The rural world of Buenos Aires after Caseros

Crossroads between the habit and the impulse of a modern rural institutional order (1854-1858)

Abstract

The present work sought to investigate how Buenos Aires countryside was affected by the political situation of Buenos Aires after Caseros in 1852. The political and intellectual world of Buenos Aires promoted an institutional model for the province that later sought to relocate the country, but the old agrarian order resisted changes. The construction of a rural legislation could not be a cut of the past to insert the new modern visions adopted from the western capitalist world. The agrarian capitalism that had been taking root in the base of our productive activity must be accompanied by our Hispanic roots in order to achieve sufficient success so as Argentina enter the new market economy. Official documents of the period 1853-1858 were used, obtained in the General Archive of the Nation, in order to know what interests the government and landowners had when participating in the construction of an institutional order for the province according to the new structures of power that were taking hold inside and outside of Buenos Aires, and that invited immediate decision-making in the vortex of economic situations that privileged the advantages of the Pampas region towards the Atlantic market. The reading and analysis of institutional correspondence between government / landowners allowed to see the commitment and attention that the creation of the mentioned article deserved, and the diverse perspectives they had about the complex rural reality of the River Plate.