In 1837, a 27-year-old man from Tucumán published one of his most important works of his time. Preliminary fragment to the study of lawwhere made a diagnosis of the national situation and its possible solutions. His name was Juan Bautista Alberdi.
Together with Esteban Echeverría and Juan María Gutiérrez he founded the Association of the Young Argentine Generation, following the model of the romantic and revolutionary associations of Europe.
This group of intellectuals will go down in history as the “Generation of ’37”.
The cob began to watch them closely and chase them. Alberdi arrived in Montevideo in November 1838 and collaborated in publications such as The Argentine Scream y Die Roses.
His two plays are also from that period: The May Revolution y The Poppy Gianta satire on Rosas and the leaders of the civil war.
In May 1843 He left with Juan María Gutiérrez for Paris and at the end of that year he decided, like Sarmiento, to go into exile in Chile. There he lived for 17 years.
The Bases, a fundamental source
Upon learning of Urquiza’s triumph over Rosas in the battle of Caseros on February 3, 1852, he wrote Bases and starting points for the political organization of the Argentine Republic.
The work will be one of the fundamental sources of our National Constitution sanctioned on May 1, 1853.
Commenting on the text, he will say: “Recognizing that wealth is a means, not an end, the Argentine Constitution tends towards the spirit of its economic provisions, not so much that public wealth is great, but rather that it is well distributedwell leveled and distributed;
because only in this way is it national, only in this way is it worthy of the favor of the Constitution, which Its destiny is the good and prosperity of the inhabitants that make up the Argentine people, not from one part to the exclusion of the other.”
The government of Paraná appoints him “Charge d’affaires of the Argentine Confederation” to the governments of France, England, the Vatican and Spain.
On April 15, 1855 he left for Europe. She visited the United States where met with President Franklin Pierce and then went to Great Britain, where he met Queen Victoria.
He finally arrived in Paris to stay for 24 years. He regularized relations with the Vatican and achieved the recognition of our independence by Queen Isabel II of Spain.
After Urquiza’s defeat in Pavón, Alberdi was fired by Miter from his position and replaced by Mariano Balcarce.
He had not received his salary for two years and the new government refused to pay him what he owed or to finance his return trip. He commented: “Mitrism is rosism changed into a costume.”
During the War of the Triple Alliance, Alberdi, like José Hernández and Guido Spano, will decisively support the Paraguayan cause and accuse Miter of carrying out a “War of Triple Infamy”. Under the deep impression that this conflict and the bloody Franco-Prussian war produced on him, he published The Crime of War in 1872, a notable anti-war plea.
In 1879 an alliance between Roca and Avellaneda launched Alberdi’s candidacy for national deputy. He arrived in Buenos Aires on September 16 of that year and had a decisive participation in the parliamentary debates on the Federalization Law of Buenos Aireswhich finally gave a Federal Capital to the Republic.
The senate, under Mitrista pressure, rejected the project to publish his complete works and his appointment as ambassador to France.
Tired and humiliated, he decided to leave the country permanently. He left for France on August 3, 1881, confessing to a friend “what afflicts me is loneliness.”
He died in Nueilly-Sur-Seine, near Paris on July 19, 1884.
Grades: 1. Juan Bautista Alberdi, Complete Works, Volume IV, Buenos Aires 1887.
