flag, I lovingly kiss the Argentine colors and take pride in seeing them prouder and more honorable than ever before.
The truth be told to the discredit of none: the colors of the River
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Plate have known neither defeat nor defection. In the hands of Rosas2 or Lavalle,3 when they have not sponsored victory, they have presided over liberty. If they have ever fallen into the dust, it has been against their own; at war with their own family, never at the feet of the foreigner.
Save your tears, then, those generously sobbing over our misfortunes. In spite of them, no people on this part of the continent is entitled to feel pity for us.
In its life as a nation, the Argentine Republic does not have one man, one deed, one defeat, one victory, one success, one loss to be ashamed of. All reproaches, save that of villainy. Our right comes from the blood that runs in our veins. It is Castilian blood. It is the blood of El Cid, the blood of Pelagius.4
Full of patriotic warmth, and possessed of that impartiality that comes from the pure sentiment of one’s own nationalism, I wish to embrace them all and enclose them in a painting. Blinded sometimes by partisan spirit, I have said things that might have flattered the ear of zealous rivals: may they hear me now with less flattering words. Will there be no excuses for the selfishness of my local patriotism, when partiality in favor of one’s own land is everyone’s right?
Besides this I am led by a serious idea, namely, the need of every man in my country to reflect today on where our national family now stands: what political means do we, its sons, possess; what are our duties; what needs and desires are the order of the day of the famous Argentine Republic?
It would not be strange for someone to find this pamphlet Argentine, as I shall write it in blue-and-white ink.
If I say that the Argentine Republic is prosperous in the midst of upheaval, I recognize a fact that everyone can sense: and if I add that it has the means to be more prosperous than all, I am writing no paradox.
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There can be no man alive who would deny that it is in a respectable state and has nothing to be ashamed of. Why not say it once and for all with our heads held high? The Argentine Republic has moved foreign sensibilities with the images of its civil war. It has seemed barbarous, cruel. But it has never been the butt of anyone’s ridicule. And misfortune that does not reach the point of mockery is far from being the ultimate misfortune.
At all times, the Argentine Republic has appeared at the forefront of the movement of this America. For right and for wrong, its power to take the initiative is the same: when it does not imitate its liberators, it mimics its tyrants.
In the revolution, Moreno’s5 plan encompassed our continent.
In the war, San Martín6 showed Bolívar the road to Ayacucho.7
Rivadavia8 gave the Americas his plan of progressive improvements and innovations. What statesman before him put on the order of the day the question of roads, canals, banks, public education, staging posts, religious freedom, abolition of privileges, religious and military reform, colonization, trade and shipping treaties, administrative and political centralization, organization of the representative system, electoral system, customs, taxation, rural laws, useful associations, European imports of unheard-of industries? The sum of decrees from his day is a perfect administrative code, just as the decrees of Rosas contain the catechism of the art of subjugating despotically and teaching obeisance with blood.
Twenty years from now, many states of the Americas will deem themselves advanced because they will be doing what Buenos Aires did thirty years ago: and forty years will elapse before they have their own Rosas. I say their Rosas, because they will have him. Not in vain is he today called
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Man of the Americas. He truly is, for he is a political type who will be seen around America as a logical product of that which produced him in Buenos Aires and which exists in sister states. In all places the orange tree, when it gets to a certain age, gives oranges. Where there are Spanish republics, formed from former colonies, there will be dictators once development reaches a certain level.
They should not be upset by this idea. This means that they will advance as much as the Argentine Republic has advanced today, regardless of the means. Rosas is at once a sickness and a cure: America says this of Buenos Aires, and I repeat it as true of the future America.
This is not a malignant and vengeful omen of a desired evil. Although I oppose Rosas, as a party man, I have said that I write this with Argentine colors.
Rosas is not a simple tyrant in my eyes. If in his hand there is a bloody rod of iron, I also see on his head the rosette of Belgrano.9 I am not so blinded by love of my party as not to recognize what Rosas is, in certain respects.
I know, for example, that Simón Bolívar did not occupy the world so much with his name as the current governor of Buenos Aires does.
I know that the name of Washington is worshipped in the world but is no better known than that of Rosas.
The United States, despite its fame, does not today have a public figure held in higher esteem than General Rosas.—The people speak of him from one end of America to the other, although he has not done as much as Christopher Columbus. He is as well known in Europe as a man in the public eye in England or France. And there is no place in the world where his name is not known, because there is no place outside the reach of the English or French press, which for the last ten years have repeated his name day after day. What orator, what celebrated writer of the nineteenth century has not named him, has not spoken of him on many occasions? Guizot, Thiers, O’Connell, Lamartine, Palmerston, Aberdeen.10 What celebrated parliamentarian of this era has not
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mentioned him, speaking to the face of Europe. Shortly he will be a romantic hero: the stage is set for a young genius, remembering what Chateaubriand, Byron,11 and Lamartine gained from their journeys, to set sail across the Atlantic, in search of an immense and virginal territory ripe for poetry, offered by the most beautiful country, the most esteemed and the most abundant in remarkable traits of the New World.
Byron, who once thought of visiting Venezuela and was so eager to cross the line of the equinox, would have been attracted to the banks of the immense River Plate, if the man who could have offered the most colors through his life and character to the pictures from his diabolical and sublime brush had lived in his day. Byron was the predestined poet of Rosas, the poet of The Corsair, The Pirate, Mazeppa, and Marino Faliero. It would be fitting if the hero, like the singer, were defined as angel or demon, as Lamartine called the author of Childe Harold.
It would be necessary not to be an Argentine to be unaware of the truth of these facts, and be proud of them, without getting involved in examining the legitimacy of the right with which they cede in honor of the Argentine Republic. It is enough to see that glory is independent sometimes of justice, of usefulness, and even of good common sense.
So I will say in all sincerity something I consider consistent with what I have expressed here:—if Rosas’ rights to Argentine nationality were lost, I would contribute with no small sacrifice to bringing about their rescue. It is easier for me to declare than to explain the motive, because it pleases me to think that Rosas belongs to the River Plate.
But, when speaking
