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The Americas 58.2 (2001) 328-330



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Book Review

Children of Facundo: Caudillo and Gaucho Insurgency During the Argentine State-Formation Process (La Rioja, 1853-1870). By Ariel de la Fuente. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000. Pp. xiii, 249. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $54.95 cloth; $18.95 paper.

This work combines approaches used by social, political, and cultural historians to delve into a nuanced analysis of the competing leaderships, diverse constituencies, and strategies of resistance and military occupation during the Argentine age of post-constitutional discord, 1853-1870. After the fall of Juan Manuel de Rosas in 1852 and the writing of a national constitution the following year, Argentines remained divided over the nature of the relationship between the peoples of the interior provinces and Buenos Aires, the wealthiest and most populous. The independence movement had given birth to two military offspring: first, the campaigns aimed at freedom from Spain, which involved external conflicts (the result of exporting the revolution to neighboring regions, including Alto Peru, Paraguay, Chile, and Peru) and internal dissension, and, second, the rebellions that resulted from failed consensus over the role and extent of government and especially of Buenos Aires in matters of decision-making and economic development plans.

Children of Facundo is fundamentally a study of the relationship between leaders and their followers, between caudillos and gauchos, in a rural setting. Caudillo rule has been a historical problematic occupying the energies of both historical actors and scholars. For Domingo Sarmiento, caudillos typified the despotism of Oriental societies. Tulio Halperín Donghi argued from a social system perspective that caudillismo was the consequence of the institutional crisis resulting from three sources: the wars for independence, the militarization of society, and the ruralization of political authority. For John Lynch, caudillos represented the defense of the [End Page 328] elites' interests and their own stakes in the country's interior. In this thesis, the power of the caudillos rested on their discipline of rootless and marginal folk and on the transformation of the elites' peons into political followers. Other analysts, such as Robert Kern and José Luis Romero, have emphasized cultural aspects in seeing caudillos as representative of the creole and Hispanic heritage of the majority of rural dwellers in opposition to the urban, modernizing, and liberal elites.

Ariel de la Fuente contributes to these discussions by arguing two principal points. First, that caudillos can be understood by the political, material and cultural nexus between followers and leaders. Caudillo-follower relationships developed, in the process of mobilization, into party allegiances which were public and explicit, all in the context of socio-economic conditions and political culture. Second, de la Fuente argues on behalf of agency on the part of the Argentine masses, particularly the rural folk: "Unitarism and Federalism were highly differentiated party identities, with precise connotations and meanings, which occupied important places in the experiences of rural dwellers. They were fundamental in orienting people politically, and it was the character of those identities that accounted for the consistency and commitment that rebels exhibited . . . in their political affiliations" (p. 7).

This book takes on a couple of important and influential notions regarding the nature and composition of the caudillos' followers. First, de la Fuente places the durable nature of civil conflict in La Rioja in the context of a minimalist economic system: the dearth of provincial resources gave considerable opportunities to individuals of limited material substance to occupy leadership positions. Modest estancieros and even more modest gauchos could ignite conflicts against central authorities (and their proxies) with relative ease, confident of a following consisting of men whose motivations drew from a deep reservoir of historical resentment against Buenos Aires. At the end of the 1850s, La Rioja's provincial budget averaged 20,000 pesos, compared to Buenos Aires' nearly four million pesos. In the absence of resources, social control could not be effectively exercised by the state. In the event, attitudes hardened: provincial ineffectiveness in dealing with rebellious movements would lead to military interventions by Buenos Aires, which...

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