In this first English-language biography of Juan Manuel de Rosas, John Lynch writes that to “study Rosas is to study the original bases of political power in Argentina, ... to understand more fully the roots of caudillismo ...” (p. 1), and to comprehend the period after 1820, when Argentina suffered “universal dismemberment” (p. 26) politically. Lynch focuses on Rosas’s domination of Buenos Aires Province between 1829 and 1852, characterizing the man and his politics as both products and designers of the times. Two biographical and seven topical chapters display Rosas’s lifelong interests and beliefs, and the way in which he played his public role to protect and expand his own estate and those of relatives and supporters who waxed wealthy from land, stockraising, and exports. Combining excellent source materials with critical scholarship, Lynch shows how Rosas and his faction epitomized, profited from, and conflicted with major economic changes from the era of independence until the mid-nineteenth century.
Lynch pictures Rosas’s system for the province: control of gauchos and Indians; expansion of cattle-raising; concentration of land in few hands; neglect of artisan and machine industry. Society was polarized in two classes, and careful relations pursued with the chief trading partner, Britain. Rosas’s political and administrative techniques, and his unwillingness to delegate a particle of power, are effectively set forth.
This book is not intended as a complete history of Buenos Aires Province in Rosas’s time. Lynch deals with foreign policies involving only Britain, France, and Uruguay; and interprovincial relations—the struggles between unitarios and federales in what later became the Argentine Republic—appear only as background. Little is said of the province’s troubled finances, although Lynch demonstrates how fiscal and commercial policies were calculated to sustain the landowners’ export business.
In a field marked by ample publication of historical manuscripts and rich resources of newspapers, government reports, published travel accounts, and many fine histories and monographs, this book nonetheless makes impressive contributions. Lynch gives convincing negative answers to the most controversial questions regarding Rosas: whether he was a nationalist, a populist, or a federalist. As for whether Rosas was strongly influenced or managed by his wife or his daughter, Lynch finds no answer, but clearly provides the facts. The explanation of policies toward Britain and British subjects in the province is excellent, as are the treatments of the crisis of the regime, 1849-52, and of Rosas’s twenty-five-year exile in England. Lynch’s account of the governor’s progress toward total control of the population is as convincing as is his demonstration of Rosas’s conservative, aristocratic attitudes—and his posture of social divisiveness: “to protect my friends at all costs, and to destroy my enemies by any means” (p. 65).
For this period of Argentine history, over almost a century important works have been appearing including, recently, many fine monographs. Among these works Lynch’s differs sharply from those of “revisionists” such as Julio Irazusta while paralleling—and achieving sharper focus than— those of the best “neo-Liberals” like Ernesto Celesia and Enrique M. Barba. This well-written book is a guide to the literature and the sources; it is one of the best on the place and the times; and, while neither an exhaustive biography nor a comprehensive history of the province, it is the best work on the subject.
