THE LIBERATION OF SOUTH AMERICA 167
remained in Spanish hands until 1814, when it
fell to an Argentine siege. The junta met even more
tenacious resistance from the gauchos of the Uru-
guayan pampa, led by José Gervasio Artigas, who
demanded Uruguayan autonomy in a loose federal
connection with Buenos Aires. The porteños(in-
habitants of Buenos Aires) would have nothing to
do with Artigas’s gaucho democracy, and a new
struggle began. It ended when Artigas, caught
between the fi re of Buenos Aires and that of Por-
tuguese forces claiming Uruguay for Brazil, had to
fl ee to Paraguay. Uruguay did not achieve inde-
pendence until 1828.
The creole aristocracy in another portion of
the old viceroyalty of La Plata, Paraguay, also sus-
pected the designs of the Buenos Aires junta and
defeated a porteño force sent to liberate Asunción.
This done, the creole party in Asunción rose up,
deposed Spanish offi cials, and proclaimed the inde-
pendence of Paraguay. A key fi gure in this uprising
was the remarkable Dr. José Rodríguez de Francia,
soon to become his country’s fi rst president and
dictator.
Efforts by the Buenos Aires junta to liberate
the mountainous northern province of Upper Peru
also failed. Two thrusts by a patriot army into this
area were defeated, and the invaders rolled back.
The steep terrain, long lines of communication,
and the apathy of Bolivian indigenous peoples con-
tributed to these defeats.
The Buenos Aires government also had serious
internal problems. A dispute broke out between
liberal supporters of the fi ery Mariano Moreno,
secretary of the junta and champion of social re-
form, and a conservative faction led by the great
landowner Cornelio Saavedra. This dispute fore-
shadowed the liberal-conservative cleavage that
dominated the fi rst decades of Argentine history
after independence. In 1813 a national assembly
gave the country the name of the United Provinces
of La Plata and enacted such reforms as the aboli-
tion of mita, encomienda, titles of nobility, and the
Inquisition. A declaration of independence, how-
ever, was delayed until 1816.
Also in 1816, the military genius of José de San
Martín broke the long-standing military stalemate.
San Martín, born in what is now northeastern Ar-
gentina, was a colonel in the Spanish army with
twenty years of service behind him when revolu-
tion broke out in Buenos Aires. He promptly sailed
for La Plata to offer his sword to the patriot junta.
He was soon raised to the command of the army of
Upper Peru, which was recuperating in Tucumán
after a sound defeat at royalist hands. Perceiving
that a frontal attack on the Spanish position in Up-
per Peru was doomed to failure, San Martín offered
a plan for total victory that gained the support of
the director of the United Provinces, Juan Mar-
tín de Pueyrredón. San Martín proposed a march
over the Andes to liberate Chile, where a Spanish
reaction had toppled the revolutionary regime es-
tablished by Bernardo O’Higgins and other patriot
leaders in 1810. This done, the united forces of La
Plata and Chile would descend on Peru from the
sea.
To mask his plans from Spanish eyes and gain
time for a large organizational effort, San Mar-
tín obtained an appointment as governor of the
province of Cuyo, whose capital, Mendoza, lay at
the eastern end of a strategic pass leading across
the Andes to Chile. He spent two years recruiting,
training, and equipping his Army of the Andes.
Like Bolívar, he used the promise of freedom to
secure black and mulatto volunteers, and later de-
clared they were his best soldiers. Chilean refugees
fl eeing the Spanish reaction in their country also
joined his forces.
San Martín, methodical and thorough, de-
manded of the Buenos Aires government arms,
munitions, food, and equipment of every kind. In
January 1817 the army began its march over the
frozen Andean passes, which equaled in diffi culty
Bolívar’s scaling of the Colombian sierra. Twenty-
one days later, the army issued onto Chilean soil. A
decisive defeat of the Spanish army at Chacabuco
in February opened the gates of Santiago to San
Martín. He won another victory at Maipú (1818),
in a battle that ended the threat to Chile’s inde-
pendence. Rejecting Chilean invitations to become
supreme ruler of the republic, a post assumed by
O’Higgins, San Martín began to prepare the attack
by sea on Lima, fi fteen hundred miles away.
The execution of his plan required the creation
of a navy. He secured a number of ships in England