Wandering Paysanos: State Order and Subaltern Experience in Buenos Aires during the Rosas Era (review)
Juan Manuel de Rosas and his regime (1829-52) occupy a central position in Argentine political imagery and historiographic debates. To generations of liberal intellectuals and historians, he remained the "Caligula of the River Plate" and his rule a feudal and despotic prelude to the long period of liberal hegemony that lasted until the country's first military coup in 1930. To nationalist ideologues and "revisionist" historians, particularly after that date, Rosas represented a populist and antiimperialist leader who enjoyed the support of the masses and defended national sovereignty. The tone of recent Argentine historiography has shifted from the politically charged and Manichean language of these confrontations to the dispassionate, or less bombastic, style of scholarly prose. But debates about the political and economic nature of the Rosas regime and its relationship to the lower classes continue. This book represents an enormous contribution to this specific discussion as well as to the political and social history of rural populations in nineteenth-century Latin America in general.