Juan Manuel de Rosas

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Juan Manuel de Rosas (1793-1877) was an Argentine dictator. He was the prototype of the caudillo dictators of South America and ruled supreme in the Argentine Confederation from 1829 to 1852.

Juan Manuel de Rosas was born in Buenos Aires on March 30, 1793, and claimed descent from a noble Asturian family through Count Ortiz de Rosas. The first of his parents' 20 children, he detested school and spent most of his childhood on the family estancias, where he became one of the best horsemen in the Argentine and later excelled in all of the techniques of the gaucho frontiersman. His mediocre education led to his personal animosity toward his more highly educated contemporaries.

Rosas commenced his long military career at 15, when he volunteered in the Buenos Aires forces to combat the second English invasion of his homeland. This experience led him to mistrust the motives of any European powers dealing with his government.

He married Encarnación de Escurra despite the objection of his mother at a time when marriages were usually arranged by the parents. Under Juan Martin de Pueyrredon, he organized a cavalry troop to fight against the Indians and welded his men into a disciplined army completely subservient to his orders. He soon entered the power struggle between the urban commercial leaders of Buenos Aires (the portenos) and the landed aristocracy of the interior provinces on the side of the latter. When Rosas was victorious in battle, he seized control of the Buenos Aires government in 1829.

Supreme Dictator

At first Rosas was just a senior partner of the federalist leaders of the other provinces, but as these were overcome or liquidated, he became almost supreme in the Argentine. He then became the prototype of more recent 20th-century dictators. He destroyed the liberty of the press, dissolved Congress, organized a secret police (the Mazorca Club), and inaugurated a reign of terror which lasted until his final overthrow in 1852. He was a natural leader and a master of efficiency and ran the government like a well-organized estancia or a well-disciplined army.

Near the close of his first term Rosas turned over his office to Juan Ramón Balcarce and led an expedition to fight the Indians to the south. He was visited at his bivouac by Charles Darwin, who gives a flattering account of Rosas at this time. The campaign allowed Rosas to train and maintain a large armed force under his personal command.

Foreign Wars

During his absence, his wife and his former tutor, Dr. Maza, held the real reins of the government. Rosas resumed control of the government upon his return and became embroiled in constant warfare. In 1837 he was involved in a war with Andrés Santa Cruz of Bolivia. Victorious in this costly encounter, he was faced with the necessity of defending his government against an uprising by the portenos, under Juan Lavalle and aided by the French, who blockaded Buenos Aires. The French soon pulled out, and Rosas was once more victorious. When the defeated invaders took refuge in Uruguay, Rosas intervened in the political turmoil in that country and was drawn into a siege of Montevideo which lasted for 9 years. Britain and France intervened jointly, and once again the ports of the Argentine were blockaded. The Europeans were forced to give up their blockade, but Rosas was forced to withdraw from the Uruguayan venture.

Ouster and Exile

The blockade had curtailed commerce and caused a loss of customs revenues from which the Rosas government never recovered. The other provinces had been equally hurt, and Justo José Urquiza, governor of Entre-Ríos and a former Rosas lieutenant, turned against him and, in 1852, at the battle of Caseros, Rosas was overthrown and fled to England aboard the British ship Locust. He never returned to his native land and died in England in relative obscurity.

The new government tried Rosas in absentia and found him guilty of tyranny, violating natural law, and endangering the republic to satisfy his personal ambition. His immense fortune, consisting of lands and cattle, was confiscated, and most of his personal records were destroyed. Until the Juan Perón era no man's memory was more uniformly hated in Argentina, and to this day there are no monuments to his memory in his native land. Yet Rosas was the man who had done the most to keep Latin America free of European domination. Urquiza, who overthrew him, provided him with the necessary funds to enable him to sustain himself during his exile.

Rosas' life had been a series of contradictions. He had come to power as a federalist and had then centered the government in Buenos Aires and the power in his own hands. Lacking in imagination, he alienated all of the intelligentsia and instituted a reign of terror and bloodshed. Yet throughout, his love of country was unquestioned, and he served it in the only way he knew.

Further Reading

Rosas was hated by all contemporary Argentine intellectuals, most of whom he had exiled. The outstanding example of such vituperation is D. F. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic in the Days of the Tyrants: or, Civilization and Barbarism (trans. 1868). An extensive biography is "Juan Manuel de Rosas, Greatest of Argentine Dictators" in George Washington University, Seminar Conference on Hispanic American Affairs, South American Dictators during the First Century of Independence, edited by A. Curtis Wilgus (1937). An excellent volume on the economic aspects of the Rosas administration is in Miron Burgin, Economic Aspects of Argentine Federalism (1946).

• Born: 1931, Sarita, TX
• Died: June 02, 2004, Corpus Christi, TX
• Active: '60s, '90s, 2000s
• Genres: Latin
• Instrument: Accordion, Vocals, Leader
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• Representative Songs: "Atotonilco," "El Circo," "Paloma Sin Nido"

Biography

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General de Rosas in 1840

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), was a conservative Argentine politician who governed the Buenos Aires Province from 1829 to 1832 and again, from 1835 to 1852. Rosas was one of the first famous caudillos in Ibero-America and through his rule united Argentina, provided an efficient government and strengthened the economy. The change in family name from Rozas to Rosas came because his mother told him he was stealing her cattle. Furious he changed his family name. He begun after that as an "arriero", carrying cattle through the immensities of the pampas.

He was the son of León Ortiz de Rosas y de la Cuadra and wife Agustina Teresa López de Osornio. 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 the 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. ^[1]

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 Lavalle's 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 a 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. As Charles Darwin related in The Voyage of the Beagle, he met Rosas in the early 1830s, 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 countryside, 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. In his Palermo house, which in fact was Argentina's government house, in the evenings balls, he used buffoons to tell foreign Ambassadors harsh things which had to be taken as coming from buffoons; in fact he was sending them.

In 1835, Rosas was offered "la suma del poder" which gave him total power with no oversight and his dictatorial regime began.

To enforce the dictator's will there arose a secret organization known as the Mazorcas, a militia that beat up or even murdered Rosas' opponents.

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.

His wife Encarnación died in Buenos Aires on October 20, 1838.

Rendition of the Battle of Caseros, February, 1852. Rosas' defeat at Caseros resulted in his overthrow and exile.

The people who opposed Rosas formed a group called Asociacion de Mayo-May Brotherhood. It was a literary group that became politically active and aimed at exposing Rosas' actions. 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.^[1] Rosas political opponents were exiled to other countries, such as Uruguay and Chile.

By the end of his reign, many of his supporters turned on him. General Urquiza, who was governor of the Entre Ríos Province and once backed Rosas, organized an army against him. Other provinces as well as Brazil and Uruguay joined the fight to take down the dictator.^[1] On February 3, 1852, Rosas was overthrown when his army was defeated at the Battle of Caseros. After Caseros battle Rosas spent the rest of his life in exile, in the United Kingdom, as a farmer in Southampton. He was initially buried in the Southampton Old Cemetery in Southampton Common until his body was exhumed in 1989 and transferred to the La Recoleta Cemetery in Argentina.

Rosas received the 'combat sable' from General San Martin, 'maximum hero' of Argentina, who judged that Rosas was the only man capable of defending Argentina against the European powers, especially the British.

In the aftermath of the Battle of Caseros, Martin de Santa Coloma (or Colonel Martiniano Chilavert), who passionately resisted the Unitarians, was pursued and assassinated in Belgrano, a district of Buenos Aires. This was the Unitarians' idea of justice. Sarmiento, future Ambassador to USA and Argentinian President, hated him enough to offer as a Sunday spectacle the dynamite blowing of his house, which had been durng 25 years Argentina's Government House.

See also

• History of Argentina
• History of the Falkland Islands
• List of heads of state of Argentina

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d} Crow
2. ^ Britannica

• Argentine Caudillo: Juan Manuel de Rosas, by John Lynch (1981, 2001).
• Crow, John A. The Epic of Latin America. New York: University of California P, 1992.
• "Juan Manuel de Rosas." Britannica. 2008. 25 Oct. 2008.

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

v • d • e Heads of state of Argentina Supreme Directors (1814–1820) Gervasio Antonio de Posadas · Carlos María de Alvear · Ignacio Álvarez Thomas · Antonio González de Balcarce · Juan Martín de Pueyrredón · José Rondeau First presidential government (1826–1827) Bernardino Rivadavia · Vicente López y Planes Argentine Confederation and Republic (1827–1880) Manuel Dorrego · Juan Manuel de Rosas · Juan Ramón Balcarce · Juan José Viamonte · Manuel Vicente Maza · Juan Manuel de Rosas · Justo José de Urquiza · Santiago Derqui · Juan Esteban Pedernera · Bartolomé Mitre · Domingo Faustino Sarmiento · Nicolás Avellaneda The Generation of 1880 (1880–1916) Julio Argentino Roca · Miguel Juárez Celman · Carlos Pellegrini · Luis Sáenz Peña · José Evaristo Uriburu · Julio Argentino Roca · Manuel Quintana · José Figueroa Alcorta · Roque Sáenz Peña · Victorino de la Plaza First Radical Terms (1916–1930) Hipólito Yrigoyen · Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear · Hipólito Yrigoyen Infamous Decade (1930–1943) José Félix Uriburu · Agustín Pedro Justo · Roberto María Ortiz · Ramón Castillo Revolution of '43 (1943–1946) Arturo Rawson · Pedro Pablo Ramírez · Edelmiro Julián Farrell First Peronist Terms (1946–1955) Juan Domingo Perón Liberating Revolution (1955–1958) Eduardo Lonardi · Pedro Eugenio Aramburu Argentine Republic (1958–1966) Arturo Frondizi · José María Guido · Arturo Umberto Illia Revolución Argentina (1966–1973) Juan Carlos Onganía · Roberto M. Levingston · Alejandro Agustín Lanusse Second Peronist Term (1973–1976) Héctor José Cámpora · Raúl Alberto Lastiri · Juan Domingo Perón · Isabel Martínez de Perón National Reorganization Process (1976–1983) Jorge Rafael Videla · Roberto Eduardo Viola · Leopoldo Galtieri · Reynaldo Bignone Return to Democracy (1983–present) Raúl Alfonsín · Carlos Menem · Fernando de la Rúa · Adolfo Rodríguez Saá · Eduardo Duhalde · Néstor Kirchner · Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

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