Ibarra, Juan Felipe (1787–1851)

Juan Felipe Ibarra (b. 1 May 1787; d. 15 July 1851), Argentine military leader and Federalist governor of the province of Santiago del Estero (1831–1851). A native of Santiago del Estero, Argentina, Ibarra studied briefly for the priesthood before he began his military career in 1810. During the Wars of Independence, he served with distinction on the staffs of San Martín and Belgrano, rising to the high rank of graduate sergeant major in 1817. In 1820, in response to an appeal by the local autonomists, he used the urban Abipone garrison to expel from the province of Santiago del Estero the occupying forces of Governor Bernabé Aráoz of Mendoza and subsequently was elected political and military governor by a cabildo abierto (open town council). He encouraged economic development by protecting local industries from competition with imports and by authorizing the minting of real and half-real coins. A Federalist, Ibarra admired the state system and the internal economic organization of the United States. He survived a plot by the Unitaristos to have the poet Hilario Ascasubi assassinate him, but the Unitarists finally overthrew him. Other Federalists restored him to power, and in 1831 the legislature elected him governor and brigadier general, a post he held until his death.

A paternalistic ruler, Ibarra encouraged education, built churches, exercised the patronato real, banned imports that threatened the local economy, and condemned gambling, alcoholism, and other vices. Some see him as a barbarian, ignorant and cruel; others, as a popular caudillo and Federalist.

See alsoArgentina, Movements: Federalists .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Joseph T. Criscenti, ed., Sarmiento and His Argentina (1993), pp. 105, 156.

Tulio Halperín-Donghi, Politics, Economics, and Society in Argentina in the Revolutionary Period, translated by Richard Southern (1975).

John Lynch, Argentine Dictator: Juan Manuel de Rosas, 1829–1852 (1981), pp. 67, 226.

Additional Bibliography

Alén Lascano, Luis C. Ibarra, un caudillo norteño. Buenos Aires: Crisis, 1976.

Newton, Jorge. Juan Felipe Ibarra: El caudillo de la selva. Buenos Aires: Plus Ultra, 1973.

                                      Joseph T. Criscenti