63. THE CISPLATINE WAR
The economic take-off of Argentina in the early 1900s brought it into competition with the Brazilian Empire for the position of the leading nation of the South American continent: Argentine agricultural products were in great demand abroad and the intensification of trade produced an increase of wealth which resulted in continuous industrialization. The increase in prosperity and prospects for the inhabitants led to ever more consistent migratory waves directed to Argentina which boosted the local population. The increase in economic power translated into an ever greater political and diplomatic weight that Manuel Jimenez, elected in 1910 to the presidency on a Confederal platform, decided to exploit to impose Argentina as a great South American power.
Argentina was an interesting prospect for european immigrants, especially from Spain, Southern Italy and France.
The Confederal political platform envisaged a "return to colonial origins" by establishing a political, economic and military union between Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, nations that are close and easily influenced by a great power. The success of the confederal idea in Argentina shook all over the south of the continent, galvanizing the parties adhering to the idea in other nations: the most important success occurred in 1912 in Paraguay with the election of the Confederal Conservatives who immediately entered into negotiations with Argentina to formalize the confederation of the two states, which took place in 1913 with the agreements of Paranà.
But the real prize was Uruguay: Jimenez spent a lot of money to finance the supporters of the confederal idea, leading them to electoral success in the 1914 elections which ended with the election of Luis Blanco, a friend of Jimenez, to the presidency. The newly elected president immediately entered into negotiations to confederate Uruguay with Argentina but the idea was not digested by the armed forces who feared the supremacy of the Argentines so general Lopez orchestrated a coup that overthrew the government and established a dictatorship temporary held by the anti-confederal military.
Argentina denounced the incident and threatened to have its army intervene if the Uruguayan military did not step aside in early June. The empire of Brazil was following the situation with great interest: the inclusion of Uruguay in the Argentine project would neutralize any buffer state between Argentina and Brazil, making an Argentine invasion of Brazil much more likely. It was for this reason that the Brazilian government guaranteed the independence of Uruguay and threatened Argentina to intervene. The carioca threats were ignored as Jimenez, aware of Argentina's military superiority (Argentina had a strong war industry as well as a lot of European material, mainly French and English such as aircraft and automatic rifles), decided to proceed anyway with the invasion that began on the 2nd May 1914 with the crossing of the Uruguay River. At the time of the ford the three nations declared war, starting the Cisplatin war.
Soldiers from Argentina cheerfully march into Uruguay.
The Brazilian army was slow to mobilize and intervene as no one believed in the seriousness of the Argentine threats. This slowness was the death knell of Uruguay which, with an army equal to 1/10 of the Argentine one, had no hope of slowing its advance and the few battles fought on the road to Montevideo led only to heavy defeats that disintegrated morale and the unity of the Uruguayan armed forces. The fall of the capital in July 1914 left the Uruguayans to garrison the Melo-Tacuarembo-Riviera line, the last stop before the border with Brazil. The redeployment of half a million Argentines on the line took a couple of weeks, giving the first four Brazilian divisions time to arrive on the line and guard it.
Brazilian professional soldiers in position in Uruguay during summer 1914
The war could have ended there with the restoration of the Confederal party in Uruguay and the annexation of the remaining territory to Brazil, but Jimenez preferred to continue the hostilities, convinced that the war was the perfect opportunity to deal a fatal blow to Brazil and subject it to Argentine influence, therefore ordered a new offensive to be carried out in September, with the aim of conquering the state of Rio Grande do Sul, one of the most populous and richest regions in Brazil.
The Argentine military had invested in creating an Air Force, one of the first in the world, by buying or producing planes. On the contrast, the Brazilians had no such thing at the outbreak of the war
The offensive began on September 14, 1914 with a long bombardment of artillery on Brazilian positions, located through the use of airplanes as scouts for the artillery. Argentine airplanes were basically untouchable: small arms had difficulty hitting them, and their enemies were equipped with few anti-aircraft guns. After the bombardment, infantry advanced equipped with French-made FAM automatic rifles which proved excellent in suppressing enemies and their rate of fire greatly increased the firepower of individual infantry squads giving the Argentines a distinct advantage over their enemies. Archieving breakthrough in multiple points, the Argentine begun advancing into Brazil, arriving in Santa Maria in early December due to a lack of infrastructure and land that had to be crossed on foot or on horseback with railways limited to connecting major cities.
Argentine heavy artillery shells Porto Alegre during Christmas 1914
In January 1915 Porto Alegre was conquered after a hard street by street battle, giving the Argentines the control of most of Rio Grande do Sul. The Brazilian situation was getting worse by the day with the army unable to stop the Argentine advance: the years of cuts to the armed forces, little training and non-cutting edge equipment were showing. In a moment of great charisma and national unity Dom Pedro Alfonso, Emperor of Brazil, urged the population to resist the Argentine aggressor, asking every able man with no distinction of race or religion to join the armed forces to repel the invader in one of his best speeches to the nation. The economy began to be converted for war purposes while huge military orders were placed in the American Republic, Italy and the British Empire, in the hope of acquiring cutting-edge material to counter the Argentine advance.
Portrait of Dom Pedro Alfonso, Emperor of Brazil, in military uniform
The combination of aerial reconnaissance, artillery support and automatic rifles had given the Argentines a considerable advantage in the field, as noted by the numerous military observers of the great powers present on the continent, eager to see the tools of modern warfare in operation. Until then the war had been relatively mobile with the overcoming of all static defenses and the use of new technologies seemed to confirm this style of warfare. Everything changed in April 1915 when the Argentines arrived at the Iguazu and Negro rivers during the pursuit of the Brazilian army retreating to the north: here the cariocas had decided to exploit the hilly terrain to create static defensive positions and, helped by abundance of material as any available equipment had been sent south, they managed to stop the enemy advance and prevent its ford in the bloody battle of the two rivers, which lasted until May 1915.
Brazilian soldiers rest during a break between battles on the Iguazu-Negro line
When the Argentines realized they could not cross the rivers they dug defensive lines identical to the Brazilian ones, creating a parallel system of trenches that went from the Atlantic coast to the border with Paraguay, which remained neutral in the conflict even if confederated with Argentina. Three more times the Argentines tried to cross the river and three times they were pushed back by the Brazilians. Although these were pyrrhic victories, Brazil could afford them since it had double the Argentine population, while the Argentine losses were hardly replaceable: the high quality of the army had to be exchanged for a greater availability of men and the reserves of modern weapons soon ran out, leaving bolt action weapons for conscripts.
The frontlines at the end of 1915. Despite being confederated with Argentina, Paraguay was still an independent country and had not been called to war by Jimenez
Both sides entrenched themselves for the rest of the year, leaving room for sporadic bursts of rifle fire across the river or for the increasingly frequent aerial combat that took place in the skies of Paranà between Argentine aircraft of national or French manufacture and Brazilian aircraft usually coming from Britain and the American Republic: these first fights took place initially between aviators who fired with light weapons and then evolved into real dogfights between aircraft equipped with machine guns (fighters) or bombs (bombers) for ground attack.
