The Colonial Period

views updated

The Colonial Period

The territory of what became Argentina in 1853 was incorporated to the Spanish Empire in the middle of the sixteenth century as a marginal area, and it remained so until the end of the eighteenth century. With neither dense indigenous populations nor coveted material resources, these lands received only scant attention from the Spaniards.

EXPLORATION AND SETTLEMENT

The first explorations of the Atlantic coast of the future Argentina came in the aftermath of the discovery of the Pacific in 1513, which prompted efforts to find a passageway from the Atlantic. Trying to find such passage, Juan Díaz de Solís in 1516 reached a vast water mass that he called Mar Dulce, which in time was known as Río de la Plata. In 1520 Ferdinand Magellan finally found the passage to the Pacific Ocean after exploring the whole coast of Patagonia and gathering rich ethnographic observations on the native populations. In 1526 the Spanish crown sent an experienced Italian explorer, Sebastian Cabot, to follow Magellan's route to the Pacific. When Cabot's expedition arrived at the Río de la Plata, it encountered survivors of the failed Solís expedition, who relayed stories about a wealthy king ruling over an inland territory rich in silver. Craving riches, the expedition turned into the Río de la Plata, sailed north along the Paraná River, and established the first settlement in the area, the short-lived fort of Sancti Spiritu (1527). After reaching the Paraguay River and failing to find any silver, Cabot evacuated the fort and sailed back to Spain.

In the 1530s the true conquest and settlement of Argentina began. Spanish expeditions entered the territory following three different routes. In the mid-1530s the Adelantado Don Pedro de Mendoza sailed from Spain to the Río de la Plata area with a very well equipped expedition of 1,500 men that established Buenos Aires in 1536. The city did not prosper, due mainly to indigenous resistance to the Spanish presence. Besieged and starving, Mendoza's lieutenants (the adelantado had died of syphilis on his way back to Spain) decided in 1541 to evacuate the city and transfer its residents to the town of Asunción, Paraguay, established in 1537. Thus, Asunción became the center of Spanish colonization in the Río de la Plata area. Its advantages over Buenos Aires were obvious to the settlers: It was located closer to the alleged silver hill and had a dense indigenous population, the agriculturalist Guaraní peoples, who were ready to collaborate with the Spaniards as laborers and soldiers in exchange for a military alliance against their bellicose neighbors. In the 1570s and 1580s people from Asunción—largely mestizos—moved southward to establish the towns of Santa Fe (1573) and Corrientes (1588) and to resettle Buenos Aires in 1580.

The Spanish exploration and settlement of Argentina's northern area (known as Tucumán in colonial times) came as a result of conflicts over the spoils of the conquest of Peru. From 1550 onward, many unrewarded Spaniards joined the expeditions to Tucumán to find riches. These expeditions established many cities whose survival was helped by the presence of sedentary indigenous populations (most of which had previously been incorporated to the Inca Empire) with rigid social and political hierarchies and accustomed to regular work habits. After three failed attempts at establishing a city in the area, the Spaniards managed finally to found Santiago del Estero in 1553 among Quechua-speaking Indians. Though the Spaniards tried to expand their control to the surrounding territory, they failed to establish another stable city until 1565, when they founded San Miguel de Tucumán.

In the 1570s two major competing but complementary colonizing projects were advanced. Juan de Matienzo, oidor (judge) in the Audiencia of Charcas, advocated the continuation of exploration and settlement towards the Atlantic to establish better links with Spain. Viceroy Francisco de Toledo, on the contrary, promoted the consolidation of territories already explored through the founding of new cities among the still-belligerent Indians of Tucumán. Following Toledo's instructions, the cities of Córdoba (1573), Salta (1582), La Rioja (1591), and Jujuy (1593) were established. Based on these cities the Spaniards managed to control the surrounding territories, though indigenous resistance continued in the western parts of Tucumán until the middle of the seventeenth century.

The area to the west of Argentina, known as Cuyo, was settled from Chile from the 1560s onward. The cities of Mendoza (1561), San Juan (1562), and San Luis (1594) were incorporated to the kingdom of Chile, whence their scant population originally came.

By the end of the sixteenth century, all of the colonial towns had already been established. Political and judicial organization ensued. In 1563 the crown created the gobernación (province) of Tucumán, placing it under the jurisdiction of the Audiencia of Charcas. This province consisted of the cities of Santiago del Estero, Tucumán, Córdoba, Salta, Jujuy, La Rioja, and Catamarca (the latter established in 1683) and their rural jurisdictions. The oldest city, Santiago del Estero, was made provincial capital (where the governor resided), but the seat of power was transferred to Córdoba in the seventeenth century due to its larger population and economic importance. On the Atlantic side, in 1617 the crown separated the old province of Paraguay from the province of Buenos Aires. The latter included the cities of Buenos Aires (seat of the governor), Santa Fe, and Corrientes and was also placed under the jurisdiction of the Audiencia of Charcas, except for a brief period (1661–1671) when a high court operated in Buenos Aires. The regions of Cuyo became a corregimiento (political and military jurisdiction) dependent on Chile. Its territory was thus politically and judicially separated from the other cities that would later become part of Argentina. This political and judicial organization survived until the sweeping reforms of the late eighteenth century altered it considerably.

INDIAN SURVIVAL AND RESISTANCE

In general, the Spaniards managed to control more quickly the sedentary, agriculturalist indigenous populations of Tucumán and Paraguay than the hunter-gatherer, nomadic ones of Chaco, the Pampas, and Patagonia. Whereas several of the sedentary groups maintained fierce resistance to Spanish occupation until the 1660s, the hunter-gatherers survived beyond the Spaniards' control throughout the colonial period. They were called bárbaros (savages) by the Spaniards who engaged in frequent confrontations with them.

Tucumán: Encomienda and Indian Labor

From the mid-1550s onwards, the crown distributed the labor of the subdued Indian groups of Tucuman in encomiendas among the Spanish conquistadors. A few of these encomiendas were very large and were located mostly in Jujuy and Salta (such as Casabindo and Cochinoca, given to the marquis of Tojo in 1605 and comprising 2,200 people as late as 1760), but the majority of them were small, encompassing only one or two dozen Indians.

The encomienda system in Tucumán had features that set it apart from other areas in Spanish America. First, the institution took the form of encomienda de servicio personal (labor encomienda) as Indians paid their emcomenderos exclusively in labor despite the efforts made by the authorities in the seventeenth century to introduce payment in money, as they had done in the rest of Spanish America. To fulfill their obligations the encomienda Indians worked in the encomendero? haciendas or wove textiles for them. Some encomenderos even rented their Indians to other Spanish hacendados as agricultural labor or as muleteers and porters to transport goods. This last custom was very common in Salta, Jujuy, and Cuyo, where it took the name of saca de indios (extraction of Indians) to Chile.

Second, several encomiendas continued to exist in Tucumán until the end of the colonial period, long after they had been abolished in other areas. By 1700 only a handful of Indian communities holding communal lands and ruled by autonomous ethnic authorities existed, mostly located in Jujuy and Santiago del Estero. Called also pueblos de indios (indigenous towns), they survived until the first years after independence. The rest of the indigenous population lived on Spanish haciendas, where they worked as day laborers or tenants. Tenancy appeared to have been widespread in Salta and Jujuy, where Indian peasants paid rent in a combination of kind (sometimes in money) and labor. The day laborers (known locally as peones) received a low salary in kind (mostly textiles) or less frequently in money.

Indian Resistance: The Calchaquí Uprisings

Indian resistance to Spanish settlement was very strong in the Calchaquí Valley, the western mountainous districts of Catamarca, Salta, and La Rioja in Tucumán. The Spaniards had assigned the Indian groups in Calchaquí to encomiendas, but these never materialized due to indigenous resistance. Beginning in the mid-1560s the Indians rose up against Spanish attempts at setting up towns, expelling or killing Spaniards and even priests sent to the area to convert them. Coalitions of several Indian groups participated in two bouts of rebellion against Spanish control, the first in the 1630s and the second in the 1660s. The second Calchaquí uprising was led by a Spanish adventurer named Pedro Bohorques, who managed to convince the Indians that he was a descendant of the Incas. Apparently the Calchaquí groups accepted his leadership, hoping that he would guide them toward elimination of the Spanish presence in the area and possibly restore the old indigenous order. The violence of this uprising and its unified leadership persuaded the Spanish authorities to arm a strong entrada (military expedition) to quash Indian insurgence. Governor Alonso Mercado y Villacorta summoned the urban militia, asked the governor of Buenos Aires for military help, entered the Calchaquí area, and crushed the rebels. The defeated Indian groups were divided up and allocated in encomiendas or individually to Spaniards who had participated in the military campaign; some of them were even enslaved. Some groups were uprooted and relocated to distant areas, such as the residents of Quilmes, who were resettled on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.

Frontier Areas

With the defeat of the Calchaquí rebellion, Indian resistance within Spanish territory came to an end. But the Spaniards could not extend their control on the Chaco, east of Tucumán, and the Pampa and Patagonia areas in the south. On these frontiers Spaniards and Indians engaged in relations that involved violence but also all sorts of commercial and cultural exchanges. In the seventeenth century the cities located near both frontiers were in constant danger of Indian invasions. Local militias were called upon to patrol the border and defend the territory. Hostility was more virulent in Pampa and Patagonia as the Araucanian Indians had mastered horsemanship since the Spanish Conquest. In the eighteenth century, Spanish authorities developed a three-pronged approach to control the Indian frontiers: the establishment of forts and creation of regular military corps (called partidarios or blandengues) to keep the Indians at bay; the creation of religious missions to convert them to Catholicism and to Spanish work habits, and the organization of military expeditions to expand territorial control. In Pampa and Patagonia, Indians and Spaniards signed treaties that launched a period of stabilized ethnic relations that lasted until independence.

Jesuit Missions

A unique experiment at controlling Indian populations took place in the northeastern area of the Río de la Plata. Starting in the seventeenth century, the Jesuits established religious missions; there were thirty mission towns by the middle of the eighteenth century. The Jesuit missions attracted a good number of Guaraní Indians, to whom the Jesuits offered protection and shelter against Portuguese bandeirantes (slave traders, who enslaved them) and enemy Indian groups. Mission Indians received religious education, knowledge of Spanish literacy skills, and training in music and crafts. They were allowed to hold land in common and to have their own ethnic authorities. Still, the priests supervised most aspects of economic and cultural life in the missions, although they left the solution of daily issues to the Indian authorities. These missions were major players in the colonial economy, especially in the production of yerba mate (a very popular infusion then and now), which was commercialized throughout the region. The missions helped also control the border between the Spanish and Portuguese empires. To put an end to a long-standing conflict, in 1750 Spain decided to hand out most of the territory where the missions were located to Portugal in exchange for Colonia do Sacramento. Believing that Portugal was to dissolve the missions, the Indians rebelled against the territorial swap in the Guaraní War, but the rebellion was put down by forces of the two empires combined. After the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain and its colonies in 1767, the missions entered a period of sharp decline.

ECONOMY AND SOCIETY (1600–1750)

Starting in the late sixteenth century, the cities of Tucumán and Río de la Plata were rapidly integrated into the Andean economic space that revolved around the production and circulation of silver extracted in Potosí (Upper Peru). Throughout most of the colonial period, both areas specialized in the production of primary goods paid for by Potosi's silver and largely consumed by the mining and urban centers of Upper Peru and Peru.

Land, Agrarian Production, and Labor

Argentina's agrarian history has always been dominated by the image of large cattle ranches inhabited by a roaming rural population, the gauchos. Around the turn of the twenty-first century, historians replaced this image with one of a varied landholding pattern, diversified production, and a more stable population.

In the province of Tucumán, landholding was heavily concentrated in the hands of a small Spanish elite living in the cities. Its members owned large haciendas. In Jujuy and Santago del Estero they were located next to Indian towns that managed to keep control of their communal land, In Tucumán, Salta, and Córdoba they engulfed former Indian communities that had lost their rights to land ownership. Agrarian production was largely organized through encomienda, though Indians and mestizos living within haciendas also were part of the work force. Tenancy was widespread in some areas and tenants (arrendatarios, agregrados) were required to pay rent in a combination of labor and kind more than in money. Generally, large rural estates combined agriculture (wheat, corn) with cattle and mule raising and wintering. Some of the estates had lumber works and soap and candle mills.

In the pampas of Buenos Aires and Santa Fe, large ranches were not the prevailing agrarian unit. The rural landscape was dominated by small- and medium-size productive units; therefore, landholding was not fully concentrated in the hands of a landed elite. Tenancy was more general than previously thought and encompassed various arrangements between tenants and landlords that involved payment in money (much more common than in Tucumán) and kind. As encomienda Indians were very few, several labor arrangements existed: Family labor in small and medium units was supplemented with the occasional hire of day laborers (peones); larger estancias (cattle ranches) hired tenants and day laborers as temporary labor, and slave workers were common among them. Salaries paid in money were more common than those paid in kind. Some estates specialized in cattle and mule raising, others in agriculture (especially wheat); some establishments combined both.

Trade and Transportation

The economy of colonial Argentina pivoted around the Andean markets that centered on the production and circulation of silver. Apart from supplying the small urban markets of Río de la Plata and Tucumán, agriculture and pastoral production was exported to the mining centers and cities of Peru and Upper Peru, mainly to Potosí. Mules and cattle; cattle by-products such as grease, tallow, soap, and shoe leather; cheap woolen textiles; low-quality spirits; and wooden items (shafts, beams) were the main products sent to the Andes.

This market was linked by precarious routes trekked by mule caravans and carts. Even distant Buenos Aires—a port city closed to direct legal trade with Spain by its mercantilist economic policies—became dependent on Potosí's silver. In the seventeenth century the city became an important illegal trade outpost. French, Dutch, Portuguese, and English vessels called in its harbor to trade manufactured goods and slaves for the coveted Potosí silver. Around 20 percent of the silver extracted in Potosí was siphoned off to these European countries through Buenos Aires.

Within the domestic market, the circulation of goods fostered the development of the arriería, or freight, business. Trains of carts driven by oxen made the three-month trip from Buenos Aires to Jujuy in the summer. As Jujuy was a transference point for goods shipped north (from there on carts could not tread the steep, narrow paths to Upper Peru), muleteers—largely Indians and mestizos from Tucumán—gathered there to transfer the goods from carts to mules. Northward-bound mule trains started the slow and risky crossing of the high plateau towards the Andean markets.

Beginning in the early seventeenth-century, the mule trade developed into a very profitable business that became the central economic activity linking three regions: the pampas of Buenos Aires and Santa Fe; the wintering and trading posts of Tucumán; and the consuming cities of the Andes. As postmaster Alonso Carrió de la Vandera wrote in 1771, "mules are born and raised in the countryside of Buenos Aires … finished in the pasture grounds of Tucumán, and work and die in Perú" (Carrió de la Vandera, 1965, p. 64.)

Córdoba, the first hub of this trade, shipped 25,000 mules per year to the Andes by 1650. Salta, and to a lesser extent Jujuy, started to send mules to the Andes in the 1650s and seized the trade from Córdoba from the 1740s onwards. The demand for mules increased throughout the eighteenth century to reach nearly 50,000 per year between 1765 and 1780. Along with mining districts and cities, Indian corregimientos were major markets for mules forcefully distributed by corregidores (or repartimientos) at very high prices. In 1780 the Tupac Amaru rebellion and the ensuing abolition of repartimientos brought the prosperous mule trade to a standstill. The crisis lasted between 1780 and 1795; by 1800 the trade was fully recovered, only to come to a halt with the independence war.

In Tucumán the mule trade occupied people of all walks of life. The urban elites owned the land where mules were raised or spent the winter, participated actively in it as merchants, and supplied the muleteers with food and other goods from their stores. Overseers were hired to lead mule trains; they were commonly petty merchants or professional muleteers. Members of the urban plebs, or common people—mestizos, mulattoes, and Indians—were hired as journeymen for wages in cash and kind. Mestizos and Indians from the countryside also participated in the mule business by raising and selling animals in small numbers. The impact of the decline of the mule trade after 1780 was felt by all social sectors and amounted to a serious social and economic crisis.

In Río de la Plata the elite was more concerned with trade than agriculture or livestock raising. They participated actively in the few legal commercial activities allowed and in the many illegal ones. Dealing in contraband was a common practice among the Buenos Aires merchants, with or without the authorities' complicity. Only in the nineteenth century did a landed elite fully develop with the expansion of the agrarian frontier over Indian territory.

REFORM

Located on the margins of the trade system that linked the Andean silver mines with Spain and politically irrelevant, the Río de la Plata area was neglected for more than one and a half centuries. By the middle of the eighteenth century this situation began to change. As a result of Spain's concern about Portugal's advances on the southern border with Brazil, the new Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata was created in 1776. Imperial reforms fostered economic growth and the development of regions hitherto considered unprofitable. Buenos Aires and its surrounding countryside was the area that benefited the most from the Bourbon reforms.

Viceroyalty and Intendencies

In the late 1760s Spain undertook major administrative and military reforms aimed at building up a better defense of its American empire. The Río de la Plata area was far away from the scene of war but still faced a major threat to its security. Across from Buenos Aires, the Portuguese had established Colonia do Sacramento in 1680. The small port city functioned mainly as an outpost for illegal trade by Portugal and Britain. To protect the city a military regiment was stationed in Buenos Aires and militias were organized in all the nearby other cities.

With this enhanced military structure in place, the governor of Buenos Aires, Pedro de Cevallos, occupied the eastern bank of the Río de la Plata, seized Colonia, and expelled the Portuguese in 1776. Immediately afterwards the crown created the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata, comprising the jurisdictions of the old governorships of Buenos Aires and Tucumán, and added to them Cuyo, which formerly depended on Chile. Buenos Aires was made its capital city and Cevallos its first viceroy. The political role of the city was thus enhanced and a sizable administration was appointed. Also an audiencia (royal high court of justice) was established in 1783, and an expanded branch of the Real Hacienda (Royal Exchequer) began to function.

In 1782 Spain introduced a sweeping reform of the colonial political organization through the Real Ordenanza de Intendentes, which was first applied to the Río de la Plata and later to other American viceroyalties. The Ordenanza created eight intendencies in the Viceroyalty of La Plata, three of which, Córdoba, Salta, and Buenos Aires, would form Argentina after independence. The Intendency of Córdoba comprised the southern part of the old province of Tucumán (to which Cuyo was added), that of Salta the northern part, and that of Buenos Aires the whole namesake province.

Each intendency was headed by an intendent. Even though theoretically subordinated to the viceroy, intendents concentrated all economic, political, military, and judicial power within their jurisdiction and communicated directly with Spain. The crown's goal of enforcing a more efficient and less corrupt administration clashed with the interests of the local urban elites who wanted to maintain their power. The elites managed to keep some of it by holding the post of subdelegado (local magistrate) for one of their own. Yet the autonomy of cabildos (town councils) was deeply affected as intendents meddled in local affairs.

Economic Reforms

By the mid-eighteenth century the old trade system, which connected Cádiz in Spain to a few ports in Spain's American colonies through convoys of ships, collapsed due to incessant wars. Starting in the 1760s, Spain applied new economic policies to its American colonies. Gradually, the crown opened many ports on both coasts of the Atlantic to trade and, beginning in 1720, authorized individual vessels (navíos de registro) to trade with America, thus phasing out the convoys. These policies reflected the shift of economic development from the Pacific to the Atlantic and benefited Río de la Plata, and especially Buenos Aires, immensely.

In 1778 the city was included in the royal decree of commercio libre, which opened many Spanish American ports to legal trade with Spain. The same year Viceroy Pedro de Cevallos order the mandatory export of silver from Upper Peru (now part of the Viceroyalty of La Plata) through Buenos Aires. With its improved links to the Atlantic, the city's economy prospered. It became a major exporter of silver and also an important supplier of hides to Europe, especially England. By 1800 the city exported goods worth five million silver pesos per year on average, four million of which were silver and the remainder in hides.

Its newly acquired prosperity and higher political status made Buenos Aires a magnet for both Spanish migrants and inhabitants of interior areas attracted by prospects of economic advancement. In 1744 the city's population totaled roughly 11,000. By 1810 this figure had increased fourfold to 45,000 people. Buenos Aires was by then the fastest-growing city in the Spanish Empire. This dramatic influx of immigrants had a strong impact on the makeup of the city's elite as the immigrants joined ranks with the recently appointed bureaucrats and military officers stationed there. This new elite had a strong commercial basis and came to dominate the import of European goods and their distribution within the viceroyalty. Testament to its importance, in 1794 the crown authorized the founding of a consulado (commercial tribunal) in Buenos Aires. The merchant elite was the foundation of Argentina's nineteenth-century ruling class.

Urban growth and exports fostered the expansion of rural production. Rural establishments of various sizes were brought into the supply of agricultural products and meat to the urban market and hides to the export economy. This economic dynamism led to agrarian expansion on new lands, mainly in Entre Ríos and Uruguay. It also fostered internal migration from Tucumán, Córdoba, and Santiago del Estero to the countryside of Buenos Aires and Santa Fe. Some of these migrants settled in the Buenos Aires countryside while others stayed only temporarily. Slaves were also imported in larger numbers than before. By 1800 roughly one-quarter of the population of Buenos Aires was black and mulatto, both slave and free. Their presence was also sizable in the countryside, where large rural estates employed them as labor.

The impact of economic reforms, namely the expansion of legal trade, was experienced differently by different regions. For Buenos Aires and the Atlantic littoral it inaugurated a period of economic growth that continued after independence. For Tucumán and Cuyo the situation varied, but by and large the impact was negative. Córdoba, for instance, managed to shift its production from textiles to cattle and hides, thus linking with the expanding Buenos Aires and international markets. Other cities suffered the loss of markets for their local products. The cheap wines and liquors manufactured in Cuyo were hit hard by European competition, as were the rough textiles from Tucumán and Santiago del Estero. Salta and Jujuy clung to the mule trade with the Andean markets. All of the cities of Tucumán depended on Buenos Aires for their import of European goods, a situation that would deepen after independence.

THE RISE OF BUENOS AIRES

For about two centuries Buenos Aires had vegetated as a distant outpost located in a forgotten corner of the Spanish Empire, surviving mainly through contraband trade with the Dutch and the Portuguese. From the 1750s on, however, the city's demographic, economic, and political importance was on the rise. This newly acquired importance was taken into account when the city was made viceregal capital and became the link of interior areas of the viceroyalty with the outside world.

In the 1770s the authorities began to improve the urban facilities of the city. Sanitation, safety, and cleanliness were enhanced: A hospital and a poorhouse were established; some streets and sidewalks around the main plaza were paved; and public lighting was installed. In addition the Alameda, a public walkway where the elite promenaded every day, was opened. The first coffeehouse in town, Almacén del Rey, opened in 1764; by 1806 there were already thirteen of them in the city, places where people gathered to drink, play billiards, read, and talk. The first permanent theater opened in 1783 under the viceroy's sponsorship; plays written by local authors were performed there, along with Spanish plays. By the end of the colonial period there were two working theaters in Buenos Aires.

Viceregal authorities also improved educational facilities. In 1772 the old Jesuit school was transformed into a royal school, the Colegio Real de San Carlos. By 1800 three other educational institutions had been created: a school of medicine; an academy of drawing; and an academy of maritime sciences, which was primarily a school of mathematics. Only Córdoba had an older educational institution, the prestigious university established there in 1683.

In 1780 the city incorporated a printing press to its cultural patrimony. The machine had belonged to the Jesuits of Córdoba and was brought to Buenos Aires by viceregal order. Leased to private printers, it was mostly used for publishing official documents and religious and educational books. Argentina's first newspapers appeared in Buenos Aires: the Telégrafo Mercantil (1801–1802), Semanario de Agricultura, Industria y Comercio (1802–1807), and Correo de Comercio (1810–1811). These newspapers were major means for disseminating enlightened ideas throughout the viceroyalty. Copies of them were sold by subscription in all of the provincial towns; as a result a small but active group of men of letters was formed in the viceroyalty. Most of them were children of merchants sent to study at the universities of Charcas, Córdoba, or Salamanca. Many of them became prominent members of the revolutionary generation that took power after 1810.

CRISIS

The last years of Spanish administration in Argentina were tense, especially after 1805. The Napoleonic Wars immensely affected trade between Spain and its colonies. In the late 1790s the colonies were authorized to trade among themselves and with neutral nations (mainly the United States). Therefore, Buenos Aires merchants, by then the richest members of the elites of the Viceroyalty of La Plata, had a taste of real free trade. The Peace of Amiens in 1801 put an end to these liberalized commercial policies. War resumed in 1805; the following year and again in 1807, Buenos Aires was invaded by British troops. The authorities organized the defense by enlisting militias all over the viceroyalty, but especially in the city. The British were expelled but the Spanish authorities saw their power weaken at the hands of the militias under the control of the Buenos Aires merchant elite. In 1810 the militias were the key political actor in the demise of the Spanish regime.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Assadourian, Carlos Sempat. El sistema de la economía colonial: El mercado interior, regiones y espacio económico. México, D. F.: Editorial Nueva Imagen, 1983.

Carrió de la Vandera, Alonso. El Lazarillo de ciegos caminantes [1773]. Caracas, Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1985. Translated by Walter D. Kline as El Lazarillo: A Guide for Inexperienced Travelers between Buenos Aires and Lima. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1965.

Chiaramonte, José Carlos. La Ilustración en el Río de la Plata: Cultura eclesiástica y cultura laica durante el Virreinato. Buenos Aires: Puntosur Editores, 1989.

Farberman, Judith, and Raquel Gil Montero, eds. Los pueblos de indios del Tucumán colonial: Pervivencia y desestructuración. Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, 2002.

Fradkin, Raúl, ed. La historia agraria del Río de la Plata colonial: Los establecimientos productivos. 2 vols. Buenos Aires: CEAL, 1993.

Ganson, Barbara. The Guarani under Spanish Rule in the Rio de la Plata. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003.

Garavaglia, Juan Carlos. Econmía, sociedad y regiones. Buenos Aires: Ediciones de la Flor, 1987.

Garavaglia, Juan Carlos, and José Luis Moreno, eds. Población, sociedad, familia y migraciones en el espacio rioplatense: Siglos XVIII y XIX. Buenos Aires: Cántaro, 1993.

Garavaglia, Juan Carlos. Pastores y labradores de Buenos Aires: Una historia agraria de la campaña bonaerense, 1700–1830. Buenos Aires: Ediciones de la Flor, 1999.

Gelman, Jorge. De mercachifle a gran comerciante: Los caminos del ascenso en el Río de la Plata colonial. Huelva, Spain: Universidad Internacional de Andalucía, 1996.

Gelman, Jorge. Campesinos y estancieros: Una región del Río de la Plata a fines de la época colonial. Buenos Aires: Los Libros del Riel, 1998.

López de Albornoz, Cristina. Los dueños de la tierra: Economía sociedad y poder en Tucumán (1770–1820). Tucumán, Argentina: Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, 2003.

Lorandi, Ana María, ed. El Tucumán colonial y Charcas, 2 vols. Buenos Aires: Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, 1997.

Lynch, John. Colonial Spanish Administration, 1782–1810: The Intendant System in the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata. London: Athlone Press, 1958.

Madrazo, Guillermo. Hacienda y encomienda en los Andes: La Puna argentina bajo el Marquesado de Tojo: Siglos XVII a XIX. Jujuy, Argentina: Universidad Nacional de Jujuy, 1990.

Mata de López., Sara E. Tierra y poder en Salta: El noroeste argentino en vísperas de la independencia. Seville, Spain: Diputación de Sevilla, 2000.

Mayo, Carlos A. Estancia y sociedad en la pampa, 1740–1820. Buenos Aires: Biblos, 1995.

Mayo, Carlos A., ed. Pulperos y pulperías de Buenos Aires, 1740–1830. Mar del Plata, Argentina: Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Facultad de Humanidades, 1997.

Mörner, Magnus. The Political and Economic Activities of the Jesuits in the La Plata Region: The Hapsburg Era. Stockholm: Victor Pettersons Bokindustri Aktiebolag, 1953.

Moutoukias, Zacarías. Contrabando y control colonial en el siglo XVII: Buenos Aires, el Atlántico y el espacio peruano. Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1988.

Punta, Ana Inés. Córdoba borbónica: Persistencias coloniales en tiempo de reformas (1750–1800). Córdoba, Argentina: Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, 1997.

Revello, José Torre. La sociedad colonial (Páginas sobre la sociedad de Buenos Aires entre los siglos XVI y XIX). Buenos Aires: Ediciones Pannedille, 1970.

Socolow, Susan Migden. The Merchants of Buenos Aires, 1778–1810: Family and Commerce. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1978.

Socolow, Susan Migden. The Bureaucrats of Buenos Aires, 1769–1810: Amor al real servicio. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 1987.

Tandeter, Enrique, ed. La sociedad colonial. Vol. 2 of Nueva Historia Argentina. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 2000.

Gustavo L. Paz

Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture