Here's part two! South America ain't doin' so well.
Spanish America, Post-Independence: 1821-1846
José Gervasio Artigas, President of Argentina
The second quarter of the 19th century was a time of vast change in South America, much in a way that the previous one had been. By the end of the 1820’s most of the continent had achieved independence from Spain (and Portugal in the case of Brazil), with the one exception of Peru, which remained part of the Spanish Empire. There seemed to be an air, during the mid-1820’s, of a sense of optimism over what the new nations of South America had accomplished. The optimism, however, was fleeting, and would soon fade away as the years progressed.
In the wake of Simón Bolívar death in 1821, the federal government in Cúcuta was plunged into disarray. Bolívar was technically the President of Colombia at the time of his death, prompting a minor succession crisis within the young republic. Vice-President Francisco de Paula Santander had been serving as acting President in Bolívar’s absence, and the Libertador’s death only officially elevated the 29 year old native
cúcuteño to the capacity he had already been serving. Santander’s political enemies immediately pounced on his recent rise to fame, arguing that Santander was too young and inexperienced to take on the task of leading the new nation (as well as the fact that technically, Santander was ineligible to serve, as he was not 30 years of age as stipulated in the constitution). Despite this, Santander was much preferred to the other contenders for the presidency, and the fact that Bolívar himself had endorsed his candidacy for the vice-Presidency, ensured Santander’s continued mandate. For most of his first term Santander and his Federalist allies attempted to institute various reforms that had been initiated during the Cúcuta Constitutional Convention of 1820, such as education reform, as well as overseeing a complete overhaul of the tax system. Unfortunately for Santander, most of his initiatives were more often than not thwarted by a combination of strong political opposition and lack of money in the government’s coffers. Santander attempted to remedy this by using the increase in tax revenue from imports, and indeed, the Creole dream of unrestricted free trade had finally been achieved with independence. Santander and many of his compatriots, however, failed to take into account the cost of paying the nations new proto-bureaucracy, as the profits raised from import levees failed to be enough to pay all of the nation’s government employees. To say nothing of the amount of money the government spent on military expenditures (including soldier salaries and the cost of constant campaigns into Spanish Peru), the result became a growing friction between Colombia’s growing government elite, and the influential clique of military officers who claimed credit for their country’s independence. It also happened that most military officers hailed from Venezuela, while most of the lawyers and members of the government bureaucracy came from New Granada, adding a regional element to the brewing unrest within Colombia.
Francisco de Paula Santander and José Antonio Páez, polar opposites.
Surprisingly, Santander managed to retain his mandate in the 1825 elections, despite Colombia’s deteriorating position. Adding to Santander’s misfortune was General Sucre’s repeated failure to topple the Spanish government in Lima, which further strained Colombia’s empty treasury. Tensions seemed to finally come to a head in early 1826, when Venezuelan General José Antonio Páez began calling for Venezuela’s secession from the Colombian union. Páez took the matter personally, as his anger stemmed from an ongoing blood feud with the Congress in Bogota. For his part, Santander attempted, to no avail, to moderate between the military establishment (lead by Páez) and Congress, both factions which saw the other as a threat to their control of the nation, and hell bent on annihilating the other. Páez, paying no heed to Santander’s pleas to desist, called his countrymen to arms on March 30, 1826, from his home southwest of Caracas. Almost immediately both sides prepared for war, as the Neogranadine forces began amassing both in Bogota in the interior and Santa Marta on the Caribbean Coast, while the rebel Venezuelans fortified themselves for a defensive war. Hostilities were in full swing by summer, as the two main Colombian armies (headed by General Pedro Alcántara in the south and General José María Obando in the north) drove eastwards toward San Cristóbal and Maracaibo respectively. Santander’s solicitations to General Sucre were welcomed with cool indifference, as the famed General sought to tend to his personal affairs, and those of his wife, at their home in Quito, his failures in the Peruvian campaigns having taxed him greatly. Many in New Granada scorned Sucre for his Venezuelan ties, as Sucre’s place of birth was indeed in Venezuela, though he cared little for what “petty lawyers in Bogota” thought of him. To their advantage, the Venezuelan forces swelled to over 25,000 troops (almost twice the numbers of the Neogranadine army), as many young Venezuelan men felt the impulse to serve the highly popular Páez in the face of “Neogranadine tyranny.” Venezuela also retained much of Colombia’s military talent, which proved decisive in the Battle of Taribe, north of San Cristóbal, which saw the Venezuelans under Páez successfully repel Alcántara’s army. Alcáantara was pushed back across the border, where he would receive a crushing defeat in the Battle of Cúcuta in late August 1826.
With Alcántara’s forces effectively neutralized, Páez turned around and traveled north, to relieve his allied forces in Maracaibo, which was under siege by Obando’s forces. The city was unrecognizable when Páez finally arrived to relieve the city in late October, as some of Obando’s more overzealous Neogranadine lieutenants saw fit to punish the rebellious Venezuelans in the cruelest of fashions. When the two armies met south of the ruined city, contemporary accounts describe the battle as cataclysmic. The Venezuelan forces won the day, with the resounding cries of “¡recuerdan Maracaibo!” echoing clear across the battlefield. The Siege of Maracaibo and the subsequent victory by Páez’s forces galvanized the Venezuelan forces and populaces, who were now after Neogranadine blood for the bloodshed incurred on the citizens of Maracaibo. Páez would deal a finishing blow to Obando’s troops at the Battle of Riohacha one month later, leaving the coastal road clear of opposition to the victorious Venezuelans. That triumphant army would march into Santa Marta on January 2, at which point Páez acquiesced to appeals from Bogota to a ceasefire. Despite calls from his fellow Venezuelans to march on Cartagena, Páez recognized how prostrate the government in Bogota was, and knew his party could easily dominate the peace talks. Páez’s main concern was Neogranadine recognition of Venezuelan independence, though his position did allow him some minor territorial concessions, namely being the occupation of Santa Marta. Santander truly despaired at his lot, though it was only just the beginning, as New Granada’s dire straits provided Spain the opportunity to seek revenge against her old colony by invading southern Ecuador. News of the invasion, and subsequent Spanish assault on Guayaquil, reached Bogota around the same time of the peace talks with Páez, forcing Bogota to yield to Venezuela’s demands in order to hastily defend their territory from the Spanish invasion.
Antonio José de Sucre, defender of Ecuador
General Sucre, quickly leaping out of retirement in order to defend his adopted home, assembled 1,200 troops in late December, poised to defend Quito from a Spanish-Peruvian force over three times larger advancing north from occupied Guayaquil. With Sucre’s reputation preceding him, the Spanish anticipated to easily take the Ecuadorian capital, but against all odds Sucre commanded the field with a clear victory over the Spanish forces, providing Bogota with one of the few victories it would ever receive throughout the conflict. Nonetheless, Sucre’s euphoria was short lived, as a Spanish-sponsored revolt in the ultraconservative region around Pasto broke out, north of Ecuador. Amazingly Sucre would hold Quito well into 1827, until the growing rebellion choked all of Sucre’s supply lines dry, forcing his army to turn around and deal with the rebels. Spain easily overran Quito on March 24, 1827, pausing temporarily to tighten its hold on its recently conquered territory, while awaiting reinforcements. This gave Sucre enough time to deal a massive blow to the rebellion in Pasto, while his own reinforcements arrived via Popayan. Sucre reengaged the Spanish south of Pasto that May, securing several more victories and pushing the Spanish out of much of southern New Granada, until he received orders for a ceasefire between Bogota and Spain. Sucre wished to pursue the conflict further, but his troops were indeed succumbing to exhaustion, and the Spanish had numbers on their side. Santander’s government, utterly bankrupted by two successive wars, was in no position to fight for much longer, and instead agreed to grant Spanish Peru dominion over Ecuador and Pasto, an act that would forever injure relations between Santander and Sucre. Needless to say, Santander was utterly broken over the dissolution of Colombia, resigning as President in August 1827. Vice-president Joaquín Mosquera assumed executive powers while new elections were organized for the Republic of New Grenada, as Bolívar’s dream of a united Colombia now seemed as dead as the famed Liberator himself. [1]
Fulgencio Yegros, First President of Paraguay
As the dust settled in the former union of Colombia, unrest seemed to be brewing in the inland nation of Paraguay. After successfully ridding itself of the Spanish in 1811, it remained (as did most of the Río de la Plata basin) more or less distant from the warring that had engulfed other parts of the continent. In 1813 it formally declared independence, and a constituent congress named Dr. José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia (a lawyer) and Lieutenant Colonel Fugencio Yegros as co-Consuls to rule Paraguay. After several months Yegros retired, leaving the 48 year old Francia as sole ruler of a nation of roughly half a million. Francia managed to maintain Paraguay’s shaky independence with an iron grip. Assuming dictatorial powers almost immediately, Francia began to rid the small nation of any possible signs of opposition, at first by imprisoning many of the military generals who had aided in the independence struggle. Francia also created the
pyraguës, a secret police force that answered directly to
el Caraí, as many of his potential rivals were thrown into the jail cells of Asunción to never see the light of day again, in a process which would accelerate after 1818.[2] Sensing their window of time was diminishing rapidly, several of Asunción’s leading military men and elites began conspiring for the removal of Francia. The plot to remove Francia was nearly compromised in February 1820 when a raid on the home of Marcos Baldovinos had several of the high ranking plotters arrested. Regardless, the plot went forward as planned, and on Friday March 31, 1820, Francia was killed when his personal carriage exploded while carrying him on one of his habitual rides through the capital.[3] With Francia eliminated the plotters all moved as fast as they could to fill the vacuum, Yegros being named leader of the nation while rebels and loyalists fought in the streets of Asunción. As news radiated out of the capital of Francia’s death, so too did the violence, as rebel cells clashed with Francia loyalists within the military and members of the
pyraguës. Paraguay’s apparent descent into civil war unearthed fear of the potential for foreign invasion, as both the Argentines and the Portuguese held irredentist claims on territory claimed by Paraguay. As luck would have it, Argentina was rife with civil war of its own, and Portuguese Brazil was in the midst of breaking away from the authority of Lisbon, effectively neutralizing the foreign threat to Paraguay. The lack of a threat, however, did not stop Francia loyalists and rebels alike from using the fear of invasion to galvanize support to their cause. Regardless, the violence would persist through the fall and into the winter of 1820, until fatigue and numbers finally tipped the balance in favor of the rebels.
The famed 33 Orientales, who reignited Uruguay's war for independence against Brazil
With the cessation of hostilities at hand, the national congress was once again reconvened in Asunción, this time absent of men previously appointed by Francia. It voted in favor of writing a new constitution, as well as appointing Yegros to serve as President of Paraguay for a five year term. Yegros also sought to rectify the injustices incurred by Francia against Paraguay’s Spaniards, whom were expelled prior to Francia’s downfall. Yegros also undid many of Francia’s social engineering laws, namely those which required Spaniards to marry only Mestizos or Indians. Yegros also oversaw Paraguay’s reopening to the world at large, recommencing trade with its neighbors and beyond. Paraguay’s reopening also entailed embroilment into the affairs of other nations. Indeed Yegros and his clique were of the mind of uniting Paraguay with neighboring provinces as a means to counteract the expansionist ambitions of both Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro. To that end Yegros sought to aid his “brave eastern compatriots” in the Banda Oriental in their fight against Brazilian invasion. As fate would have it, the famed Uruguayan General José Gervasio Artigas and his diminished entourage were in Paraguay, living in exile after having suffered a stinging defeat at the hands of the Brazilians in early 1820. President Yegros met on several occasions with Artigas, from early 1821 through to the end of his first term, offering the General Paraguayan patronage in the form of troops and supplies in order to force the Brazilians out of Uruguay. At first Artigas rebuffed Yegros’ offers, though he did thank him for granting him asylum, but the persistent Paraguayan continued to meet privately with Artigas through to 1825, in the hope to persuade him to take up the sword once more. The time to decide arrived early that same year, as news of rebellion in Uruguay soon reached Asunción. Sometime after the conflict, later to be known as the Uruguayan War, commenced, the aging General resolved to join the anti-Brazilian rebellion in his native land, celebrating his 61st birthday by leading a mixed force of 1,600 Uruguayan exiles and Paraguayan auxiliaries across the Paraná River into Corrientes province.[4] Bolstering his army as he traveled south through allied territory, Artigas successfully routed a Brazilian force of nearly 2,000 north of Salto, on the Uruguay River. Contemporaries noted that Artigas seemingly exuded a zeal that some of his close confidants claimed he had lost when Brazil conquered the Banda Oriental years earlier. By the end of the year the combined Uruguayan-Paraguayan army managed to unite with the bulk of the Uruguayan rebels in central Uruguay, under the command of Juan Antonio Lavalleja. Most of 1826 was characterized by Brazil’s steady retreat north, climaxing at the Battle of Ituzaingó, where the combined forces of the United Provinces, the Orientales (a term used to refer to the collective forces of Lavalleja and Artigas) and their Paraguayan auxiliaries inflicted a stinging defeat to the Brazilian Army, taking place in the Brazilian province of Rio Grande do Sul.[5] The fight at sea proved to be no better for the Brazilians, as their attempt to blockade the coast of Buenos Aires proved unsuccessful. The Imperial government in Rio de Janeiro, unable to further propagate the war further, and with enemy forces occupying parts of Rio Grande do Sul, capitulated to the allied forces in early 1827. Under the auspices of the United Kingdom and France, the Treaty of Montevideo required Brazil to recognize Argentine sovereignty over the Banda Oriental. The treaty did allow Brazil navigation rights on the Uruguay River, but on the whole the aftermath of the war was humiliating. The War continued to haunt Brazilians well after 1827, as it was seen as a precursor to the Empire’s eventual collapse in the 1830’s. For Paraguay’s troubles, its border with Argentina was finally fixed in the former’s favor, with Paraguay’s acquisition of Misiones and territory north of the Bermejo River.[6]
Juan Manual de Rosas and Facundo Quiroga, Dictator and Democrat
Despite Argentina’s victory in the Uruguayan War, it too like the Brazilian Empire was plagued by civil war. Following his success against Brazil, Artigas sought to revive the idea of uniting the former Viceroyalty under the banner of federalism. Before long the provinces of Uruguay, Buenos Aires, Entre Rios, Corrientes and Santa Fe were united under the banner of Artigas and Federalism, with the signing of the Federal Pact on January 17, 1829 in Montevideo. Several months later, in early 1830, the remaining provinces banded together as the Unitarian Pact. Centered in the city of Córdoba in the interior, the movement found its leader in military veteran José María Paz. Initial engagements proved to swing in favor of the
federalistas, as they easily managed to halt
unitario advances into Santa Fe, and launched successful counter offences into the hinterland surrounding Córdoba. The city proved another matter however, as Federalist forces under the command of Facundo Quiroga failed to wrest it from Paz’s control. Quiroga reassessed his battle plan, and in October 1830 led a daring campaign through the aboriginal territories in the south, under passing Córdoba in order to attack defenseless Mendoza. The plan proved to be a complete success, as Quiroga ushered in 1831 with Mendoza’s quick surrender. Córdoba would fall in May, but not before Paz and his army retreated north to Tucuman. Slowly, the Unitarian Pact crumbled, as province after province sided with the Federalists. Paz would finally forfeit the Unitarian cause in 1834, on the battlefield southeast of Salta, but the war was not yet over, as factionalism was rife amongst the Federalist forces. The Federalist governor of Buenos Aires, Juan Manuel de Rosas, had rebuilt the mechanisms of state around himself, effectively converting Buenos Aires into his own kingdom. Federalist in name only, Rosas was loathed towards Artigas and his vision for a federal and democratic Argentina. Rosas established a belligerent approach towards Artigas, earning his ire in 1832, when Rosas personally ordered the execution of nearly a dozen high ranking prisoners-of-war. When Artigas called for the creation of a new constitution in 1834, Buenos Aires was the only province to proclaim against such a move, largely on Rosas’ wishes. Sensing that conflict was eminent, Rosas decided to co-opt the remnants of the Unitarian Party, many served as agents to carry out Rosas’ bidding in the other provinces. Civil war once again was reignited in September 1835, when foolhardy Rosistas botched a massive assassination attempt on various delegates for Argentina’s new constitution. Captured and interrogated, they revealed Rosas’ implication in the plot, prompting Artigas to call for Rosas’ resignation as governor of Buenos Aires. Naturally Rosas ignored Artigas’ words, denying that he ordered the attacks, and further claiming that his command over Buenos Aires also gave him control over the nation at large. After further Federalist ultimatums proved futile, Artigas, Now past 70, had the younger and more charismatic General Quiroga lead the charge against Buenos Aires. Rosas utilized all the resources available to him in order to repel Quiroga’s offensive, forcing the Federalist army to an agonizingly slow advance down the Río de la Plata. After some of the most ferocious fighting not seen since the war for independence, a smoldering Buenos Aires would fall into Quiroga’s hands, but Rosas and the bulk of his men retreated south. Against all odds Rosas eluded the Federalists for over two years, managing by allying with Puelche and Mapuche
indios. By 1838 Montevideo was ready to sue for peace, and by some accounts, so was Rosas. After a series of third party talks, both sides agreed to sign a formal peace treaty. On November 20, 1838, Rosas and President Artigas (having been elected in 1836) signed the Treaty of Buenos Aires, whereby Artigas recognized Buenos Aires’ independence, while Rosas relinquished claim to the rest of Argentina. The peace was lasting, allowing Rosas, the “Hero of Buenos Aires,” to further his totalitarian grip over the province. In Montevideo, Artigas was busy state-building as well, albeit one based on Federalism and constitutional rule of law. He was popular enough to gain support for a second term, but decades of constant warfare had truly taken a toll on the great general, so he declined to run for reelection. Nevertheless, the Federalists, with Artigas’ blessing, ran behind General Quiroga, who was still as popular as ever. With the Unitarians still in the political wilderness, Quiroga soundly won the 1840 elections. Artigas was not one to complain, he was content with seeing his life dream of a federal and democratic Argentina unfold before him. He would die a content man in early 1846, just as war and death loomed over North America.
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Notes:
[1] So yeah, Gran Colombia breaks up a few years ahead of schedule, but don't you worry, I have plenty of action lined up for this part of the world.
[2] See the previous update. Also,
el Caraí is a Hispanisized Guarani term, short for
Karaí Guazú, meaning "great lord." Artigas was also known to be called this.
[3] Everything up to this point was OTL. TTL the plot is never uncovered and goes more or less according to plan, i.e. Francia dead n' gone.
[4] OTL Artigas was allowed to stay in Paraguay, and he did for about 30 years before croaking. Francia didn't want him stirring up trouble for him so he let the man be. Yegros here is using Artigas for his own purposes, but it works out for the both of them.
[5] Pretty much same battle as OTL, but the Argentines and Uruguayans are better off so the battle precipitates Brazil's defeat.
[6] More butterflies yaaay! The Cisplatine War of OTL was pretty close as it was, and it was the UK's intervention to bring peace that resulted in Uruguay's independence. TTL the extra support of Artigas and Paraguay allows the war to end faster, and Uruguay stays with Argentina.
Hope you guys enjoyed the update, next up will be a bit smaller, but I intend to cover important bits outside the Americas.
