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“Savages” into Supplicants: Subversive Women and Restitution Petitions in Córdoba, Argentina During the Rosas Era*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Jesse Hingson
Jesse Hingson*
Affiliation:
Georgia College and State University, Milledgeville, Georgia
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Extract

In response to an anti-Federalist insurgency within the province of Córdoba in 1840, Manuel López, the governor (r. 1835-1852) and staunchally to Juan Manuel de Rosas, issued a directive to all provincial judges to round up all suspected Unitarians and their families, seize their property, and strip them of their citizenship. In following these orders, Pedro José García, the local juez de paz (Justice of the Peace), the principle law enforcement body of Pueblo de la Toma in the heart of Córdoba province, proceeded to the farmhouse of Faustino Avalo, who had recently been “classified” as a “savage Unitarian,” a political label describing any person opposing Federalist rule. García charged Avalos with secretly aiding and abetting Unitarian armies, which had passed through the province during the anti-Federalist uprisings in the previous year. As evidence of his guilt, according to the confiscation order, Avalos went missing for weeks and was nowhere to be found. Indeed, when García arrived, only Avalos's wife, María Juana Villafáñez, and their ten children remained. Nevertheless, García, along with two other “trusted” witnesses, read the order and confiscated the entire family's property. Villafáñez and her children could only watch helplessly as their clothes, toys, furniture, and livestock were taken away in wagons and their house boarded up. Yet, García did not arrest nor imprison Villafáñez and her children; instead, they were allowed to stay with her brother, Gervasio, a well-known Federalist and one of the “trusted” witnesses to his sister's material loss and public humiliation.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 64 , Issue 1 , July 2007 , pp. 59 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2007

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Mark D. Szuchman, Victor M. Uribe-Uran, William O. Walker III, Eduardo Gamarra, N. David Cook, and the two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions on this article. Research for this study utilized the following archives: Archivo Historico de la Provincia de Córdoba (AHPC), Archivo General de la Nación (AGN), Archivo de la Legislature de la Provincia de Córdoba (ALPC), Archivo del Arzobispado de Córdoba (AAC) Instituto de Estudios Americanistas de la Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades de la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (IEA).

References

1 AHPC-Escribanías, Legajo 103, Escribanía 3, Cuaderno 2.

2 AHPC-Escribanías, Legajo 103, Escribanía 3, Cuaderno 1.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid.

6 Lynch, John, Argentine Dictator: Juan Manuel de Rosas, 1829–1852 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 65.Google Scholar In confirming Lynch’s observation, my own brief survey of these petitions for Buenos Aires province revealed that out of a sample of 500 petitions for the restoration of property and citizenship, Rosas responded to only three. Of those three, he granted their requests, but the lack of any response to the vast majority of cases confirms Lynch’s conclusion. AGN, Sala X, 25-9-3; AGN, Sala X, 17-3-6; AGN, Sala, X, 17-9-3.

7 The word desembargo or “restitutions of ‘temporarily’ seized property” has been invoked by scholars. See Quiroz, Alfonso, “Loyalist Overkill: The Socioeconomic Costs of ‘Repressing’ the Separatist Insurrection in Cuba, 1868–1878,” Hispanic American Historical Review 78:2 (May 1998), p. 261 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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19 The first nationwide census of 1869 confirms that the illiteracy rate was 77.9%. See Germani, Gino, Estructura social de la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Raigel, 1955), p. 231.Google Scholar

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22 AHPC-Escribanías, Legajo 103, Escribanía 3, Cuaderno 2.

23 AHPC-Escribanías, Legajo 103, Escribanía 3, Cuaderno 4.

24 AHPC-Gobierno, tomo 159, folio 173.

25 Although Juana Luisa’s subsequent letters did not indicate that she encountered any problems, women were highly susceptible to violence on the Argentine frontier. See Susan Socolow, “Women and Crime: Buenos Aires, 1757–1797,” Journal of Latin American Studies 12 (1980), p. 46.

26 AHPC-Escribanías, Legajo 103, Escribanía 3, Cuaderno 4.

27 Seoane, María Isabel, Historia de la dote en el derecho argentino (Buenos Aires: Instituto de Investigaciones de Historia del Derecho, 1982 Google Scholar); Korth, Eugene and Flusche, Della, “Dowry and Inheritance in Colonial Spanish America: Peninsular Law and Chilean Practice” The Americas 43:4 (April 1987), pp. 406–407 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tutino, John, “The Revolution in Mexican Independence: Insurgency and the Renegotiation of Property, Production, and Patriarchy in the Bajío, 1800–1855” Hispanic American Historical Review 78:3 (August 1998), pp. 367–418 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rock, Rosalind Z., “’Pido y suplico': Women and the Law in Spanish New Mexico, 1697–1763,” New Mexico Historical Review 65:2 (April 1990), p. 150.Google Scholar

28 Meisel, , “War Economy and Society” pp. 140–142 Google Scholar; indeed, in the event that patriarchs died (civilly or otherwise), wives stood to gain inheritances and control over property and children were able to free themselves of patria potestad (parental authority). See Deere, Carmen Diana and León, Magdalena, “Liberalism and Married Women’s Property in Nineteenth-Century Latin America,” Hispanic American Historical Review 85:4 (November 2005), pp. 629–630.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 AGN, Sala X, 16-6-6, Legajo 181, Expedientes 13-14.

30 Ferreyra, Ana, Elite dirigente y vida cotidiana en Córdoba, 1835–1852 (Córdoba: Centro de Estudios Históricos, 1994), p. 43 Google Scholar; AHPC-Escribanías, Legajo 103, Escribanía 3, Cuaderno 4.

31 AHPC-Escribanías, Legajo 103, Escribanía 3, Cuaderno 4.

32 This was also common in other places in Spanish America. See Kicza, John K., “The Role of the Family in Economic Development in Nineteenth-Century Latin America,” Journal of Family History (Fall 1985), p. 242.Google Scholar

33 AHPC-Gobierno, folio 618; AGN, Colección Mario César Gras, 1829, Legajo 3, Número 142; AHPC-Escribanías, Legajo 103, Escribanía 3, Cuaderno 2.

34 AHPC-Escribanías, Legajo 103, Escribanía 3, Cuaderno 1.

35 AHPC-Gobierno, tomo 176, folio 122.

36 AHPC-Escribanías, Legajo 103, Escribanía 3, Cuaderno 4; AHPC-Gobierno, tomo 176, folio 122.

37 AHPC-Escribanías, Registro 3, 1859, Legajo 122, Expediente 16.

38 AHPC-Gobierno, tomo 138, folio 189; ALPC, tomo 11, folio 136.

39 AHPC-Escribanías, Legajo 103, Escribanía 3, Cuaderno 4.

40 Endrek, Emiliano S., “Los dueños de Córdoba en la época de Rosas: datos para un estudio de la oligarquía criolla cordobesa (1839–1845)” Revista de la Junta Provincial de Historia de Córdoba 8 (1978), p. 84 Google Scholar; AHPC-Escribanías, Legajo 103, Escribanía 3, Cuaderno 4.

41 AHPC-Escribanías, Legajo 103, Escribanía 3, Cuaderno 4.

42 AHPC-Escribanías, Legajo 103, Escribanía 3, Cuaderno 1.

43 AHPC-Crimen, Legajo 118, Expediente 14.

44 AHPC-Escribanías, Legajo 103, Escribanía 3, Cuaderno 1.

45 Ibid.

46 AHPC-Gobierno, tomo 176, folio 119.

47 Jorge Myers also notes that agrarian concepts of republicanism and beliefs in freedom from the control of others (e.g., foreigners or centrists in Buenos Aires) resonated most strongly with their most loyal followers even as Rosas embodied the concentration of power in practice. See Orden y virtud: el discurso republicano en el régimen rosista (Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, 1995), p. 13.

48 Vogel, , “New Citizens” pp. 107–108 Google Scholar; Constitution of 1821, Section X, “Duties of all citizens,” Article 82 as quoted in José Carlos Chiaramonte, “¿Provincias o estados? Los orígenes del federalismo rioplatense,” Ciudades, provincias, estados: orígenes de la nación Argentina (1800–1846), tomo 1, ed. José Carlos Chiaramonte (Buenos Aires: Compañía Editora Espasa Calpe, 1997), p. 190.

49 AHPC-Escribanías, Legajo 103, Escribanía 3, Cuaderno 2.

50 AHPC-Escribanías, Registro 3, 1841, Legajo 102, Expediente 3.

51 AHPC-Escribanías, Legajo 103, Escribanía 3, Cuaderno 1.

52 See Caraveli-Chaves, Anna, “The Bitter Wounding: The Lament as Social Protest in Rural Greece” in Gender and Power in Rural Greece, ed. Jill Dubisch (Princeton: Princeton University, 1986), p. 178.Google Scholar

53 This is precisely why John Lynch found numerous supplicants in Buenos Aires province who “alleged that their property had been confiscated by justices on false accusations of Unitarian beliefs, where they were ‘notoriously Federalist.’” See Caudillos in Spanish America, 1800–1850 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), p. 263.

54 AHPC-Gobierno, tomo 178, folios 71, 90–91.

55 AHPC-Gobierno, tomo 172, folio 251.

56 AHPC-Gobierno, tomo 178, folio 41.

57 AHPC-Gobierno, tomo 177, folio 215.

58 AHPC-Gobierno, tomo 178, folio 60. Scott, James C. asserts that the dominant, knowing full well that the public transcript is ‘only’ a performance, they will discount its authenticity.… Dominant elites, for their part, are unlikely to be completely taken in by outward shows of deference. They expect that there is more here than meets the eye (and ear) and that part or all of the performance is in bad faith.” See Domination and the Arts of Resistance, pp. 3, 44.Google Scholar

59 AHPC-Escribanías, Legajo 103, Escribanía 3, Cuaderno 2.

60 Dellepiane, Antonio, Los embargos en la época de Rosas (Buenos Aires: Academia Nacional de Ciencias, 1968), p. 8 Google Scholar; Salvatore, Ricardo D., “Confederación del regimen rosista” in Revolución, república, confederación, directed by Noemi Goldman (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1999), p. 333 Google Scholar; Donghi, Tulio Halperín, Guerra y finanzas en los orígenes del estado argentino (1791–1850) (Buenos Aires: Editorial Belgrano, 1982), pp. 245–246.Google Scholar

61 Ferreira Soaje, Jose V., “Alborotos revolucionarios en Córdoba en 1832” Revista de la Junta Provincial de Historia de Córdoba 5 (1977), p. 107 Google Scholar; AHPC-Gobierno, tomo 198, folios 27, 28; AHPC-Gobierno, tomo 199, folios 188, 588, 638; Compilación de leyes,decretos, acuerdos de la excma cámara de justicia, p. 152; AGN, Sala X, Gobierno, 1838-55, 5-4-3.

62 AHPC-Escribanías, Registro 4, 1853, Legajo 100, Expediente 42.

63 This confirms Pilar González Bernaldo’s observations about rural families’ support of rosismo in Buenos Aires province. She suggests that provincial families desired to hang on dearly to “traditional social habits and forms of exchange” and that those actively participating in Rosas’s rebellion were not necessarily fighting for Rosas but “were moved to act by fears emanating from changes in the structure of the production that were aggravated by the growing isolation of traditional society and that impelled the rural population to fight for an authoritative power which would afford them the protection needed for their survival.” See “Social Imageryand Its Political Implications in a Rural Conflict: The Uprising of 1828–1829,” in Revolution and Restoration: The Rearrangement of Power in Argentina, 1776–1860, eds. Szuchman, Mark D. and Brown, Jonathan C. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), p. 198.Google Scholar

64 Guy, Donna J., “Lower-Class Families, Women, and the Law in Nineteenth-Century Argentina” Journal of Family History (Fall 1985), p. 322.Google Scholar

65 Dellepiane, Antonio, Los embargos en la época de Rosas (Buenos Aires: Academia Nacional de Ciencias, 1968), pp. 22–23.Google Scholar