Reflexión sobre el costumbrismo

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34 Argentine Caudillo

Had rosismo prevailed it would have held Argentina in an economic straitjacket. But the model was finally undermined from within, first by sheep farming, then by the agrarian revolution of the 1880s. Nevertheless, the Rosas regime left an indelible imprint on the agrar- ian structure of Argentina. The countryside was given its social and economic form before Argentina received its mass immigration, underwent a revolution on the pampas, and became a major exporter of grain and meat. Before modernization even began, the system of landholding, the size of estates, and in many cases the per- sonnel had all been permanently implanted.

3

PATRON AND PEON

The Social Divide

The structure of society was simple and its scale was small. Argentina, so full of cattle, was empty of people, and even in the

1850s its population density was not much more than one inhabi- tant per square mile. Moreover, the population tended to extreme concentration; over one-third of the total was to be found in Buenos Aires and Cordoba. Yet Argentina underwent considerable demo- graphic growth in the half-century following independence, as the official statistics show (see Table 3.1). The gap between 1825 and 1857 can be filled by the estimates of Diego de la Fuente, director of Argentina's first census (1869), who gives a total of768,000 for 1839 and 935,000 for 1849. In the thirty-two years from 1825 to 1857, almost coterminous with the rule of Rosas, the population of Argen- tina roughly doubled itself Growth was due essentially to a fall in the mortality rate in a period of improving conditions and freedom from major epidemics. There was only moderate immigration under

Table 3.1 Population Growth, Argentina 1800-1869

.rear TOtal 1800 300,000 1816 507,951 1825 570,000 1857 1,180,000 1869 1,736,923

Source:Data from Ernesto J. A. Maeder,Evoluciondemogrdficaargentinade 1810 a 1869 (Buenos Aires, 1969), 22-26.

37

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36 Argentine Caudillo

Rosas, though a number of Basques, French, Italians, and British entered Buenos Aires in the years between or after blockades.

The greatest population upswing was registered by the littoral provinces, which increased their share of the total from 36.0 percent in 1800 to 48.8 percent in 1869. Buenos Aires grew under Rosas but not spectacularly, and the historian of the period is dealing with a very small community. Rosas himself commissioned a census of the

province in 1836; this was carried out successfully and gave a popu- lation of 62,228 for the city and 80,729 for the countryside, a total of 142,957 (see Table 3.2). The figures in Table 3.2 show that the countryside was steadily redressing the demographic balance as cat- tle and sheep farming drew increasing numbers to the rural sector. Official housing figures for Buenos Aires reflect the principal inter- ruptions to economic activity, namely civil wars and blockades, but not the growth characteristic of a dynamic city.

The social structure was founded on land; it was the large estancia that conferred status and power. Among the eighty or so people who were members of the House of Representatives between

1835 and 1852, the assembly that voted Rosas into power and kept on voting for him, the majority (60 percent) were landowners or had occupations connected with land. The administration, too, was dominated by landowners. The closest political adviser of Rosas, Nicolas Anchorena, was the greatest landowner in the province, by 1852 having accumulated 306 square leagues (1,836,000 acres). Juan N. Terrero, economic adviser of Rosas, owned 42 square leagues (252,000 acres) and left a fortune of 53 million pesos. Angel Pacheco, Rosas's general, had 75 square leagues (450,000 acres).

Table 3.2 Province of Buenos Aires, Population 1797-1869

.rear

1797 City Countryside TOtal

1822 40,000 32,168 72,168

1836 55,416 63,230 118,646

1855 62,228 80,729 142,957

1869 90,076 183,861 273,937 177,787 317,320 495,107

Source: Dara from Ernesro J. A. Maeder, Evolucidn demogrdfica argentina de 1810 a 1869 (Buenos Aires, 1969),33-34.

Patron and Peon

FelipeArana, minister of foreign affai:s, had 42 squ.areleagues. Even Vicente Lopez, poet, deputy, and presIdent of the hIgh court, owned

12 square leagues (72,000 ~cres). At a local level, of course, power consisted onl and III the Countr SI e an owners ru ea. As justi~ce or military comm.?n4~~_.5:~ancier~~!:_.t ~ir

cl1eiitsQomi1lli~d~ 10~~.,K~e£E:!!l~1];!;._Oft_~nilliEe£~~~aEd 11~:r~2' i~L- educated, these auiliQJJj:Ies n~1:<:;.rrb.d~ss-p.oss.e.sst:dJ:.h~.el.~nn&~!J.a1~- ifitauons of landQ~l1~J§h!tLgJJ.d)Qyalty=to_Rosas.andJe.q~!~j§.m~ Therule of' ~as,Jh ...J:;.t~£Qre"'''s a w the .,cre.,a.tiQQ .o£.a '.m'~ itiv.Pn -~,,!JJJiPg ~fa s~'~"

, , , ., , . , , , , .in thUQ.WJ1(y.side..,,!b~t :was YirtuaUY-~J:he,_same_ilstb..e..lQcal

,' , , JaQd.~~", , , 1

Class;its mel!!Qers g~g;1n..byserving Rosas,"but.,sl1.£s~e~jngregi~~~-too, fouq..sLthe.PJjlldisl1eQ~.g,blt:""""".~

'~ olarization of socie was absolute. There was an upper classof Ian own rs an t eir associates an a lower class composing the rest of the population. There were some ambiguities, it is true, and some social margins were unclear. Both before and after the rev-

olution for independence, commerce was economically important and socially respectable. In the Hispanic world wholesale trade had never been a barrier to social status, and in the Rio de la Plata even retail trade was acceptable. There were many businesses situated in the center of Buenos Aires whose owners were the ancestors of some of the principal families of Argentina. But the urban elite of the

early nineteenth century did not acquire a separate identity or become an independent middle class. Faced with insistent Br' . competition in the ears after . ~usin~smen began to Ivert t eircapital into land and become estancieros. There wereno °she~ ~mY-the --~middle~rilllJi:i..':" ~ -.

It there was little prospect of a native middle sector in the towns, there was even less chance of one emerging in the coun- tryside, wbcre an immense gulf separated the landed proprietor fr.,<::>m It is true was a sizable group,the landless peon. that there perhaps one-third of the rural population of the province, that did not work directly on the land bUt found employment as traders, artisans, and carters or found delight in unemployment. But these were drawn into the prevailing polarization. William ~acCann did not doubt that rural society was deeply divided: . There i~ as vet no m!MJe class; the owners of land feeding h - ----Immense flocks and herds form one class, their herdsmen and

s epherds form another."! He thought that the immigrant farmers

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38 Argentine Caudillo

were beginning to form an intermediate class of small flockhold- ers, a variant of the English yeoman. This prospect was only par- tially fulfilled, however, and in many cases the early immigrant either dropped out or was integrated within a generation or two into the estanciero class.

The homogeneity of this class was not absolute. Not all traders were plebeians; not all estancieros were great landowners. Some were owners of truly immense land concentrations, but there were some

whose estates were relatively modest. The former were often capital- ists of urban origin with some education and aspirations to higher standards of living. The latter were more likely to come from gener- ations of country dwellers and were little removed in culture from the gauchos around them-illiterate, indifferent to material com- forts, and investing little in improvement. The difference between the two was not entirely one of wealth. It was also determined by cultural levels and social expectations. Sarmiento defined it in terms of civilization and barbarism. ..,, - fu in spite of differences in income, culture, and social style, the

estancieros were as one compared with the peons on their estates and the gauchos on the pampas, and they had more in common with each other than with the rest of society. There was a great deal of group cohesion and solidarity among the landed class. Rosas himself was the center of a vast kinship group based on land. He was surrounded by a closely knit economic and political network linking deputies, law officers, officials, and military who were also landowners and related among themselves or with Rosas. Even when he was out of power and far from Buenos Aires, he had considerable political influence through Felipe Arana, the foreign minister; through his brother-in- law Lucio N. Mansilla, the police chief; and especially through the Anchorenas, his cousins and collaborators. Rosas used his extensive patronage to bind this small oligarchy even closer.The Anchorenas in particular were able to extend their urban and rural properties with his direct assistance, making a profit from their alleged services to the state. Rosas subsequently argued that as governor, he had advanced their interests and increased their fortune immensely: "I served them with notorious favoritism in everything they asked and needed." Tomas de Anchorena thanked Rosas for exempting his son from mil- itary service and from mixing in the barracks with common people. And Rosas himself admitted that he had deliberately exempted the

(~ Patron and Peon

Anchorena estancias from state demands for peons, cattle, and horses, "a privilege which at that time was of supreme value to them. "2

The values of the estanciero class were conservative, and most

of them took it for granted that continuity was superior to change. Their social and in some cases their political ideas betrayed a basic affinity with the colonial order; for many of them the years before 1810 had indeed been a golden age, when in monopoly conditions their families had made their first fortunes. Tomas de Anchorena was such a type, though no doubt an extreme one. Friend, relation, and associate of Rosas, he lost no opportunity to extol the past and denounce novelty. His hostility to foreign influences amounted to xenophobia. In the House of Representatives in 1828, he fulmi- nated against "that plague of corrupt foreigners which infests our

countryside," arguing that the country had made more progress before the British invasion of the Rio de la Plata in 1806 than after-

ward and that Rivadavia had admitted too many immigrants. He went on to claim an innate superiority in the prerevolutionary gen- eration: ''Asfar as enlightenment is concerned, I have observed, and no one will deny it, that generally the men of most capacity and credit in the country are those who were formed before the revolu-

tion and those whom these have since brought up in the old way." Men like this were opposed to the slightest modification of the

colonial social structure. Tomas de Anchorena was a harsh oppo- nent of social disturbance and subversion and a constant critic of anarchy and insecurity in the countryside, though even he had to admit, in his contemptuous way, that there was an order in the Countryside that had not been changed: "The coarseness of our common people and country folk is not so striking as that of the same class in Europe. Although they lack manners, they are gener-ally docile."

The views of Tomas de Anchorena were too extreme even for many of his elitist contemporaries, but his influence on Rosas was considerable. According to Mansilla, "Only one man, an Anchorena, had any real influence on him. And it was certainly not good for the country, though the person in question was a man of sound repute. But he belonged to the group of hacendados whose great remedy for everything was to prescribe a 'strong govern- ment.' "3Rosas depicted himself as removed from class interest, an

: illlill I I

r 40 Argentine Caudillo

honest man of the countryside called to restore the laws. In contrast, he expressed a social solidarity with his class that embraced even his political enemies: "I believed it important to accustom the people always to regard with respect the upper classes of the country [las primeras categoriasdel pays}, even those whose opinions differ from the prevailing ones. This is the reason why all my punishments were reserved for the scoundrels and rebels, for the whole pack of officials and ambitious leaders."4

Rosas was a man of conservative instincts, a creature of the colo-

nial society in which he had been formed, a defender of authority and hierarchy. In spite of his overt populism, he stood for the preser- vation of the traditional social structure in its entirety. His political thinking was not profound, but it was consistent. His favorite model appears to have been the absolute monarchy of the old regime, his great aversion the spirit of revolution. He opposed change in Argentina and abhorred it in Europe. Mter 1852, pessimistic and powerless, he could only observe the events of contemporary history. In 1871, horrified by the advance of democracy, he wrote from Southampton: "When even the lower classes increasingly lose respect for law and order, and no longer fear divine punishment, only absolute powers are capable of imposing the laws of God and man, and respect for capital and its owners."5These are no doubt the views of conservative old age, influenced as much by convulsion in Europe as by change in Argentina, but they also summarize a life- long philosophy.

Gauchos and Peons

At the end of the colonial period the pampas were inhabited by wild cattle, frontier Indians, and untamed gauchos. The gaucho was a product of race mixture; the components have been disputed, but there is no doubt that there were three races in the littoral: Indians, whites, and blacks. By simple definition the gaucho was a free man on horseback. But the term was used by contemporaries and by later historians to mean rural people in general. Yet many country people were neither gauchos nor peons; they were independent families liv- ing on small ranches or farms or earning a living in a pulperia or a village. Greater precision would distinguish between the sedentary

Patron and Peon 41

rural dwellers working on the land for themselves or for their patron and the pure gaucho, who was nomadic and independent, tied to no estate. Further refinement of terms would identify the gaucho malo, who lived by violence and near delinquency and whom the state regarded as a criminal. Sarmiento established his own typology: the Tracker, the Pathfinder, the Singer, the Outlaw. Whether good or bad, however, the classical gaucho asserted his freedom from all for-

mal institutions; he was indifferent to government and its agents, indifferent to religion and the church. Social marginality for the

gauchowas a desire as well as a condition. As Sarmiento observed, I"He is happy in the midst of his poverty and privations," for he most I

valued complete independence and idleness.6 He did not seek land; he lived by hunting, gambling, and fighting.

The nomadism of the gaucho had many social implications. It prevented settled work or occupation. Property, industry, land, habitation; these were alien concepts. So too was the gaucho fam- ily. The upper sector of society enjoyed great family stability and drew strength from ties of kinship. The lower sector was much weaker institutionally. The cultural division was partly an urban- rural one, but it was also a feature of the social structure. Whether we interpret it in terms of town and country, civilization and bar- barism, or landowner and laborer, the difference in the degree of family stability was a fundamental feature of Argentine society. Among the gauchos and peons, unions were temporary, and fam- ilies were only loosely joined. Marriage was the exception, and it was the unmarried mother who formed the nucleus of the rural

family, for she was the only permanent parent, the one who kept - " together those homes that survived the rigors of ruraIII.fe. Even if

.

the father was not prone t~ho nomadism,l1e usual* ~ .

b~ economic resources to~main and sustain a tami~!:QJ.ij2; . .. . .~o selInis laborwherehe-C.0-LllcLQLelse ~he~as-1:~cruit~- ~

Into armies or montoneros. Lack of domesticity meant that the gauc os I aga e hem;r as a lamily group or pre- serve their identity t roug enerations. Con ltlons were a ainst. t em; t ey were cast a ri t on the plains, homeless and hunted.

e gauchos and the country tolk III general were victims of gov- er~ment policy and the new economy: "Victims of the trimestrial leVIesfor irregular warfare, they have no incentives to steady work and cannot, in fact, root themselves. At all times and by all parties

42

43

r Argentine Caudillo

they are hunted out, to fight or run away, disband or be disbanded, but to be hunted again; with none to share a home, with no home to be shared, driven to roam, they have no belongings and they do not propagate. What would it avail them to form homes or create

surroundings as long as a press-gang incessantly dogs them, or they crouch and hide like hunted deer among dense scrub or thistle beds?"7

The ruling class in the countryside had traditionally imposed a system of coercion upon people whom they regarded as m~zos vaJ!:os y m.alentretenidos,vagabonds without employer or occupation, idlers whb'sat in groups singing to a guitar, drinking mate, gambling but

apparently not working. This classwas seen as a potential labor force. and was therefore subject to all kinds of constraints and controls by the landed proprietors-the obligationto carryproof of identity and ,..

permits to leave the estancia, imprisonment, conscription to the Indian frontier, corporal punishment, and other penalties. The unfortunate gaucho might escape beyond the frontier, fleeing from crime or adversity, to become a gaucho alzado; but to live among the Indians w~~, ' the worst possible stigma, signifYing nonwhiteness, delinquency, and apostasy. No doubt there was much chronic law- lessness in the countryside and an identifiable criminal element: rob- bery of estancias, murder, gambling in pulperias, illicit sale of hides and other products, and traveling without a permit were not offenses

invented by the authorities. However, legislators further sought ~ identifY vagos y mal entreteni~iUliIlai class oydetlnmon a~agrancy Itself as a crime. In practice, ro be poor, une~yed,

, aii:d1aTewas equated -WIth bein~ a gaucho. }.he first ollje~erancUP' : antivag y leglSlation was to Impose law an d order in the coun-

. . ..

I .:0~ tryslde; the. second was to provide a labor pool tor hacendados; t~ \{I?. wra, to produce conscnpts tor me army. Tl1:e.mlfltia became, in

I' ~.t e ct,. an 0 en ITsffirint6 wnich t1lemostmiserable part. o~ .J'5-r ruralJ?opulation"~s orablYheided. By no stretch of the imagina-

.t1onwer~~l!@l militia~sI2on~neousor 0 .ular . orce ~ For the gaucho the years after 1810 were, if ..nything, harsher than those before. During the colonial regime the' free and nomadic gaucho traditionally had access to ciJ?larrones(wild cattle) on the open range. But this tradition came to an end as the estancias were

implanted and endowed and began to extend private property in the pampas and app~opriate all cattle to themselves. Now the landown-

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Patron and Peon

rs with the support of republican governments, began to prevent illi~ithunting, slaughter, and trade in hides and to defend their land nd cattle. There was a prolonged stru Ie between the hacendado

:nd the gaut 0.. n. tImes 0 tur u ence and civi war the margilli!J people of the countryside revived the communal r . s of the

past an once more too catt e, ut w en or er returned, the hacen-j dadOSreaffIrmed the nghts ot properrv. This did not mean that ciillarrones no longer roamed the range. Now the peons of the estancia, not free gauchos, caught the wild cattle and took them tO their masters; otherwise such ap~ropriation was rustling. J

Coercive controls and the horror of life among the Indians drove the gaucho into the hands of the hacendado, but as a hired ranch

hand, a wage earner, a peon de estancia.It is true that labor scarcity gave the peon some advantage, and an active labor market and job mobility coexisted with repressive rural codes; at the same time, col- laboration between estancieros and army deserters resolved many of the problems of labor shortage. The rural regime was not entirely unfuir row.trd the worker, and on many ia., Ir pr

ovided a stable j/. .lving and jo secunty 1 t at was w at tea orer wanted. But for the .,

gatiCIiothe price was s@Joss of freedom. He became virtually the property of his patron; if the estate was filS sanctuary, it was also his prison. An estanciero needed personal as well as institutional power. He had to be as tough and talented a gaucho as his own peons, if not more so. He had to have enough skill and resources to beat the

Indians and to resist the authorities if necessary.He had to be a fighter as well as a proprietor, a man who could protect as well as employ.

The relation of patron and client was the essential bond, based on a personal exchange of assets between these unequal partners.

The landowner wanted labor, loyalty, and service in peace and war. ) The peon wanted subsistence and security. The estanciero, there- fore, was a protector, the possessor of sufficient power to defend his dependants against marauding bands, recruiting sergeants, and rival hordes. He was also a provider who developed and defended local resources and could give employment, food, and shelter. Thus a

pat~~n recruited a peonada that followed him blindly in ranching, . polItICs,and war. These individual alliances were extended into a social ramid as atrons in turn became c ients to more ower u ~

tnen Until t e eak 0 ower was reac e and the all became clients 0 a superpatron, t e cau i o. osas was t e archetypal cau illo, the

45 44 Argentine Caudillo

embodiment of personal power in a society that responded to patronage rather than politics.

I

Rosas: Populist or Patrician?

ilill

Did Rosas have a mass following among the gauchos? Was he a true III

11111 populist? old he, as contemporaries implit:J and hiStorians asserted, represent the rural masses against the urban elites? Rosas's view of the popular classes was c~ditionedJ?y his economic interests and social position. It was a predICtably conservative and authoritarian view but was based not on an attitude of cruelty or contempt but, in the beginning, on apprehension. Soon after taking possession of his estancia Los Cerrillos, he wrote to the government in 1817, com- plaining of the terrifying insecurity and anarchy in the region of Monte, which was infested by hordes of vagrants, idlers, and delin- quents who respected neither property nor persons but who inso- lently roamed the countryside defying the authority of magistrates and landowners alike: "Only a month ago I was attacked in my own estancia because I tried to stop ostrich hunting, in which dozens of men helped themselves to my animals. I had to defend myself in a knife attack; and since then my life depends on striking back at idlers and delinquents."8

The gaucho as delinquent was a familiar interpretation. It was the lawlessness of the countryside that first impressed Rosas. And this vivid awareness of incipient anarchy bred in him a determina- tion to conquer it, first in his own environment, then in the politi- cal world beyond. There was a period, in the late 1820s, when he seems to have genuinely feared an autonomous movement of protest from below, a movement that he sought to capture and control. This is the context in which occurred his often cited interview with the

Uruguayan envoy, Santiago Vazquez, on the day after he took office as governor in December 1829. Then he claimed that unlike his predecessors, he had cultivated the 'people ''ileZasclasesba 'as"and

a gauc erize imse in or er to contro t em. Previous govern- ments, he argued,

acted very well towards educated people, but they despised the lower classes, the country people, the men of action. . . , It seemed to me that

r-

Patronand Peon

in the crisis of the revolution the governing parties would be displaced by the lower class who would impose their rule and cause worse evils. As you know, the dispossessed are always inclined against the rich and the powerful. So from then onwards I thought it very important to gain a decisive influence over this class in order to control it and direct it; and I was determined to acquire this influence at all costs, I had to work at

~:;:..) ::..it relentlessly,sacrificingmy comfort and fortune, in order to becomea <,,~ '

.gaucho like them, to speak like them, to do everything they did. I had ~~Ir .-

spareto protectno them, neglectrepresentno meansthem, guardsecuretheirtheirinterests, In short I had to ( i/'- "2f?..) cJ" effort, to allegiance.9

Rosas, therefore, identified culturally with the gaucho. He brought up his son to feel the same. Rosas's idea of a joke while rid- ing with his followers was to lasso a man suddenly round the neck, . pull him off his horse, and drag him along for a distance. The crude and obscene jokes, the presence of a court jester, Eusebio, and the violent horseplay and clowning all displayed what one observer

, described as "su genio y caricter gauchesco."lo Some of this behav- ior had a positive effect. Charles Darwin evidently heard the stories current about Rosas's gaucho sympathies and talent" and could see that even his iron discipline drew a grudging respect from his men. He was impressed by his horsemanship and all-round proficiency in rural ways: "By these means, and by conforming to the dress and habits of the Gauchos, he has obtained an unbounded popularity in the Country, and in"consequence a despotic power."11Darwin was further struck by a ce~tain egalitarianism in Rosas's social relations. Rosas'senemies made much the same point, though with bitter dis- approval. Accordin to Andres Lamas, a spokesman for the emigres in Montevi eo, Rosas was a social danger w 0 too rom t e rich ana aveto the "ViCIOUSand Idle," basing his power exclusively on die i educated an ruta lze part 0 SOCIety,glvIllg an outs to the lower orders, aITowlll them to take revenge on their superiors, an.- IIIgener a III a' olic of ee SOCI ivisiveness.12.

0 I entify culturally w ,h the peop e of the country was not the same thing as uniting with them socially. To behave like a gaucho Was not necessarily to represent or elevate or save the gaucho. Subsequent rosista historiography claimed that Rosas identified totally with the gauchos and that they rose spontaneously for him. ~ ?~mber of contemporary observers spoke in the same way. 1:b£-

fltlsh ~nisters invariably reported that the lower classes of town - ~

46

47

Argentine Caudillo

Patron and Peon

and country supported Rosas, and they gave the im ression of gau- I!II! I cho or es ri mg to t e caplt m t e cause of their saVIOr. 1i ~, I II Yorke Gore reported: "The Gauchos, or innabita~~11,~o~ntry

districts, are ardentl attached to General Rosas, to whom, as their

acKnowledge chief and benefactor, t ey ave ong looked up with

an inq:~ dcvuLion.." Rosas, hImself explainedtO]Ol1nY~ry MandevIlle that "there ISno anstocracy herefCf'support a gQvern- .rnent, puEUc opinion and the masses govern. " Henry Southern

4elTeved, "ItTs~the secretofhiSpOWer that he taught the Gaucho of the plains that he was the true master of the towns. It was on the basis of troops of his own cattle-breeders and drivers and horse tamers that he first established his authority which he has main- tained to this day by a cunning and dextrous use of the same arm."13

These impressions, however, are distorted or at least open to misinterpretation. In the first place, the core of Rosas's forces were

,111,II,

his own peons and dependants, who had to follow him in war as they worked for him in peace. Who were Rosas's peons? They were

IIII!/iiI composed, first, of gauchos, previously "wild" and nomadic, now tamed and ti~o hTh-esrancIa,where tIley worked as ranch hands inI!!II,

"II return for pay and protection. Second, they included "friendly" 1"11 Indians. Some of these worked for him as peons; others simply lived 11111.

in the zones near his estancias or camped on his land, collaborating I 'If1I1I1II with him against incursions of enemy Indians or against politicalI foes in return for the atrona e of a o~ertul caudillo w1iO-

'I impressed them and spoke their language. T ir , t e Rosas esr;mcia~" II

h~~ored a nU~r of outlaws. He deliberatefy recruited ~- .11 quents, deserters from the army, escaped prisoners, and encouraged

diem to seek refu e on his estates, partly as a response to the labor s ortage, partly as a contro measure agamst anarc y. Rosas, of

r c6urse, 1 not to erate 0 enses agamst property. sSarmiento

pointed out, he made his estancia "a sort of asylum for mllt:d~n~~s," but as a landed proprietor, ile did not extend his protection to rob- bers.]4Otherwise he cast his net fairly widely, as General La Madrid

noted: "In spite of the severity with which he forced them to obey, Rosas was the hacendado who had most peons, because he paid them well and joined in their horse-play during breaks from work, and he patronized all the villains and deserters who made for his estancias and no one could touch them."15Gauchos, Indians, delin- qU~nts, whoever they were, Rosas's peons were his servants rather

than his supporters, his clients rather than his allies. When Rosas aid to his gauchos "Adelante!" it was an order, not a political speech.

s These surges of the rural populatiou, moreover, occurred iu times of exceptional crisis, rebellion, or war, such as in 1829, 1833, and 1839. In 1828-1829, as has been seen, Rosas deliberately exploited rural unrest to assemble popular forces to COUnterthe uni- tarian rebellion.16One who knew him then reported: "He estab-

lished a camp, which had all the privileges of a sanctuary, for every malefactor,in everydistrict from BuenosAyresto Upper Peru."17 He used these marginal elements as part of his "popular forces." In 1833, waiting in the wings during the Desert Campaign, he instructed his wife to cultivate the poor as a base for a political comeback: "You have already observed how valuable is the friend- ship of the poor and therefore how important it is to cultivate it and not to lose any opportunity of attracting and keeping their sympa- thies. So do not lose COntact.Write to them frequently; send them gifts and do not worry about the cost. I say tbe same about the mothers and wives of the pardos and coloreds who are loyal. Do not

hesitate to visit those who are worth it and to take Nlem on outings in the COuntry,also assist them as far as you can when they are in trouble. "]8 And Dona Encarnacion, agent of rosismo, "heroine of the federation," patronized the popular elements and the people of color, calling in black women to receive her favor, sending them Out as clients. Her patio was like a club for the populace. Rather than politicization, this was a primitive and personalist form of political manipulation. There was no organization: Rosas, his wife, and a fewfriends held all the strings.

. On all these occasionswhen Rosas needed to make a critical political push, he enlisted the gauchos in the Countryside and the mob in the city. They were the only manpower available, and for the mOment they had a value outside the estancia. The normal ag~arian regime however, was very different. And as Sarmiento POInted OUt,the gaucho forces lasted only as long as Rosas needed ;'hem. Once Rosas had the apparatus of the state in his possession, rom 1835, once he Controlled the bureaucracy, the police, the

;azorca, or paramilitary squads, and above all the regular army, he Id ~Ot need or want the popular forces of the Countryside. He

~eCru1ted, equipped, armed, and purged an army of the line, etachments of which were used against the Countryside to round

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up the levies. It was the army camped at Santos Lugares that gave him his ultimate power.

The gaucho militias, furthermore, were popular forces only in the sense that they were composed of the peons of the countryside. They were not always volunteers for a cause; nor were they politi- cized. Methods of military recruitment in general were crude and often violent. The British minister, William Gore Ouseley, took a cynical view of spontaneity. He described the brutal activities of General Prudencio Rosas while raising levies in a village near Buenos Aires, where he gave a man 200 lashes for remonstrating against forced conscription. The severity of the punishment killed the man, but General Rosas thought it set a good example. "This mode of raising troops," commented Ouseley, "is described in late numbers of the Gacetaas the 'spontaneous and enthusiastic rising of the peo- ple in their own defence against the aggressions of the savage Unitarians.' "19As for the militias, they were officered and led by the justices of the peace, by regular army commanders, and by estancieros. The fact of belonging to a military organization did not give the peons political power or representation, for the rigid struc- ture of the estancia was also built into the militia, where the estancieros were the commanders, their overseers the officers, and their peons the troops. These troops did not enter into direct rela- tions with Rosas; they were mobilized by their patron, which meant that Rosas received his support not from free gaucho hordes but from estancieros leading their peon conscripts, a service for which the estancieros were paid by the state. Rosas himself was from the beginning the most powerful estanciero, and his peonada was the most numerous and best equipped. But that did not make him a populist leader.

Even the use of the word "gaucho" was ambiguous in rosista ter- minology. It had two meanings, according to the situation. In pub- lic, it was used as a term of esteem and perpetuated the idea that the g~ucho, like the estanciero, was a model of native virtues...a.n.dthat the interests of both were icfemical. Rosas, too, he¥d to propagate the myth that the estanciero understood the gaucho and was con- cerned only with his welfare; this was one of the themes of the dic- tator's propaganda and was incorporated into popular songs of the times. In private, however, especially in police usage, "gaucho" meant "vago, mal entretenido, delinquent." The first usage repre-

Patron and Peon

sented political propaganda. The pejorative meaning expressed class

distinction, social prejudices, a~economic attitudes; it was used by the landowner, short of I bill, confronting the countryman who wished to remain free. cording to William MacCann, "The term

Gaucho is one 0 sive to the mass of the people, being under- stood to me a person who has no local habitation, but lives a noma' lfe; therefore in speaking of the poorer classes I avoid that

"20

The poorer people, of course, were a heterogeneous group, not a unified class.They were peons on estancias, dependants subject to a patron, free laborers, farmers and tenants, small ranchers, and the marginal population that was almost professional montoneros. Uneducated, illiterate, ignorant of public issues, these groups could not participate in even the crudest political process; they were inca- pable of autonomous action, of organizing themselves, or of responding to political leadership. The history of populism, of course, contains many examples ofleaders who offer benefits to apo- litical masses without necessarily incorporating them into politics or basicallychanging society. Did Rosas do this? Did he improve con- ditions for the rural population? Did he deliver economic and social benefits?

The domination of the economy by the estancia was continued and completed under Rosas, as has been seen. No land was granted to the gaucho; no property was allocated to the peon. It is sometimes argued that under Rosas the rural laborers were free men, respected ~~d defended; yet there is no eviden~e that Rosas ever queried the eXlstmgsociar structure. He inherited from previous regimes a dis- criminatory social legislation and a political system designed to exclude participation. The electoral law of August 14, 1821, which r~mained in force throughout the rule of Rosas and beyond, estab- hshed direct elections and universal male suffrage; all free men from the age of twenty had the right to vote, and all property owners over twenty-five had the right to be candidates for election. This was the law, and there were no literacy or property qualifications for voters. But in practice the illiterate gauchos could not vote as free men. The syste~ was a fraud and a farce: the government sent a list of official candIdates, and it was the task of the justices of the peace to ensure t~at these were elected. Open and verbal voting, the right of the jus- tIces to exclude voters and candidates whom they considered

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unqualified, the intimidation of opposition; these and many other malpractices reduced the elections to absurdity. Rosas frankly admit- ted that elections had to be controlled, and he condemned as

hypocrisy the demand for free elections. His government, he told the assembly in 1837, "has sent many worthy residents and magistrates throughout the province lists which contained the names of those citizens who in its opinion were fit to represent the rights of their country, in order to favor their election, if so they wished."21 In prac- tice the Rosas lists were an absolute order, and those gauchos who went to the polls did so as voting fodder.

The politically defenseless gaucho was attacked on all sides by harsh labor laws that classifiedas a vagrant anyone who did not have a recognized employment or occupation endorsed by an employer. To inhabit or to move about the provincial territory, a man had to have a papeleta de conchabo,a certificate stating that he was working for a known proprietor and, ifhe was on the move, the date when he would return to his usual place of work. If he was found without this certifi- cate, he was considered a vagrant and liable to be arrested and sent to the army. In this way the gaucho lost his freedom and civil rights and became a peon dependent utterly on a patron; if he wanted to keep out of the army or prison, there was only the estancia. The only indi- viduality the peon retained was his particular occupation on the estancia, and some were more skilled than others. Thus the estancia became a closed sociopolitical reservein which the peon had no rights.

The severity of these sanctions reflected the emptiness of the pampas, the very low population density, and the ruthless search for labor in a period of estancia expansion. For these reasons, Rosas could not be expected basically to alter the discriminatory legislation that he inherited. He simply elucidated the law, defining more pre- cisely the crime and the punishment of vagrants, robbers, deserters, and other delinquents without granting the poorer classesany means of legal defense. If anything, the application of the law became harsher, and there was a tendency toward shortening criminal pro- ceedings. Rosas continued to apply the existing regulations against vagrancy, and although his local conscription levies simply contin- ued from previous administrations, the incidence of recruitment increased as his wars increased. In 1830, he decreed that militiamen could not travel about the country without their documents duly signed by the local magistrate. A militiaman could not change domi-

r Patron and Peon

cile without permission and without informing his commanding officer. In his speech at the beginning of the legislative session of 1836, he reported the strong action taken against vagos y mal entretenidos and the increased numbers conscripted into the forces.

Corporal punishment in the army ~as severe; the recruits were vir- tUalprisoners, kept under guard untIl the actual moment of march- ing; and the army canteens and pulperias robbed them of their small allowances. Conscription was not the only punishment for rural delinquency. The lash and various forms of torture, punishments characteristic of the colonial past, were continued beyond inde- pendence and into the Rosas regime. On the estancias, proprietors still punished their peons by putting them in stocks or staking them out like hides in the sun. It was a seigneurial regime in which the peons were deprived of full civil rights and the countryside was ruled by an informal alliance of estancieros and militia commanders who were often the same people. They were joined by a third oppressor.

The key agent of control in the countryside was the justice of the peace. The office was established in 1821 to fill the gap left by the suppression of the colonial cabildo, but its original judicial and administrative functions in a given district were soon extended to include those of commander of militia, police chief, and tax collec- tor. In a sense the office grew up with the estancia. In the years after 1821 the colonization of the empty countryside was accompanied by the creation of a new officialdom, and it became a convenient instrument of caudillo rule. The justice of the peace was not a con- stitUtional official but a political agent, a servant of state centralism. Rosas was quick to see this advantage, and he took control of the justices in the campaign of 1829; from then on they were his crea- tures. He scrutinized their appointment and monitored their every action. "From an administrative point of view, Rosas regarded the COuntrysideas an immense estancia, divided into stations; in charge of each was a justice of the peace, a kind of feudal lord dependent upon the seigneurial power established in the capitaI."22

The justices both administered the rural labor laws and policed the population; they pursued criminals, deserters, and vagrants; they rep~rt:d on properties and their owners, and also on their political a.ffihatlons;they took censuses of the population, applied confisca- ~Ions.of property, presided over elections. Yet in general the admin- IstratIon of justice was defective, and there was a kind of official

52 53

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delinquency just as bloodthirsty as gaucho delinquency. Most jus- tices of the peace were uneducated and ill qualified for their office; some were totally illiterate. No doubt there were exceptions, a few worthy officials who tried to shield their districts from the worst excessesof government power and to protect individuals from polit- ical vengeance. But in general the justices of the peace were either willing accomplices or helpless instruments of a policy expressed in arrests, confiscations, conscriptions, or worse and directed against anyone who could be branded a unitarian or delinquent. '

Some observers, however, were impressed by the rough justice administered in the province and by the law and order imposed by Rosas. The crime rate appeared to have dropped, personal security to have improved, property to be better protected. The evidence, moreover, comes at different times from various sources, some of them British: "Since Rosas's administration there has been little to

fear from them [the gauchos]: I do not say that their love of plun- der, the natural propensity of a savage, is extinct among them: but as the Captain General invariably shoots them, or makes them food for powder by making soldiers of them if they indulge in this propensity, a robbery, to my knowledge, by violence, is unknown."23 This observation was made in the mid-1830s. A

decade later William MacCann observed on the security of even remote properties since Rosas had established the rule of law in the pampas: "I have been assured that such was not the case before the ascendancy of General Rosas; but it being well known that, owing to the system of police established under his government, all, whether rich or poor, who were implicated in the violation of the established laws of the country were sure to suffer the extreme penalty of their crimes, robbery and outrage are almost unknown."24

This was the classic defense of Rosas, that his rule was the only alternative to anarchy; it was propagated by Rosas himself, and it particularly appealed to foreigners. But not to all of them. A French observer had other views: "In the Argentine pampas there are men more dreadful than the bad gaucho and who do more harm, with- oUt however being forced to flee from the law, because they them- selves represent lawful authority and justice. They are the officials honored by Rosas with his favor and confidence: the military com- manders of the countryside and the justices of the peace."25

Patron and Peon

Rosas and the Blacks

In spite of the May Revolution, the liberal declarations of 1810, and the subsequent hope of social as well as political emancipation, slaverysurvived in Argentina, fed by an illegal slave trade. The trata de negrosof the eighteenth century had produced a sizable slave population, most of it employed in domestic service or the artisan industries. The abolition of the slave trade within the United Provinces by decrees of April 9 and May 14, 1812, reduced the source of supply; and the treaty of February 2, 1825, with Great Britain obliged the United Provinces to cooperate with Britain in the total suppression of the slave trade. The abolition of slavery itself, however, involving as it did rights of property and scarce labor, was more difficult to achieve, and the institution long sur- vived the May Revolution.

At the end of the colonial period the Rio de la Plata contained aboUt 30,000 slaves oUt of a population of 400,000, or about 8 percent. The incidence of slavery was greatest in the towns, and after 1810 the people of color continued to concentrate in Buenos Aires.A breakdown of the population in Buenos Aires from 1810 to 1838 appears in Table 3.3. In 1810 there were 11,837 blacks and

mulattos in Buenos Aires, or 29.3 percent of the total population of 40,398, and over 77 percent of the blacks were slaves. In 1822, of the 55,416 inhabitants of the city of Buenos Aires, 13,685, or 24.7 percent, were blacks and mulattos; of these, 6,611, or 48.3 per- cent, were slaves. In 1838, people of color constitUted 14,928 out of 62,957, or 23.71 percent.

. Although slave numbers declined, slavery survived and an inter- nal slave trade continued to function. A number of upper-class fam- iliesheld slaves and valued them as status symbols in the home and as laborers on the land. Rosas was a slave owner. The vast acquisition ~f lands, the eXploitation of growing estancias, the increased produc- tion for saladeros, all raised the demand for labor at a time when

p~onswere scarce and military recruitment was heavy during the war WIthBrazil. Rosas bought slaves for himself and the Anchorenas. In the period 1816-1822, he acquired three slaves in Santa Fe; the Anchorenas bought three also. In 1822-1823, Rosas bought fifteen slaves for Anchorena estancias, and in 1828, he made further pur- chases. On the estancias Los Cerrillos and San Martin alone he had

54

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Table 3.3 Black and Mulatto Population, Buenos Aires, 1810-1838

1810 1822 1836 1838 Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent

Whites 28,116 69.6 40,616 73.3 42,445 67.34 42,312Blacks and 67.2

mulattos 11,837 29.3 13,685 24.7 14,906 23.65 14,928 23.71Indians and mestizos 192 0.5 1,115 2.0

Foreigners and others 253 0.6 4,019 6.37 3,649Troops

1,665 2.63 2,068 3.28

Total 40,398 100.0 55,416 100.0 63,035 99.99 62,957

Source:Data from Marta B. Goldberg, "La poblaci6n negra y mulata de la

ciudad de Buenos Aires, 1810-1840," DesarrolloEconomico, 16, no. 61 (1976),75-99.

thirty-four slaves. He was severe in his treatment of slaves, and he favored the lash to keep them obedient and preserve social order.

Rosas was responsible for a partial revival of the slave trade. His decree of October 15, 1831, allowed the sale of slavesimported as ser- vants by foreigners "in order to allow the unfortunate children of Mrica to experience the benefits of civilization" and also, evidently, to relieve the shortage of labor. Apart from slavery allowed under this decree, during the 1830s, slavescontinued to be illegallybrought into the country from Brazil, Uruguay, and Mrica. The government did

not seriously challenge this trade. Rosas himself argued that slavery was necessary to supply labor for the estancias, industries, and house- holds. Throughout the 1830s, newspapers daily carried advertise- ments offering slaves for sale. According to British observers, slaves were "sold with little concealment."26The British government pressed Rosas for action and in particular sought an anti-slave trade treaty but received no response until Rosas needed British support against the French blockade of 1838. A comprehensive anti-slave trade treaty was signed on May 24, 1839, providing for reciprocal search, mixed courts, and claims procedures. By 1843, according to a British esti- mate, there were no more than 300 slaves in the Argentine provinces, though the coloreds formed one-fourteenth of the total population.

Patron and Peon

Some slaves regarded Rosas as an escape route, a means of eman- cipation, which is evidence of the esteem in which he was held. Fugitive slaves from Brazilian vessels made their way to the head- quarters of Rosas to petition for their freedom. Foreign slave owners in BuenosAires were particularly liable to lose their slaves.A U.S. cit- izen, Andrew Thorndike, appealing to rights of private property and the absence of a decree of abolition, petitioned Rosas for the return of a freed slavewho had cost him 1,200 pesos.27He appealed in vain. Meanwhile, the traditional avenues of emancipation were still open:

slaveswho joined th~ federalist arn~y,especially if ~~eybelon~ed to

unitarian owners, gamed freedom m return for mIlItary servIce. A French factory owner petitioned Rosas for the return of one of his slaves who had made his way to Santos Lugares and enlisted; the / owner obtained neither his return nor financial compensation.28 Emancipation appears to have increased toward the end of the regime: "It is already well known in Brazil that if a slave can once A

reach the territory of the Confederation, he is free. Rosas has been here the Liberator of the Mrican, and if he is looked to with affec- tion by any class in the state, it is by the dark coloured races, whom

he has invariablyfavoured."29 When, in the Constitution of 1853, J slavery was finally abolished in the whole of Argentina, there werefew slavesleft.

The opposition attacked Rosas's record on slavery, and inevitably the liberals in Montevideo made much of the issue. They COntrastedthe policy of the old republic after the May Revolution with What followed under Rosas: "He issued a decree, eight years

' ago, allowing negro slaves to be brought in, because he and the Anchorenasneeded them for their estancias."30 Juan BautistaAlberdi also criticized the discrimination practiced against people of color, though he referred to the whole of the Rio de la Plata and not only to the Rosas state. He cited the expulsion of four young blacks from a cafe in Montevideo in 1840. The theater was also closed to blacks. But racism 'of this kind was never a feature of Rosas's ersonal atti- t~- e toward blacks and mu attos, w IC was crudel friendl. 1/ . osas had many blac s m ISemp oyment an many more in

hIs political service. He did not raise them socially, but neither did h~ discriminate against them racially. They had an accepted place in

~ hIs household, and outside his immediate circle, they gave him use- ful SUPpOrtin the streets and were parr of his "popular" following.

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Argentine Caudillo Patron and Peon

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The blacks of Buenos Aires were grouped in various societies, such as the Sociedad Conga or the Nacion Banguela, each with its own name, leaders, and distinctive dress, the whole having a strong and relatively recent African character. On the outskirts of the city, they formed a series of small communities, black enclaves where they pre- served their dances, music, customs, and language. Rosas patronized some of their festive gatherings and discreetly attended their can- dombes, as did his daughter, Manuela.

The blacks in turn ave Rosas their blind support. They joined the po ar c asses as they oc e to t e Carniva 0 osas, where they beat their drums, marched, danced, and shouted in a delirium

of drink and excitement, "Viva el Restaurador!" These orgies of drinking, dancing, and fighting were a sardonic hint to the upper classes of the tumult they could expect without a strong restraining hand. More particularly the regime used the blacks and mulattos for two purposes. They were deployed in a military role in Buenos Aires and the province, where they formed a militia unit, the negradafed- eral black troops in red shirts, many of them former slaves. Rosas

also used them as political tools. When, from the Desert Campaign in August 1833, he directed political activity in Buenos Aires, he advised his wife and other agents to identifY the opposition in the army by observing officers' wives and their contacts, recommending in effect a spying system in which slaves and blacks were encouraged to report on their masters and mistresses. The black Domiciano, a former peon on Rosas's estancia, was one of the chief cutthroats in

the antiunitarian squads. Yet in the final analysis the demagogy of Rosas among the blacks and mulattos did nothing to alter their posi- tion in the society around them. I

Society took its form under Rosas and endured beyond his regime. The dominance of the landowners, the abasement of the

gauchos, and the dependence of the peons were all the heritage of the Rosas years. Argentina bore the imprint of extreme stratification for many generations to come. Society became set in a rigid mold to which economic modernization and political change later had to adapt. Rosas was to some extent a creature of the class structure, a product of the landowning elite, a man formed in the social image of the estancia. But he was not simply a social phenomenon; he was idiosyncratic. He did more than inherit a system; he helped to cre- ate a society. Beginning with the estancia, he established values and

structUres that permeated the whole province and became the lifeblood of the Rosas state. In the estancia, he was an absolute ruler, and from his peons he demanded unqualified obedience. At the very outset, he punished his men mercilessly. The penalty for carrying a knife on Sundays and holidays was two hours in the stocks, for other

misdemeanors a staking out, for going to work without a lasso fifty lashes on the bare back. He always insisted on undergoing the same discipline himself, ordering his servant to administer the prescribed punishment to him as an example and in turn punishing those who hesitated to chastise their own master. This grim eccentricity impressed society by its results: "This was the way Rosas began to acquire a reputation. In the southern countryside in particular there was more obedience to his orders than to those of the governmentitself "31

The Rosas system was a product of environment and idiosyn- crasy. His state was the estancia writ large. Society itself was built upon the patron-peon relationship. Rosas helped to define the terms of this relationship, working on a state of nature where life was brutish and property at risk. "Subordination" was his favorite word, authority his ideal, order his achievement. As a British minister spoke of Rosas at the peak of his power, "He praises the lower orders as docile and obedient. "32 In the beginning, obedience was not so

assured. Indeed, Rosas eXplained the origins of his regime as a des- perate alternative to anarchy:

Society was in a state of utter dissolution: gone was the influence of those men who in every society are destined to take control; the spirit of insubordination had spread and taken widespread roots; everyone knew his own helplessness and that of others; no one was prepared either to order or to obey. In the countryside there was no security for lives or property. . . . The inevitable time had arrived when it was necessary to exercise personal influence on the masses to re-establish order, security, and laws; and whatever influence on them the present governor had, he Wasgreatly tormented, because he knew the absolute lack of government resources to reorganise society.33

The rationale of the regime, its origin, and its development would have been instantly recognizable to Thomas Hobbes.