Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
features that encouraged European immigration as well as foreign invest-
ment. Foreigners were free to practice their own religions in Argentina,
were exempt from military draft, and could freely remit profits. He and
several other 19th-century liberals promoted European immigration as
the solution to Argentina's legendary problem of underpopulation. They
reasoned that European workers were superior to African, Paraguayan,
or Bolivian workers and should be encouraged to come to develop
Argentina's agricultural resources. Alberdi became famous for his dictum
“To govern is to populate.”
As an exile during the reign of Rosas, Alberdi had witnessed the
power of railways in Europe and envisioned a vast network for
Argentina. He saw them as a way to settle “the desert,” a euphemism
for the southern Pampas and Patagonian regions still under indigenous
control. Alberdi also foresaw the benefits of a transcontinental railway
between Buenos Aires on the Atlantic coast and Valparaíso, Chile, on
the Pacific. Portions of his dream would come to fruition. Railways and
immigration would indeed transform Argentina, and the constitution
he fashioned remained the blueprint for nation building in the late 19th
century and still endures as the law of the land.
Nation building, however, was not accomplished merely with the
writing of a new constitution. The provinces still retained their own
militia forces, although the
porteño
troops remained the most power-
ful in the region. The post-Rosas politicians of Buenos Aires would
not willingly give up their control of money, commerce, and collection
of customs duties. They drove Urquiza from the capital in 1854, lost
the battle of Cepeda against the president of the republic in 1859, but
won the battle of Pavón two years later. Urquiza subsequently retired
to his private business affairs, and the
porteño
political leader General
Bartolomé Mitre became president of Argentina. National unification
was still a work in progress, and two wars soon assisted the project.
War with Paraguay
The national army created on paper by the 1853 constitution in real-
ity hardly existed when, in 1865, an international conflict broke out
in Paraguay. At the time, Francisco Solano López was Paraguay's third
autocrat, succeeding the nation's founder, José Gaspar Rodríguez de
Francia (who died in 1850), and Carlos Antonio López, Solano López's
father (who died in 1862). Solano López inherited leadership of a
government that, because of its long isolation, had gained monopoly
