Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
no problems with the caudillos of the neighboring provinces, so he
forced Artigas to retire permanently from politics. Artigas, who lived
out his days in Paraguay, is considered the father of Uruguayan inde-
pendence, but Uruguay would not actually gain its independence until
1828, when Great Britain, the biggest trading partner of both Brazil and
Buenos Aires, convinced these two powers to end their competition
over the old colonial buffer zone known as the Banda Oriental.
Although independence of the Argentine region that formed the heart-
land of the former viceroyalty was assured in 1816 when a congress at
Tucumán proclaimed it, the political system—federalist or centralist—
that this region would adopt remained uncertain. The centralists formed
an entity known as the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata and
attempted to rule over these provinces from Buenos Aires, but the sur-
viving federalist caudillos ran their own provinces. This version of local
autonomy, of course, departed starkly from the centralizing program of
the Bourbon reforms, but local autonomy in the Southern Cone had
deeper roots, going back to the formative 17th century.
The Consolidation of Independence
No matter that the federalist caudillos and their popular followers
had destroyed the colonial political order, they had not been able to
consolidate South America's independence. This challenge remained
the task of two leaders who developed rather more national—even
supranational—perspectives on eliminating Spanish rule. Both of these
men were professional soldiers who commanded the loyalties of local
caudillos in the course of determining the outcome of the revolution
on a continental scale.
The two liberators of South America were José de San Martín and
Simón Bolívar, although neither of these leaders represented the popular
revolution. If anything, they attempted to tame the popular revolution
in order to finally eliminate all remaining vestiges of Spanish power in
the Americas. They were also visionaries. Each devised plans for the
governments and social relationships that they hoped would follow
independence; however, San Martín and Bolívar proved more successful
at winning independence than at charting the future tranquility of the
American nations. Each ended his career in bitter disillusionment.
San Martín in Peru
In 1812, José de San Martín returned to the land of his birth, Argentina,
after a career as an army officer fighting in Spain against the French
