Prolegomenos de Caseros

In the polemical style so dear to the hearts of Argentine historians, no less a veteran of partisan interpretation than Don Diego Luís has indicated the value of European archives to the study of Río de la Plata politics. The first half of the book is composed of several letters written by Molinari in 1952 and directed to La Nación on the occasion of that newspaper’s commemoration of the centennial of Caseros and the overthrow of Rosas. The remainder, an appendix of nearly one hundred pages, contains a number of documents in translation, including Aberdeen’s instructions to Ouseley in 1845, the report of a British consul in Rio Grande do Sul in 1851 on the Brazilian-Uruguayan treaty, several interesting communications from the French Ministry of Foreign Relations, and a large portion of Gore’s correspondence with the Foreign Office concerning Rosas’ escape from Buenos Aires. While the letters pretend to destroy straw men taken from articles in La Nación, their rapid composition and particular objective detract from the polish and organization which characterize Molinari’s better monographs. Yet students of Argentine history will certainly agree with the principal message contained in these letters—“Una vez más tenemos que exclamar que todo hay que hacerlo en materia de historia en nuestra patria; y nada hay que revisionar, porque nada existe. . ..”