Argentine Confederation
The Argentine Confederation was a confederation of provinces that existed between 1831 and 1861, during the organization of the current Argentine Republic governed by Juan Manuel de Rosas. The provinces formed a confederation of sovereign states that delegated foreign representation and some other powers to the government of one of them. It is one of the official names of the Argentine Republic in accordance with Article 35 of the Constitution of the Argentine Nation, together with the Argentine Republic and United Provinces of the Río de la Plata.
The signing of the Federal Pact between the provinces of Buenos Aires (which at that time also included the now separate Autonomous City of Buenos Aires), Entre Ríos, Santa Fe and Corrientes on January 4, 1831 —to which they adhered in the following two years the other nine then existing provinces—is considered the starting point of the transition period, which ended with the return of Juan Manuel de Rosas to the government of Buenos Aires in 1835. After the battle of Caseros, Urquiza invited the governors of the other provinces to a meeting in San Nicolás. There the governors signed the San Nicolás Agreement, by which they appointed Urquiza as provisional director of the Confederation and convened a General Constituent Congress in the city of Santa Fe.
The overthrow of Rosas after the Battle of Caseros led to the secession of the main province of the Confederation, giving rise to the State of Buenos Aires in 1852. The latter went to war with the rest of the Confederation and clashed with her in the Battle of Pavón in 1861. The triumph of Buenos Aires meant the end of the Confederation, national reunification —at the expense of provincial federal autonomies— hegemonized by the liberal elite installed in the city of Buenos Aires and the application of the Constitution of 1853 throughout the territory.
Background
Argentina emerged as an independent de facto state on May 25, 1810 under the name of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata.
From the beginning of 1814 an inorganic Federal Party was formed, which —the following year— tried to organize itself under the name of Union of Free Peoples through the Eastern Congress: a part of the United Provinces adopted the federal form of government, faced with the unitarism of the central government, beginning the Argentine civil wars.
In turn, in July 1816, the provinces subject to the central government —plus the Province of Córdoba, governed at that time by the federals— officially declared their independence in the Congress of Tucumán. By then, the armies The Argentines faced the forces of the Spanish Empire on several simultaneous fronts, while the federals began their fight against the Luso-Brazilian invasion.
In 1820, after the Arequito mutiny, which caused the dissolution of the National Congress and the central government, each province began to govern itself. This situation seemed to begin to reverse from 1824, with the meeting of a new National Congress. The outbreak of the War in Brazil the following year accelerated the process of formation of a new central government, led by President Bernardino Rivadavia, but his negotiations with the Brazilian Empire and his support for Unitarianism in the reborn civil war caused widespread discontent both in the capital and in the interior provinces.
The central government and Congress were once again dissolved, the provinces of Tarija —incorporated into Bolivia while Argentina was at war against Brazil— and Orientale, which —due to pressure from the United Kingdom and the Empire of Brazil— were lost. — became independent as the Eastern State of Uruguay. In 1833 the Malvinas Islands would be invaded by the United Kingdom. For several years a new civil war took place, after which the Federal Party managed to control all the provincial governments.
A series of attempts to institutionalize the Argentine State in some way —especially the adherence of all the provinces to the Federal Pact— failed to establish common laws or a central government. Gradually the denomination Argentine Confederation was adopted for the whole, which was recognized as part of a state, but did not create common political or legal institutions.
Between 1835 and 1852
The name became generalized from the beginning of the second term of Juan Manuel de Rosas as governor of the Province of Buenos Aires, reuniting by will of the other provinces the position of in charge of foreign relations and the war of the Confederation.
Between 1835 and 1852, the Argentine provinces used the name Argentine Confederation for their international relations. There were a total of fourteen provinces, and the territories that they effectively controlled were in many cases significantly smaller than the current ones; they formed a rather loose alliance of different independent states in almost all respects, except where Rosas was able to impose his will over that of local leaderships by political, economic, or military means. These fourteen provinces would be recognized in the Argentine Constitution as "pre-existing" to the formation of the unified state.
Political instability and wars
During the entire period of the Confederation, the United Provinces lived in fact a civil war, within the borders of present-day Argentina, generated by the political exiles of the Unitary Party from Uruguay, Chile and Bolivia, in almost permanent struggle to regain power.
Between 1837 and 1838, on the northern border of the country, the war was fought against the Bolivian-Peruvian Confederation; In practice, it was a series of skirmishes and minor combats, in which Argentine troops—almost exclusively militias recruited from the northwestern provinces of Argentina—were commanded by Tucuman governor Alejandro Heredia.
Simultaneously, the so-called "Great War" was fought in the Eastern State of Uruguay, which was related to the Argentine wars, with Argentine troops participating in it; In general terms, the federals collaborated with the blancos against the colorados. For their part, unitary troops collaborated with the Colorados and their foreign support, especially from the governments of the United Kingdom, France and the Empire of Brazil, as well as a large number of mercenaries and volunteers from Italy and other European countries.
In 1845, the undeclared conflict against the Argentine Confederation by the French and British, who supported the government of the city of Montevideo, turned into a full-scale naval invasion; it ended up failing due to the resistance of the federal forces, particularly in the Battle of the Vuelta de Obligado.
Conformation
After the battle of Caseros, Urquiza invited the governors of the other provinces to a meeting in San Nicolás. There the governors signed the San Nicolás Agreement, by which they appointed Urquiza as provisional director of the Confederation and convened a General Constituent Congress in the city of Santa Fe. Deputies from all the provinces participated in the congress. Which, each one, should send two deputies to represent them. But one of them, Buenos Aires, did not accept.
In the agreement of San Nicolás, it was established that the Constitution should establish a system of federal government. The Paraná and Uruguay rivers could be freely navigated, as the Litoral provinces wanted and finally. When Buenos Aires decides not to sign the San Nicolás agreement, it separates from the Confederation and establishes its own Constitution in 1854.
The Argentine Confederation was made up of the autonomous provinces of Santa Fe, Buenos Aires (separated from it as the State of Buenos Aires between 1853 and 1860), Entre Ríos, Corrientes, Tucumán, Salta, Jujuy, Santiago del Estero, Catamarca, Cordoba, La Rioja, San Juan, San Luis and Mendoza.
Almost all of Patagonia, the Chaco region, the province of La Pampa, and large portions of other provinces remained in the hands of indigenous peoples. Until his fall, the Rosas government did not recognize the independence of Paraguay, but it was never in fact, nor in law, united to the Confederation. The territory of the province of Misiones, after the Brazilian devastations of 1820, remained in fact desert and its sovereignty questioned by Paraguay.
Buenos Aires Secession
As a consequence of the defeat of Rosas in the Battle of Caseros (occurred in 1852) a process of institutionalization of the country began, which retained the name of Argentine Confederation: the Argentine Constitution was sanctioned of 1853 and a government and an Executive Branch were formed.
However, the Province of Buenos Aires refused to participate in the new state, separating itself under the name of the State of Buenos Aires. Its secession was due to the fact that the commercial elite in Buenos Aires did not accept the new economic regimes established in the Constitution, based on free trade throughout the territory, free navigation of rivers and the proportional distribution of national income; rights that until then only held the city of Buenos Aires.
The economic and political situation of each of them was very different. Buenos Aires enjoyed growing economic prosperity, since its rulers continued to control customs, and received the benefits of customs revenues. The Confederation, on the other hand, could barely pay the salaries of its officials and lacked sufficient resources to meet its expenses.
Each state had its own government, with its own constitution and its own authorities.
The regime established in the city and province of Buenos Aires, led by unitary leaders such as Valentín Alsina and Bartolomé Mitre, withdrew its representatives from the Constituent Congress before it adopted the Constitution. Likewise, he refused to take part in both the election of national authorities and in accepting their authority.
The sanction of the Constitution of 1853, which established a federal system of government, marked an important milestone in the development of the Confederation. On March 5, 1854, General Justo José de Urquiza and Dr. Salvador María del Carril were elected president and vice president, who moved with their ministers to Paraná, then established as the provisional capital of the Argentine Confederation.
The following were presidents of the Confederation: General Urquiza, Dr. Santiago Derqui, and General Juan Esteban Pedernera —the latter acting provisionally.
End of the Confederation
Before the constitutional reform of 1860, "Argentine Confederation" was used in the preamble and articles; however, after this and when the province of Buenos Aires was reincorporated into the Confederation, those mentions were replaced by "Argentine Nation". In any case, an article of the Constitution declares that the name of the Argentine Confederation continues to be one of the official names of the country.
Nevertheless, Argentine historiography usually uses the name of the Argentine Confederation for the entire period ending with the fall of the government of Derqui and Pedernera, at the end of 1861, as clearly separated from the immediately subsequent period, dominated by unitary leaders and porteñistas.
The battle of Pavón was a confrontation in the context of civil conflicts that affected after the independence process of Argentina. It took place on September 18, 1861 in the vicinity of the Pavón stream south of Santa Fe, hence the name given to the battle.
The victory of this battle was won by Buenos Aires, who defeated the Argentine Confederation and put an end to it, achieving the incorporation of Buenos Aires as the political center of the entire territory. After almost a year of headlessness, the former Buenos Aires governor Bartolomé Miter assumed the presidency.
The clashes were mostly due to the intention of Buenos Aires to create a central state, which was governed from the City of Buenos Aires before the federal interest of other provinces. In short, the list of the causes of this battle would be the following:
- Inconformity on the part of Buenos Aires in the rules imposed by the Confederation.
- The large political differences between the provinces that were coming long ago, originating in the discrepancies between unitary and federal.
- The pressure by Buenos Aires to create a central state, which was governed by them in the federal interest of the provinces.
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