Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
the church in Bolivia attempted to send them on to Spain, but the
Creole-backed political authorities sequestered these revenues for use
in Buenos Aires instead. Spain's wartime incompetence and greed had
tried the patience of the Creoles.
Moreover, the participation of the Creoles as militia leaders in impe-
rial defense ultimately undermined the social hegemony—and thus
the commercial and political positions—of men like Ventura Miguel
Marcó del Pont. As a Spaniard, Marcó ultimately became a victim of
the American repercussions of European war. British traders expecting
to reap profits flooded the import markets of the Río de la Plata with
so much woolens, linens, glassware, footwear, rum, and furniture that
prices plummeted below cost. Several local merchants, Marcó del Pont
among them, sought to purchase cheap British goods and hold them in
their warehouses for subsequent sale at marked-up prices. While the
foreign troops were in Montevideo, Marcó's commercial agents and boat
captains were dealing on a barter basis with British merchants. They
exchanged British manufactured goods for hides and dried beef. Such
acts may have made commercial sense, but they also could be construed
as treasonous.
Most damaging of all, the British invasion interrupted Marcó's com-
munication with Europe. The Spanish merchants could no longer ship
colonial products back to their home ports in Spain. Marcó blamed
“those malicious Englishmen” for the loss of the customary one-half
percent commission on such transactions.
Marcó del Pont personally paid a much higher price for the British
invasion. He had made an extraordinary loan of 70,300 pesos from his
collection of church mortgages to help pay for the defense of the vice-
royalty. He was never to retrieve this money. Then several boat captains
complained to the new viceroy, Santiago Liniers, the hero of the recon-
quest of Buenos Aires, about Marcó's involvement in “false contracts”
with British invaders. Despite his financial contribution to the defense
of the Río de la Plata, Marcó and his agents had been compromised by
trading with the enemy. Creole patriots who had defended Buenos Aires
were lining up against the Spaniards who either fled or collaborated
with the British.
Creole Consciousness
In the four decades of commercial growth that followed the 1776 estab-
lishment of Buenos Aires as capital of the new Viceroyalty of the Río
de la Plata, Spanish-born merchants in that city had become its lead-
