he speaks of an Argentine general, he speaks of a man of the Plate, or rather he speaks of the Argentine Republic. To speak of the esteem in which Rosas is held is to speak of the esteem in which Rosas’ country is held. Rosas is not an entity that can be conceived in abstract terms without relation to the people he governs. Like all notable men, the extraordinary development
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of his character presupposes that of the society to which he belongs. Rosas and the Argentine Republic are two entities implicated in each other. He is what he is because he is Argentine: his elevation implies that of his country; the spirit of his will, the firmness of his nature, the power of his intelligence are not traits of his own, but traits of the people, which he reflects in his person. The idea of a Bolivian or Ecuadorian Rosas is absurd. Only the Plate could today produce a man who has done what Rosas has done. A strong man always implies many others of the same spirit around him. With an army of sheep, a lion at its head would be taken prisoner by a single hunter.
Suppress Buenos Aires, and its masses and its innumerable able men, and you will have no Rosas.
The leadership of the Argentine Republic is attributed to him alone. What a great error! He is reasonable enough to listen when he appears to be leading; like his country, he is very capable of ordering when he seems to obey.
Rosas is no Peter the Great.12 The greatness of Argentina is older than he. Rosas is forty years later than Liniers;13 thirty years later than Moreno, Belgrano, San Martín; twenty years later than Rivadavia. Under his leadership, Buenos Aires sent a haughty no to the allied English and French. In 1807 it did more than that, without having Rosas at its head. In its streets, it tore apart fifteen thousand soldiers of the flower of the British armies, and snatched the one hundred standards that today adorn its temples.
In 1810, without Rosas at its head, it cast to the ground the crown that Christopher Columbus led to the New World.
On July 9, 1816, the Argentine Republic wrote the golden page of its independence, and the name of Rosas is not at the foot of that document.
In that same year, the Argentine armies climbed with cannons and
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cavalry mountains twice as high as those of Mont-Cenis and St. Bernard, to help Chile to do what had been achieved on the other side. But it was not Rosas who signed the victorious bulletins from Chacabuco and Maypo,14 but the Argentine José de San Martín.
All the glory of Rosas, to the square of four and multiplied ten times by itself, does not form a trophy comparable in esteem with Pizarro’s15 standard, obtained by San Martín in his campaign in Peru in 1821.
This is not to diminish Rosas’ merit. This is to increase the merit of the Argentine Republic. This is to say that it is not Rosas who has taught it to be brave and heroic.
From this there follows a very logical and natural conclusion, namely, that as soon as Rosas ceases to be at the head of the Argentine Republic, another man as notable as he with other scenes as memorable as his will be attracting the world’s attention to the Republic, which from the first days of this century has never ceased to be esteemed for its men and for its deeds.
But today, are Rosas and his party perhaps the only things that Argentina has to offer that are extraordinary and worthy of admiration?
That would be to see a half-truth, not the whole truth.
No one is great unless measured against other great men. There is much praise for Rosas’ heroic perseverance. But does not the perseverance of his action imply the perseverance of the resistance that he seeks to snuff out? If the persistence with which Rosas has pursued his enemies for the last twenty years shows that interest in a never-changing will, no less admirable is the invariable tenacity with which they have reacted to his power in the same space of time.
It is not my intention here to strike a comparative parallel of the merits of the two parties into which the Argentine Republic is divided. Halves of my country, equally loved, one and the other, I want the heroism that lies in both of them to be seen. In both can be observed the characters of a great political party. South America has not seen in the
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history of its civil wars two parties more tenacious in their action, more committed to their dominant idea, better organized, more loyal to their flag, clearer in their aims, more logical and consistent in their progress.
These qualities do not hold as much importance in the Unitario Party16 because it has not been embodied in a single man. It has not had that man because oppositions never have him, for they declare and organize themselves into militias in the heart of the popular masses: it has had infinite heads instead of one, and that is why its action has been divided and disturbed, which has made its results sterile.
But is not the consistency of Rosas and his men as admirable as the consistency of those men who at home and abroad and everywhere have fought for the past twenty years, braving with the fortitude of heroes all the setbacks and sufferings of foreign life, never yielding, never deserting their flag, never changing sides under cover of those weak amalgams celebrated in the name of parliamentary law?
There have been mutual reproaches, sometimes deserved, though usually unfair. The antagonist having to fight with undisciplined masses, with makeshift soldiers, chiefs, arrangements, and resources, has been the object of unpleasant accusations. But what opposition has not included excesses of this kind? Did not the holy war of independence from Spain have innumerable such traits that the glow of success and justice have left in silence? Can one not hear even today secret murmurings against the great names of San Martín and Bolívar, Carrera and O’Higgins,17 Monteagudo18 and La Mar,19 for unnoticed acts which in the labyrinth of a great war were practiced by the masses under their command?
Reveal, let us see, justly or not, some act of cowardice, some behavior of dissolute indignity that stains the life of Rivadavia, Agüero, Pico, Alsina,
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Varela, Lavalle, Las Heras, Olavarria, Suárez,20 and so many others enrolled as chiefs in the noble ranks of the Unitario Party!
This praise is not a feature of that routine declamation of the parties. It is the just vindication of one-half of the Argentine Republic.
Both sides accuse each other of faults and offenses. Perhaps they have these faults, perhaps they committed such offenses, and the first of them is having taken up arms to tear each other apart. But once they have gone to war—the last aberration of passion and fervor—should it seem strange that they should then incur other offenses? To what else could the fever of a bloody contest lead, in which are at stake honor, political faith, and the interest for a cause considered that of the homeland itself?
The Federal Party made use of tyranny: the Unitario Party made use of alliances with foreign powers. Both did wrong. But why have those who have looked on this alliance as a crime of treason forgotten that the crime of tyranny is no less a crime? There are, then, two offenses that account for each other. I say offenses, and not crimes, because it is absurd to claim that the Argentine parties have been criminal in the abuse of their means.
Rosas has people who understand his perspective because he is the victor. The Unitarios have not, because they have been defeated. Thus is the world in its judgment. They call Lavalle a traitor because he died defeated in Jujuy. If he had entered Buenos Aires victorious, they would have called him libertador. If O’Higgins
