Juan Manuel de Rosas
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Juan Manuel de Rosas (born Juan Manuel José Domingo Ortiz de Rozas y López de Osornio in Buenos Aires, March 30, 1793 – Southampton, Hampshire, March 14, 1877), son of León Ortiz de Rosas y de la Cuadra (Buenos Aires – August 13, 1839) and wife Agustina Teresa López de Osornio, was a conservative Argentine politician who ruled Argentina from 1829 to 1852. Rosas was one of the first famous caudillos in Latin America and through his rule united Argentina, provided an efficient government and strengthened the economy.
Born to one of the wealthiest families in the River Plate region, Rosas ran away from home at a young age and began working in the fields while relatives offered him food and shelter. He married right before age 20 on March 16, 1813 to almost 18 year old María de la Encarnación de Ezcurra y Arguibel and they had one child, a daughter Manuela Robustiana de Rosas y Ezcurra, born in Buenos Aires on May 24, 1817. Rosas established a meat-salting plant when he was twenty-two and the business immediately flourished. It became so successful that ranchers were afraid Rosas' business would become more popular than their own and laws were passed to end his plant.
Rosas bought a large amount of land and began living the typical rancher's life. Instead of fighting with the Gauchos, he became one of them and earned their respect and trust. When civil war broke out in 1820, Rosas organized a regiment of Gauchos and soon became a national figure through his efforts to restore peace and order.
After Rosas' army murdered Manuel Dorrego, who was head of government in Buenos Aires, the position was open and in 1829 Rosas was elected as governor of Buenos Aires. He had an successful and popular first term but refused to run for a second term even though public support was strong.[1] In subsequent years, Rosas went in and out of power, but remained a strong leader. During his years out of office (1832-1835), Rosas waged a military campaign against the indigenous population in southern Argentina. His wife Encarnación died in Buenos Aires on October 20, 1838.
In 1835, Rosas was offered "la suma del poder" which gave him total power with no oversight and his dictator regime began.
As a leader, Rosas portrayed himself as a man of the people, who could relate to the working class of gauchos and Afro-Argentines. Rosas used his man of the people ideal to unify Argentina during his era. Rosas also invited the Jesuits back into the country and because of this move they supported him whole-heartedly. Rosas supporters called themselves Rosistas. Rosas also had his portrait be displayed in all churches and public places as a symbol of complete control. Rosas claimed to be a federalist but really was a centralist and established unity through tyranny.[2] Rosas rule was filled with violence — he killed his opponents and anyone else who would not support him. To that end, he developed a paramilitary force known as La Mazorca ("the Corncob"), which, by coincidence or by design, was a Spanish homophone for más horca which signified the gallows.[3]
As Charles Darwin related in The Voyage of the Beagle, he met Rosas, who was then engaged in exterminating tribes of wandering horse-mounted Indians, describing him as a man of extraordinary character, a perfect horseman who conformed to the dress and habits of the Gauchos and "obtained an unbounded popularity in the Camp, and in consequence a despotic power". Darwin included a story of how Rosas had himself put in the stocks for inadvertently breaking his own rule of not wearing knives on Sundays. This appealed to his men's sense of egalitarianism and justice.
Rosas attempted to reincorporate Uruguay and Paraguay as Argentine provinces[citation needed] and this led to two European blockades of Buenos Aires. In 1831, during the early part of Rosas's rule, Luis Vernet, the Argentine Governor of the Falkland Islands, seized United States seal hunting ships for illegal sealing and, in response, a U.S. warship destroyed the Argentine settlement, leaving escaped convicts and pirates on the islands.[citation needed] In November 1832, a new governor arrived in the islands, but was killed in a mutiny, and though a ship's commander took charge, in January 1833, the United Kingdom reasserted its claim to the Falklands and took control. Rosas wanted to rid Argentina of European influence and cultivate a feeling of nationalism among Argentinians.
The people who opposed Rosas formed a group called Asociacion de Mayo-May Brotherhood. It was a literary group that became politcaly active and exposed Rosas for his cruelty. Some of the literature against him includes The Slaughter House, Socialist Dogma, Amalia and Facundo. Meetings which had high attendance at first soon had few members attending out of fear of prosecution. Rosas' opponents during his rule were dissidents, such as José María Paz, Salvador M. del Carril, Juan Bautista Alberdi, Esteban Echeverria, Bartolomé Mitre and Domingo Faustino Sarmiento.[4] Rosas political opponents were exiled to other countries, such as Uruguay and Chile.
By the end of his reign, even his supporters turned on him. General Urquiza, who was governor of the Entre Rios providence and once backed Rosas, organized an army against the tyrant. Other providences as well as Brazil and Uruguay joined the fight to take down the dictator. [5] On February 3, 1852, Rosas was overthrown when his army was defeated at Caseros. Rosas spent the rest of his life in exile, in the United Kingdom, as a farmer in Southampton. He was buried in the cemetery on Southampton Common.
[edit] See also
| Preceded by Manuel Dorrego |
Governor of Buenos Aires Province (Head of State of Argentina) 1829-1832 |
Succeeded by Juan Ramón Balcarce |
| Preceded by Manuel Vicente Maza |
Governor of Buenos Aires Province (Head of State of Argentina) 1835-1852 |
Succeeded by Vicente López y Planes |
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[edit] References
- Argentine Caudillo: Juan Manuel de Rosas, by John Lynch (1981, 2001).
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- Crow, John A. The Epic of Latin America. New York: University of California P, 1992.
- "Juan Manuel de Rosas." Britannica. 2008. 25 Oct. 2008 <http://www.britannica.com/ebchecked/topic/509675/juan-manuel-de-rosas>.