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3 Toutes les aristocraties, anglaise, russe, allemande, n’ont besoin que de montrer une chose en témoignage contre la France:— Les tableaux qu’elle fait d’elle-même par la main de ses grands écrivains, amis la plupart du peuple et partisans du progrès. . . . Nul peuple ne résisterait à une telle épreuve. Cette manie singulière de se dénigrer soi-même, d’étaler ses plaies, et comme d’aller chercher la honte, serait mortelle à la longue. — J. Michelet1 Today more than ever, anyone who was born in the beautiful country between the Andes mountain range and the River Plate has the right to cry out with pride, “I am an Argentine.” On the foreign soil on which I reside, not as a political exile, having left my home country legally, of my own free choice, just as an Englishman or a Frenchman can reside outside his country as it suits him; in the lovely country that receives me as a guest and provides so many pleasures to foreigners, without offending its flag, I lovingly kiss the Argentine colors and take pride in seeing them prouder and more honorable than ever before. The truth be told to the discredit of none: the colors of the River Original title: “La República Argentina, 37 años después de su Revolución de Mayo.” Source: Juan Bautista Alberdi, Obras completas de Juan Bautista Alberdi [Complete works of Juan Bautista Alberdi], vol. 3 (Buenos Aires: La Tribuna nacional, 1886). 1. Jules Michelet (1798–1874). Quotation is from his Le peuple (1846): “All aristocracies , be they English, Russian, German, need show only one thing as witness against France: The pictures she makes of herself by the hand of her great writers, most of them friends of the people and advocates of progress. . . . No people could resist such a test. That strange obsession of self-denigration, of displaying its wounds, would in time be lethal.” [e.n.] 1 JuaN Bautista alBERdi The Argentine Republic, Thirty-seven Years after the May Revolution (1847) 4 : Juan BautISta aLBerdI Plate have known neither defeat nor defection. In the hands of Rosas2 or Lavalle,3 when they have not sponsored victory, they have presided over liberty. If they have ever fallen into the dust, it has been against their own; at war with their own family, never at the feet of the foreigner. Save your tears, then, those generously sobbing over our misfortunes. In spite of them, no people on this part of the continent is entitled to feel pity for us. In its life as a nation, the Argentine Republic does not have one man, one deed, one defeat, one victory, one success, one loss to be ashamed of. All reproaches, save that of villainy. Our right comes from the blood that runs in our veins. It is Castilian blood. It is the blood of El Cid, the blood of Pelagius.4 Full of patriotic warmth, and possessed of that impartiality that comes from the pure sentiment of one’s own nationalism, I wish to embrace them all and enclose them in a painting. Blinded sometimes by partisan spirit, I have said things that might have flattered the ear of zealous rivals: may they hear me now with less flattering words. Will there be no excuses for the selfishness of my local patriotism, when partiality in favor of one’s own land is everyone’s right? Besides this I am led by a serious idea, namely, the need of every man in my country to reflect today on where our national family now stands: what political means do we, its sons, possess; what are our duties; what needs and desires are the order of the day of the famous Argentine Republic ? It would not be strange for someone to find this pamphlet Argentine, as I shall write it in blue-and-white ink. If I say that the Argentine Republic is prosperous in the midst of upheaval , I recognize a fact that everyone can sense: and if I add that it has the means to be more prosperous than all, I am writing no paradox. 2. Juan Manuel de Rosas (1793–1877), governor of the province of Buenos Aires (1829–1832, 1835–1852) and leader of the Argentine Confederation, ruled as a dictator until defeated by Justo José de Urquiza in the Battle of Caseros (1852). [e.n.] 3. Juan Lavalle (1797–1841), Argentine general, fought in the Wars of Independence; during the...

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