Manuel Dorrego
Manuel Dorrego (Buenos Aires, June 11, 1787 - Navarro, Buenos Aires province, December 13, 1828) was an Argentine soldier and politician who participated in the War of Independence and in Argentine civil wars. He stood out as one of the main referents of the nascent Río de la Plata federalism and was governor of the Province of Buenos Aires on two occasions: in 1820 and between 1827 and 1828. He was overthrown by the unitary forces of General Juan Lavalle, defeated in the battle of Navarro and shot by order of Lavalle himself.
Family origin and early years
Manuel Dorrego was born on June 11, 1787 in the city of Buenos Aires, capital of the Superintendence of Buenos Aires and at the same time of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata. He was the son of the Portuguese merchant José Antonio do Rego and María de la Ascensión Salas, he was the youngest of five brothers. In 1803 he entered the Royal College of San Carlos.
In 1810 he was studying jurisprudence at the Royal University of San Felipe, in Santiago de Chile, like many of his compatriots.
The Revolution in Chile
He was a representative of the most exalted sectors of independence since the days of the dismissal of Governor García Carrasco, even shouting Junta quieros! during the assembly in which the residents of Santiago deposed the Governor, when the prevailing atmosphere was absolutely indifferent to the idea of Independence from Spain.
By embracing revolutionary ideals, he left law studies for a career in arms, obtaining the rank of captain. From a young age he showed an exalted and wayward temperament, but great courage for war actions.
When the May Revolution broke out in Buenos Aires, he was still in Chile, where he participated in the repression of the royalist reaction of Tomás de Figueroa, and from where he returned with reinforcements for the War of Independence.
Between February and March 1811, Manuel Dorrego crossed the Andes mountain range on at least four trips to bring around 400 volunteer Chilean soldiers to reinforce the Argentine troops that were beginning the revolutionary war, a measure requested by the Argentine government and supported by the leader of the Government Junta in Chile, Juan Martínez de Rozas
First and Second Campaigns to Upper Peru
Colonel Cornelio Saavedra added him to the Army of the North, with the rank of major, leaving for Upper Peru. He received two wounds at the Battle of Amiraya, where he earned promotion to lieutenant colonel. He also had a leading role in the fights of Sansana and Nazareno.
The new commander of the Northern Army, General Manuel Belgrano, promoted him to the rank of colonel. It should be noted that he would carry that rank for seventeen years, rejecting any promotion offer that was not justified by actions of war.
He participated as head of the reserve infantry in the battle of Tucumán, on September 24, 1812, and in the battle of Salta, on February 20, 1813; in the latter he was one of the first chiefs to reach the center of the city. Despite the fact that Belgrano recognized his value and ability, he had problems with him due to his indiscipline. Joking, impulsive and temperamental, he was arrested for his behavior. The general deprived him of participating in the second relief expedition to Upper Peru, which deprived him of a brave officer. Belgrano himself commented that he would not have lost in Vilcapugio and Ayohúma if he had counted on Dorrego.
He rejoined the defeated Army of the North, to support its withdrawal at the command of guerrilla parties made up of gauchos, beginning the Gaucho War. But his new boss, José de San Martín, sanctioned him and confined him again for new attitudes of indiscipline -among them for having disrespected Belgrano- which earned him a delay in his military promotion and also did not participate in the third campaign to Upper Peru.
War against Artigas
In May 1814 Dorrego returned to Buenos Aires. There he placed himself under the command of General Carlos María de Alvear.
When the conflict between federals and unitaries began openly, he found himself under the orders of the Directorate of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata fighting against the leader of the Banda Oriental, José Gervasio Artigas.
Although he initially defeated the artiguista Fernando Otorgués in the battle of Marmarajá, on October 14, 1814, he was later defeated by Otorgués' then lieutenant, Fructuoso Rivera, in the battle of Guayabos, on January 10, 1815. This battle had as an immediate consequence the complete control of the Banda Oriental by the federals.
Political thought and exile
Dorrego returned to Buenos Aires in 1815 to marry Ángela Baudrix. Two daughters were born from the union: Isabel, in 1816, and Angelita in 1821.
His participation in the conflict that affected the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, however, made him come closer to the ideology of federalism, something unusual up to that moment in Buenos Aires and all of Latin America, seeking the autonomy of the Province Buenos Aires on equal terms with the other provinces, which throughout the Hispanic era had always belonged to a central power. His federal ideas were somewhat ambiguous.
He led a group in opposition to the Directory, which also included Manuel Moreno, Pedro José Agrelo, Domingo French, Vicente Pazos Kanki, Manuel Vicente Pagola and Feliciano Antonio Chiclana. In addition, he supported the republican position against the monarchical pretensions of some of the directorates, who tried to call a European prince to crown him king of the Río de la Plata. On the other hand, he opposed the policy of Director Juan Martín de Pueyrredón of approaching Portugal to attack together the federals of the Banda Oriental.
Pueyrredón had two interviews with Dorrego, at the end of which he ordered his arrest and exile. Embarked on a British ship, he was assigned to the island of Santo Domingo, a Spanish colony. Shortly before reaching their destination, the ship's captain and crew decided to engage in piracy and release Dorrego; When the ship was captured, it was very difficult for him to explain his position, but ultimately he was released.
He managed to reach Baltimore, in the United States, where he was soon joined by the other members of his party, also expelled by Pueyrredón.
There he learned about federalism in action: he read the newspapers and even edited one in Spanish. He met with several politicians and was convinced of his Republican and federal position.
First government
He returned to Buenos Aires in April 1820, after learning of the fall of the Directory, in the midst of the Anarchy of the Year XX. He was restored to his colonel's rank and given command of a battalion.
When the governor of the Province of Buenos Aires Miguel Estanislao Soler was defeated by Estanislao López in the battle of Cañada de la Cruz, he took control of the armies in the capital and on June 29 was appointed interim governor. He went on a campaign to persecute López and his allies, José Miguel Carrera and Carlos María de Alvear, whom he defeated in San Nicolás de los Arroyos; his troops sacked the town. He then invaded the province of Santa Fe and defeated López at Pavón. A few days later, he was completely defeated in the Battle of Gamonal.
While he was on the campaign trail, the House of Representatives decided to appoint the incumbent governor; His friends presented his candidacy, but on September 20 the Legislature appointed General Martín Rodríguez in his place. From the front he withdrew to his quinta in San Isidro. In October, after the revolution of his former ally Manuel Pagola —in which he did not participate— he was deported to the Banda Oriental.
Due to the "Law of Oblivion" sanctioned by the provincial legislature in November 1821, Dorrego —along with other exiles such as Alvear, Manuel de Sarratea and Soler— was able to return to Buenos Aires.
He helped crush the "Revolución de los Apostólicos," led by Gregorio García de Tagle, whom he managed to capture, but whom he later facilitated to escape. It was an act of particular generosity, because Tagle was the minister who had signed his banishment —which in practice had been equivalent to a death sentence— along with Pueyrredón in 1816.
The head of the opposition
In October 1823, he joined the provincial legislature and led the federal opposition to the government of Martín Rodríguez and his minister Bernardino Rivadavia. Unlike the Buenos Aires Unitarians, he embodied the interests of the gaucho population of the countryside and the poor people of the city neighborhoods. To a lesser extent, also of the Buenos Aires landowners. His brother Luis was a partner of Juan Manuel de Rosas. From his newspaper El Argentino he supported federalist ideas, in opposition to the Rivadavia government.
He campaigned strongly pressing the government to declare war on the Empire of Brazil to liberate the Banda Oriental; he was unsuccessful in the face of the closed defense of the government party, which even excluded him from re-election. Along with his brother Luis de él, they supported the liberation campaign of the Thirty-Three Orientals.
He embarked on a bad mining deal that forced him to make a trip to Upper Peru; there he participated in the interviews held between the liberator Simón Bolívar, on the one hand, and General Carlos María de Alvear and doctor José Miguel Díaz Vélez, representing the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, on the other, during the which it was possible for the territory of Tarija to be reincorporated into the United Provinces. He was enthusiastic about Bolívar's plans to create an American Federation, and requested his help to expel the Portuguese from the Banda Oriental; the terms he used are unusually flattering coming from Dorrego, who had always displayed an independent attitude.
On his return trip, he contacted the Santiago caudillo Juan Felipe Ibarra, who put him in contact with the federals of the interior and made him elect deputy for the Province of Santiago del Estero to the National Congress in 1824. There he met He was contrary to the centralist policy of President Rivadavia, who had nationalized customs and the port, as well as federalized the city of Buenos Aires. When discussing the 1826 Constitution, he debated the form of government and the right to vote.
From the newspaper "El Tribuno" He attacked Rivadavia's centralizing measures, gaining prestige in the provinces, where he was considered a federalist leader from Buenos Aires who sought the restitution of the Province affected by Rivadavia's nationalizing policy. He had an influence with his preaching in the crisis that culminated in Rivadavia's resignation from the Presidency of the Nation. The Unitary Party —which represented the enlightened middle class of the city— considered him an enemy because he led part of the so-called underworld with the interests of the Buenos Aires ranchers. For their part, the ranchers, that is, the middle and upper classes of the countryside —affected by the intervention of the national government in the provincial government, and by Rivadavia's claim to divide the province into three— leaned on Dorrego and abandoned the president.
When objected that federalism was impossible given the poverty of the provinces, he replied that they could be economically and administratively viable if they were grouped into larger groups. He defended the right to vote for "hired servants, day laborers, and line soldiers," arguing:
"Is this possible in a republican country? Is it possible that wage earners are good for what is painful and odious in society, but that they cannot take part in the elections?... I do not conceive how I may have a part in society, nor how can a man be considered a member of it, who, in the organization of the government or in the laws, has an intervention..."
When the War in Brazil began, caused by the decision of the Eastern Province to rejoin the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, the Argentine armies and their squadron achieved notable victories, but they could not force the imperialists to abandon Montevideo nor to lift the blockade imposed on the Río de la Plata.
Given the pressing economic situation and the refusal of most of the provinces to submit to his authority, President Rivadavia sent his minister Manuel José García to negotiate peace with the Empire of Brazil. He was one of the least suitable people for that mission, since he had been one of the River Plate natives who in 1816 had incited the King of Portugal to invade the Banda Oriental. García signed the Preliminary Peace Convention of 1827 on the basis of the ceding of the province to the Empire. Outrage over the treaty erupted in Buenos Aires the same day the news broke; despite the fact that Rivadavia flatly rejected the agreement, he was forced to resign.
Congress elected Vicente López y Planes provisional president, entrusting him with calling elections for a new Buenos Aires Chamber of Representatives; immediately afterwards it was declared dissolved.
Second government
In the elections of the province of Buenos Aires, no unitary list participated, so the Federal Party obtained all the seats and named Dorrego provincial governor; he assumed the post in August 1827. At that moment, which seemed to be his absolute achievement, he was offered the rank of general; Dorrego declined such an honor, explaining that he would only accept it when he considered himself worthy of such a degree, that is, when he won it on the battlefield.
His government took timid steps to give the country a federal organization. Most of the governors trusted his management, and all of them delegated to Dorrego the management of foreign relations and the war, something that some provinces had previously delegated to Governor Juan Gregorio de Las Heras, and would later do again with Rosas..
Regarding the n#34;Indian problem " at the border, Dorrego maintained that:
The interest of securing and extending our borders to the wild Indians is too much sense. The inhabitants of the campaign had been excited to come with their help to form a new line. However, a project of this nature was consigned to oblivion; going to the current administration the task of renewing it, and bringing it to its perfection. In the meantime, the repetition and excesses of the cam, about attacking personal security, and producing a dreadful emigration, had caused such a mess in the active militia bodies as it caused them in the city, which was impossible to send them any service, or to have security in their efforts, if the campaign had suffered an incursion.Manuel Dorrego. Message of September 14, 1827.
Dorrego tried to overcome the heavy legacy of the Preliminary Peace Convention of 1827 signed by García and repudiated by Rivadavia. As head of Foreign Affairs and War, he tried to quickly conclude the war with bold operations. Among other projects, he commissioned the governor of Santa Fe, Estanislao López, to liberate the Eastern Missions, from where he was to attack the Brazilians in Porto Alegre. Another of his initiatives was to support a German mercenary, Friedrich Bauer, who left the service of Brazil and tried to create the Republic of Santa Catarina. Dorrego also entered into a relationship with the main leaders of Rio Grande do Sul, Bento Gonçalves da Silva and Bento Manuel Ribeiro, promoting the Republic of San Pedro do Río Grande, since the feeling against the monarchy was growing and important in southern Brazil. The kidnapping of Emperor Pedro I was planned.
But the pressure of England, exerted directly by the envoy Lord John Ponsonby, representative of British interests in Buenos Aires, and indirectly through the Banco de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, controlled by English capitalists and their local partners, blocked his actions. On the other hand, the direct actions of military ships from the United Kingdom and Brazil on Argentine ships forced Dorrego to accept a disadvantageous peace. Ponsonby went so far as to threaten military intervention if peace with Brazil was not signed.
Although he remained adamant about the refusal to accept what was previously signed by García, he was forced to sign a new peace agreement with Brazil, the Preliminary Peace Convention of 1828, ratified on September 29, 1828, by the one that accepted the independence of the disputed province as the Eastern State of Uruguay. At the beginning of October, the Argentine troops established in Río Grande left for Buenos Aires, feeling betrayed by the treaty that Dorrego had been forced to sign.
Conspiracy and overthrow
Dorrego was prone to making enemies and the journalistic struggle in which he found himself entangled from the beginning of his government with the defeated unitary party led to a barely latent confrontation.
The opportunity that the unitarios were waiting for came at the time of the return of the army that had fought against Brazil: its officers were openly dissatisfied with the peace treaty signed by Dorrego, by which the Banda Oriental became an independent state of Argentina. Dorrego was defenseless: in broad daylight a conspiracy was being hatched to overthrow him. The senior staff of the generals, his former companions in exile, Alvear and Soler, together with Martín Rodríguez, Juan Lavalle and José María Paz were determined to oust Dorrego. When told that General Lavalle—a former comrade in arms in the army and whom Dorrego had recommended at the time for promotion—was going to try to overthrow him, he rejected that possibility.
On December 1, however, Lavalle led a revolution and overthrew him; the governor abandoned the capital, to become strong in the interior of the province. He ordered Generals Balcarce and Guido to resist inside the Fort of Buenos Aires, seat of government, but they surrendered the fortress.
While Dorrego retreated to the south of the province, the Unitarians held an election, in which only they participated, which appointed Lavalle governor. The election was made by voice in the atrium of a church, guarded by the Lavalle regiment. The legislature was dissolved and the Unitarians announced in the press that the servants "will return to the kitchen."
Dorrego fled to the south of the province and asked Juan Manuel de Rosas, campaign commander, to support him. Rosas advised him to go to Santa Fe and ask Estanislao López for support, but Dorrego decided to confront Lavalle by going to Navarro. Recklessly, he waited there for Lavalle and his men, for whom he was easily defeated at the battle of Navarro. He fled north, seeking the protection of Ángel Pacheco, but was arrested by Bernardino Escribano and Mariano Acha, two officers he believed to be loyal, and handed over to Lavalle.
Execution
Juan Lavalle refused to speak with Manuel Dorrego and immediately ordered him to be shot for treason, as had been instigated in the meeting on November 30 attended by, among others, Julián Segundo de Agüero, Salvador María del Carril, the brothers Florencio and Juan Cruz Varela, Martín Rodríguez, Ignacio Álvarez Thomas and Valentín Alsina. Dorrego, outraged, replied:
Tell him that the governor and general captain of the province of Buenos Aires, the general business manager of the republic, is aware of the order of the general lord. A deserter in front of the enemy, an enemy, a bandit, is given more time and does not condemn him without allowing him his defense. Where are we? Who gave that faculty to a submissive general? Do me whatever you want, but watch the consequences.
Dorrego was abandoned by his federal supporters and condemned by the Unitarians. The only two unitary leaders that he asked for his life were the minister José Miguel Díaz Vélez and the delegate governor Guillermo Brown. Although he did not request clemency, the brave Colonel Gregorio Aráoz de Lamadrid remained by his side until moments before his execution. Although he did not have the courage to see him die, he gave him his own military jacket for his execution, and later he would give his widow Ángela the one that Dorrego had worn until the day before, with two emotional letters and some souvenirs for her and her daughters.
In the letter he wrote to his wife in which he expressed:
My dear Angelita: At this moment I am intimated that within an hour I must die. I don't know why; but divine Providence, in which I trust at this critical moment, has so loved it. I forgive all my enemies and I beg my friends not to give way to the shame of what I received. My life: educate those friendly creatures. Be happy, since you couldn't be with the unfortunate Manuel Dorrego.
He bequeathed most of his material assets to the state. He also wrote to Estanislao López, whom he asked to forgive his persecutors, so that his death would not be a cause of bloodshed. However, his execution started a long civil war.
Summarily and extrajudicially, Dorrego was shot by order of Lavalle in a corral behind the church of the town of Navarro, on December 13, 1828. His body was buried by the religious Juan José Castañer, who was the cousin of the unfortunate condemned and who assisted him spiritually in his last moments.
Salvador María del Carril, one of those who had pushed Lavalle to commit crime, wrote to him a few days later:
...fraud the record of a war council to conceal the execution of Dorrego because if it is necessary to wrap the imposture with the passports of the truth, it becomes embroiled; and if it is necessary to lie to posterity, the living and the dead are lied and deceived.
Lavalle, for his part, assumed all the responsibility alone:
I take part in the delegated Government that Colonel Manuel Dorrego has just been shot in my order, at the head of the regiments that make up this division.History, Mr. Minister, will judge impartially whether Mr. Dorrego has had to die or not, and if by sacrificing him to the tranquility of a people mourning for him, I may have been possessed of another feeling than that of the public good.
Juan Lavalle.
Quiera el pueblo de Buenos Aires persuadse que la muerte del Coronel Dorrego es el mayor Sacrifice que can hacer en su obsequio.
I greet the Minister with all consideration,According to FacundoSunday Faustino Sarmiento.
On the first anniversary of his execution, Governor Rosas established an official commission that went to Navarro on December 13, 1829, made up of Dr. Miguel Mariano de Villegas, as the oldest chambermaid, Dr. Francisco Cosme Argerich, the chief government notary José Ramón de Basavilbaso, the justice of the peace and the parish priest Juan José Castañer, among others, to identify the remains in the act of exhumation that was carried out, and in which a record was left that there were certain indications that after the execution there was cruelty with the corpse:
[...] found the entire body, except the head that was separated from the body in part, and divided into several pieces, with a gunshot apparently, on the left side of the chest [... ]Miguel de Villegas
Regarding the importance of this event for Argentine history, years later Sarmiento would say:
...the death of Dorrego was one of those fatal facts, predestined, that form the knot of historical drama, and that, eliminated, leave it incomplete, cold, absurd.
For his part, José Manuel Estrada maintained that Dorrego:
He was an apostle and not those who rise in the midst of prosperity and guarantees, but an apostle of the tremendous crises. He cried for the green country that was converted into a perlso, teaching his fellow citizens clemency and fraternity, and leaving their sacrificers for forgiveness, on a burning summer day like his soul, and on which the night began to cast his veil of darkness, as he was about to cast his veil of mystery upon him. He let himself kill with the sweetness of a child, he who had had inside the chest all the volcanoes of passion. He lived like heroes and died like martyrs.
Dorrego's mortal remains rest in the Recoleta Cemetery in the City of Buenos Aires.
Contemporary period
Manuel Dorrego is considered an opponent of the Buenos Aires aristocracy.
In the program Algo Habrán Hecho por la Historia Argentina, hosted by Felipe Pigna and Mario Pergolini, an episode was dedicated to the last days of management and execution.
In 2007, the journalist and political scientist Hernán Brienza wrote the biography El Loco Dorrego, the last revolutionary. The book received critical acclaim and was recommended by President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez Frías.
In 2014 Gabriel Di Meglio published "Manuel Dorrego. Life and death of a popular leader', a biographical essay where not only the events in the life of this character are recounted, but also an appropriately documented historical perspective is built on the political work in the circumstances of Manuel Dorrego.
In July 2015, at the initiative of the National Executive Branch, the Argentine National Congress promoted Manuel Dorrego post mortem to the rank of general.
It should be noted that Dorrego did not accept promotion in the military ranks, but rather earned through some military act.[citation required]
In the city of Buenos Aires, there is a monument made by the sculptor Rogelio Yrurtia in the Plazoleta Suipacha (corners of Viamonte and Suipacha streets).