ARGENTINA 207
United Provinces of the Río de la Plata. Rivadavia,
who was elected president of the new state, made
a dramatic proposal to federalize the city and port
of Buenos Aires. The former capital of the province
would henceforth belong to the whole nation, with
the revenues of its customhouse used to advance
the general welfare.
Rivadavia’s proposal refl ected his nationalism
and the need to mobilize national resources for a
war with Brazil (1825–1828) over Uruguay. Con-
gress approved Rivadavia’s project, but the federal-
ist caudillos of the interior, fearing that the rise of a
strong national government would mean the end
of their power, refused to ratify the constitution
and even withdrew their delegates from the con-
gress. In Buenos Aires a similar stand was taken
by the powerful estancieros, who had no inten-
tion of surrendering the privileges of their province
and regarded Rivadavia’s program of social and
economic reform as a costly folly. Defeated on the
issue of the constitution, Rivadavia resigned the
presidency in 1827 and went into exile. The liberal
program for achieving national unity had failed.
After an interval of factional struggles, the fed-
eralism espoused by the landed oligarchy of Bue-
nos Aires triumphed in the person of Juan Manuel
Rosas, who became governor of the province
in 1829. In 1831 he forged a federal pact under
which Buenos Aires assumed representation for
the other provinces in foreign affairs but left them
free to run their own affairs in all other respects.
Federalism, as defi ned by Rosas, meant that Bue-
nos Aires retained the revenues of its customhouse
for its exclusive use and controlled trade on the Río
de la Plata system for the benefi t of its merchants.
A network of personal alliances between Rosas
and provincial caudillos, backed by the use of force
against recalcitrant leaders, ensured for him a
large measure of control over the interior.
Rosas’s long reign saw a reversal of Rivadavia’s
policies. For Rosas and the ruling class of estancie-
ros, virtually the only economic concern was the
export of hides and salted meat and the import of
foreign goods. The dictator also showed some favor
to wheat farming and artisan industry, which he
protected by the Tariff Act of 1835, but the com-
petition for land and later from livestock raising
and the primitive character of artisan industry
prevented both from taking much advantage of
the act. Rosas himself was a great estanciero and
owner of a saladero (salting plant) for the curing
of meat and hides. He vigorously pressed the con-
quest of indigenous territory, bringing much new
land under the control of the province of Buenos
Aires; this land was sold for low prices to estancie-
ros, and Rivadavia’s policy of retaining ownership
of land by the state was abandoned.
Although he professed to favor the gauchos,
Rosas enforced the vagrancy laws against them
even more rigorously, seeking to convert so-called
idlers into ranch hands or soldiers for his army.
The notion propagated by some historians that Ro-
sas represented the rural masses against the urban
aristocracy is contradicted by his own words. Fear-
ing the masses, he cultivated gauchos and urban
blacks to control them. “As you know,” he wrote
in a letter, “the dispossessed are always inclined
to rise against the rich and the powerful. So... I
thought it very important to gain a decisive infl u-
ence over this class in order to control and direct
it.” But Rosas’s “populism,” his cultivation of gau-
cho manners and dress, did nothing to improve
their condition. Under Rosas, discipline on the
estancias was enforced by punishments inherited
from the colonial past that included torture, the
lash, the stocks, and staking delinquent peons out
“like hides in the sun.” His government, observes
John Lynch, was a seigneurial regime based on an
informal alliance of estancieros and militia com-
manders, often the same people.
By degrees the press and all other potential
dissidents were cowed or destroyed. To enforce
the dictator’s will there arose a secret organization
known as the Mazorca (ear of corn—a reference
to the close unity of its members). In collabora-
tion with the police, this terrorist organization
assaulted and sometimes murdered Rosas’s op-
ponents. The masthead of the offi cial journal and
all offi cial papers carried the slogan “Death to the
savage, fi lthy unitarians!” Even horses had to dis-
play the red ribbon that was the federalist symbol.
Those opponents who did not knuckle under to
escape death fl ed by the thousands to Montevideo,
Chile, Brazil, or other places of refuge.