A reading of Justo José de Urquiza's pronouncement of 1851. Circulation, adhesions and rejections

Abstract

On May 1, 1851, Urquiza, as governor of Entre Ríos, resumed the management of foreign relations, peace and war of his province, taking them away from the governor of Buenos Aires, Juan Manuel de Rosas, who represented those attributions on behalf of the Argentine Confederation. This pronouncement had varied interpretations. Our aim in this paper is to propose a reading from a different perspective: as a reformulation of the political pact. To this end, we have recovered some references and classic and more current works that illustrate the variety of the responses that the Argentine provinces tried out in the face of the pronouncement. The purpose is not to make an exhaustive analysis of the circulation of the document nor a re-reading of sources. Rather, it is a review that allows us, based on the proposed concept, to go through some provincial situations regarding the rejection and adhesion to the pronouncement and to observe the heterogeneity and complexity of these spaces.

Las provincias que se alinearon con Urquiza rompieron el pacto original que las unía como confederación y lo reformularon apelando a él en términos de un nuevo orden futuro. Por otro lado, las provincias que lo rechazaron reformularon su pacto dentro de la confederación y así lo redefinieron, fortaleciendo los poderes delegados al gobierno confederal. En ambos casos, reasumieron y pusieron en juego sus soberanías particulares.