The sesquicentennial celebration of Argentine independence inspired the publication of the four essays comprising this volume. Each author accepts the Lenin-Marxist view of history and interprets his country’s movement for independence within that framework. Each writer utilizes well-known studies on the period and interprets them without the support of new documents. Each one praises the lives of some of the founding fathers but maintains that the traditional historians have failed to present the patriotic roles of such leaders as José de San Martín in their true light. Yet each essay contributes little that is new to the complex story of Argentine national beginnings.
Benito Marianetti recounts the role of Tomás Godoy Cruz in the movement for independence, emphasizing his ties with San Martín and the Lautaro Lodge. Leonardo Paso’s essay considers some international aspects of the struggle for independence, depicting the interests of Great Britain and France in that struggle as motivated mainly by the economic requirements of their developing capitalism.
San Martín’s political role in the events leading to the meeting of the Congress of Tucumán is stressed in Damián Ferrer’s contribution to this volume. To him San Martín was a centralist and a republican at heart, a friend of the Negro slave and the common man, and one who was ideologically closer to the morenistas than to the Porteños or provincial conservatives.
Miguel C. Lombardi’s brief essay on the effect of the Congress of Tucumán on later Argentine national organization concludes that the successors of the conservatives who dominated the Congress in 1816 were able to unify the nation by 1860, but at a high price. The interests of the oligarchy prevented the development of native capitalism thus permitting the economic development of Argentina to fall into the hands of the imperialist, capitalist nations.
