Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
VIOLENCE AND TERROR IN
THE ERA OF CAUDILLOS
D
uring the time of the caudillos, civil war spread violence and
insecurity throughout the United Provinces. Neither Federalist
nor Unitarian militia leaders could rightly claim the high road in regard
to random violence and killing. The victims were captured soldiers and
peaceful country folk who happened in live in the path of armed troops
on the move. Rape, torture, and the dreaded
degüello
, or throat cutting,
frequently occurred as the inevitable by-product of the civil warfare.
Here a witness describes how one Federalist commander treated a
captured political enemy in Mendoza: “After pulling his eyes out and
cutting his arms, they [the Federalists] cut his tongue, opened his chest,
and took his heart out” (256). Most victims came from the rural poor,
as did the soldiers in the armies. Officers and combatants perpetrating
these atrocities seldom had to answer for them, so general was the
random violence of the military campaign.
In his province of Buenos Aires, however, Governor Juan Manuel
Rosas used corporal and capital punishment with a view toward
instilling discipline in the popular classes. Thieves and army desert-
ers received floggings and the stocks, all under judicial orders. Public
executions served as a reminder that habitual deserters, murderers,
kidnappers, and the opposition Unitarians, too, could not escape pro-
vincial laws meant to control social disorder. Rosas himself justified
the state's resort to such draconian measures. “Not a single drop of
blood [was shed] that cannot be considered within the sphere of the
ordinary,” the governor said. “Ordering the shooting of this or other
fascineroso
[rascal or villain] is common in all parts of the world; and
nobody notices this, nor is it possible for a society to live if it does not
do so” (250).
Source:
Quotation from Salvatore, Ricardo D.
Wandering Paysanos: State
Order and Subaltern Experience in Buenos Aires during the Rosas Era
.
(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003).
in the provincial military and police forces. Afro-Argentines responded
to this favor and attention with political support. At their dances and
parties they shouted, “Long live our Father Rosas, the best governor of
them all” (Szuchman and Brown 1994, 223).
