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Rosas and Urquiza: AD 1835-1861
Argentina is geographically unlike other south American nations, with its vast open plains (the pampas, from an Indian word meaning a flat place) on which cattle are herded in Spanish imperial times by tough mestizo cowboys or gauchos (again probably from an Indian word, for vagabond).
This is the tradition which produces Juan Manuel de Rosas, the first strong man of independent Argentina. He is not himself a gaucho, for he comes from a noble Spanish family and owns extensive ranches, but he lives among the cowboys and trains them to his own tough standards. In the early years of independence he wins a formidable reputation as a leader of irregular troops.
In 1829 Rosas is elected governor of the province of Buenos Aires. By 1835 he has successfully imposed his will on all the other local governors. His status is now officially raised to that of dictator. Making effective use of personalismo (his portrait even features sometimes on church altars), he imposes on Argentina a brutally repressive conservative regime.
Rosas follows a vigorously nationalistic policy which pleases his people (he reacts strongly, for example, to the British seizure of the Falklands), but he goes too far when he intervenes in a Uruguayan civil war - lending his assistance in 1843 to a siege of Montevideo which eventually lasts for nearly nine years.
This embarrassment, together with Rosas' failure to provide the provinces with a federal constitution, leads to his being toppled in 1851 by one of his own provincial governors, Justo José de Urquiza.
Urquiza gathers an army to raise the siege of Montevideo and defeats an army loyal to Rosas at Caseros in February 1852. He then calls a convention which provides Argentina, in 1853, with the required constitution. Urquiza is elected president in 1854 for a six-year term. The first capital, in a rotating sequence, is to be Paraná. But there is one glaring omission from this new confederation. Buenos Aires, insisting on leadership of the nation or nothing, refuses to join.
The issue is again resolved on the battlefield. In 1861, at Pavón, the provincial troops of Buenos Aires under Bartolomé Mitre defeat the national army under Urquiza. In the following year Mitre (a distinguished author and historian as well as soldier) is elected president. He moves the capital to Buenos Aires, where it has remained ever since - though its status as permanent capital is not formally accepted until 1880.
Argentina, after fifty years of independence, has finally established its political identity. Meanwhile its economic nature is about to undergo a transformation.