slavery survived and an inter- nal slave trade continued to function. A number of upper-class fam- iliesheld slaves and valued them as status symbols in the home and as laborers on the land. Rosas was a slave owner. The vast acquisition ~f lands, the eXploitation of growing estancias, the increased produc- tion for saladeros, all raised the demand for labor at a time when

p~onswere scarce and military recruitment was heavy during the war WIthBrazil. Rosas bought slaves for himself and the Anchorenas. In the period 1816-1822, he acquired three slaves in Santa Fe; the Anchorenas bought three also. In 1822-1823, Rosas bought fifteen slaves for Anchorena estancias, and in 1828, he made further pur- chases. On the estancias Los Cerrillos and San Martin alone he had

54

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Table 3.3 Black and Mulatto Population, Buenos Aires, 1810-1838

1810 1822 1836 1838 Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent

Whites 28,116 69.6 40,616 73.3 42,445 67.34 42,312Blacks and 67.2

mulattos 11,837 29.3 13,685 24.7 14,906 23.65 14,928 23.71Indians and mestizos 192 0.5 1,115 2.0

Foreigners and others 253 0.6 4,019 6.37 3,649Troops

1,665 2.63 2,068 3.28

Total 40,398 100.0 55,416 100.0 63,035 99.99 62,957

Source:Data from Marta B. Goldberg, "La poblaci6n negra y mulata de la

ciudad de Buenos Aires, 1810-1840," DesarrolloEconomico, 16, no. 61 (1976),75-99.

thirty-four slaves. He was severe in his treatment of slaves, and he favored the lash to keep them obedient and preserve social order.

Rosas was responsible for a partial revival of the slave trade. His decree of October 15, 1831, allowed the sale of slavesimported as ser- vants by foreigners "in order to allow the unfortunate children of Mrica to experience the benefits of civilization" and also, evidently, to relieve the shortage of labor. Apart from slavery allowed under this decree, during the 1830s, slavescontinued to be illegallybrought into the country from Brazil, Uruguay, and Mrica. The government did

not seriously challenge this trade. Rosas himself argued that slavery was necessary to supply labor for the estancias, industries, and house- holds. Throughout the 1830s, newspapers daily carried advertise- ments offering slaves for sale. According to British observers, slaves were "sold with little concealment."26The British government pressed Rosas for action and in particular sought an anti-slave trade treaty but received no response until Rosas needed British support against the French blockade of 1838. A comprehensive anti-slave trade treaty was signed on May 24, 1839, providing for reciprocal search, mixed courts, and claims procedures. By 1843, according to a British esti- mate, there were no more than 300 slaves in the Argentine provinces, though the coloreds formed one-fourteenth of the total population.

Patron and Peon

Some slaves regarded Rosas as an escape route, a means of eman- cipation, which is evidence of the esteem in which he was held. Fugitive slaves from Brazilian vessels made their way to the head- quarters of Rosas to petition for their freedom. Foreign slave owners in BuenosAires were particularly liable to lose their slaves.A U.S. cit- izen, Andrew Thorndike, appealing to rights of private property and the absence of a decree of abolition, petitioned Rosas for the return of a freed slavewho had cost him 1,200 pesos.27He appealed in vain. Meanwhile, the traditional avenues of emancipation were still open:

slaveswho joined th~ federalist arn~y,especially if ~~eybelon~ed to

unitarian owners, gamed freedom m return for mIlItary servIce. A French factory owner petitioned Rosas for the return of one of his slaves who had made his way to Santos Lugares and enlisted; the / owner obtained neither his return nor financial compensation.28 Emancipation appears to have increased toward the end of the regime: "It is already well known in Brazil that if a slave can once A

reach the territory of the Confederation, he is free. Rosas has been here the Liberator of the Mrican, and if he is looked to with affec- tion by any class in the state, it is by the dark coloured races, whom

he has invariablyfavoured."29 When, in the Constitution of 1853, J slavery was finally abolished in the whole of Argentina, there werefew slavesleft.

The opposition attacked Rosas's record on slavery, and inevitably the liberals in Montevideo made much of the issue. They COntrastedthe policy of the old republic after the May Revolution with What followed under Rosas: "He issued a decree, eight years

' ago, allowing negro slaves to be brought in, because he and the Anchorenasneeded them for their estancias."30 Juan BautistaAlberdi also criticized the discrimination practiced against people of color, though he referred to the whole of the Rio de la Plata and not only to the Rosas state. He cited the expulsion of four young blacks from a cafe in Montevideo in 1840. The theater was also closed to blacks. But racism 'of this kind was never a feature of Rosas's ersonal atti- t~- e toward blacks and mu attos, w IC was crudel friendl. 1/ . osas had many blac s m ISemp oyment an many more in

hIs political service. He did not raise them socially, but neither did h~ discriminate against them racially. They had an accepted place in

~ hIs household, and outside his immediate circle, they gave him use- ful SUPpOrtin the streets and were parr of his "popular" following.

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Argentine Caudillo Patron and Peon

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The blacks of Buenos Aires were grouped in various societies, such as the Sociedad Conga or the Nacion Banguela, each with its own name, leaders, and distinctive dress, the whole having a strong and relatively recent African character. On the outskirts of the city, they formed a series of small communities, black enclaves where they pre- served their dances, music, customs, and language. Rosas patronized some of their festive gatherings and discreetly attended their can- dombes, as did his daughter, Manuela.

The blacks in turn ave Rosas their blind support. They joined the po ar c asses as they oc e to t e Carniva 0 osas, where they beat their drums, marched, danced, and shouted in a delirium

of drink and excitement, "Viva el Restaurador!" These orgies of drinking, dancing, and fighting were a sardonic hint to the upper classes of the tumult they could expect without a strong restraining hand. More particularly the regime used the blacks and mulattos for two purposes. They were deployed in a military role in Buenos Aires and the province, where they formed a militia unit, the negradafed- eral black troops in red shirts, many of them former slaves. Rosas

also used them as political tools. When, from the Desert Campaign in August 1833, he directed political activity in Buenos Aires, he advised his wife and other agents to identifY the opposition in the army by observing officers' wives and their contacts, recommending in effect a spying system in which slaves and blacks were encouraged to report on their masters and mistresses. The black Domiciano, a former peon on Rosas's estancia, was one of the chief cutthroats in

the antiunitarian squads. Yet in the final analysis the demagogy of Rosas among the blacks and mulattos did nothing to alter their posi- tion in the society around them. I

Society took its form under Rosas and endured beyond his regime. The dominance of the landowners, the abasement of the

gauchos, and the dependence of the peons were all the heritage of the Rosas years. Argentina bore the imprint of extreme stratification for many generations to come. Society became set in a rigid mold to which economic modernization and political change later had to adapt. Rosas was to some extent a creature of the class structure, a product of the landowning elite, a man formed in the social image of the estancia. But he was not simply a social phenomenon; he was idiosyncratic. He did more than inherit a system; he helped to cre- ate a society. Beginning with the estancia, he established values and

structUres that permeated the whole province and became the lifeblood of the Rosas state. In the estancia, he was an absolute ruler, and from his peons he demanded unqualified obedience. At the very outset, he punished his men mercilessly. The penalty for carrying a knife on Sundays and holidays was two hours in the stocks, for other

misdemeanors a staking out, for going to work without a lasso fifty lashes on the bare back. He always insisted on undergoing the same discipline himself, ordering his servant to administer the prescribed punishment to him as an example and in turn punishing those who hesitated to chastise their own master. This grim eccentricity impressed society by its results: "This was the way Rosas began to acquire a reputation. In the southern countryside in particular there was more obedience to his orders than to those of the governmentitself "31

The Rosas system was a product of environment and idiosyn- crasy. His state was the estancia writ large. Society itself was built upon the patron-peon relationship. Rosas helped to define the terms of this relationship, working on a state of nature where life was brutish and property at risk. "Subordination" was his favorite word, authority his ideal, order his achievement. As a British minister spoke of Rosas at the peak of his power, "He praises the lower orders as docile and obedient. "32 In the beginning, obedience was not so

assured. Indeed, Rosas eXplained the origins of his regime as a des- perate alternative to anarchy:

Society was in a state of utter dissolution: gone was the influence of those men who in every society are destined to take control; the spirit of insubordination had spread and taken widespread roots; everyone knew his own helplessness and that of others; no one was prepared either to order or to obey. In the countryside there was no security for lives or property. . . . The inevitable time had arrived when it was necessary to exercise personal influence on the masses to re-establish order, security, and laws; and whatever influence on them the present governor had, he Wasgreatly tormented, because he knew the absolute lack of government resources to reorganise society.33

The rationale of the regime, its origin, and its development would have been instantly recognizable to Thomas Hobbes.