Sarmiento and Urquiza
Frequent shifts and reversals in the relations between Domingo Faustino Sarmiento and Justo Jose de Urquiza have made them difficult to understand and to relate to the process of Argentine political history. During the Rosas dictatorship, Sarmiento was a leader of the exiled unitarios while Urquiza was a leader of the provincial federales. They were, consequently, sworn enemies. In the Caseros campaign they were allies and co6perated, each in his own field, in the overthrow of the Rosas regime. After the Battle of Caseros, a new rift appeared between the two men. Sarmiento went into voluntary exile and wrote violent protests against the presidency of Urquiza and against the constitution that Urquiza promulgated. Within a decade, however, he had reversed that position and had become a staunch supporter of national union in the Constitutional Convention of Buenos Aires. The execution of Sarmiento's close friend, Antonio Aberastain, by forces of the Urquiza-controlled Confederation renewed the old enmity. Sarmiento turned down the position that the Confederation had offered him as minister to the United States and became a leader of the civil war directed against the forces of Urquiza. Less than a decade after that, Sarmiento assumed the presidency of a united Argentine Republic. Urquiza offered his support. The two became the closest of political and personal friends, and the subsequent assassination of Urquiza can, in part, be attributed to the resentment of his fellow caudillos at his friendship with the national president. The vacillating and contradictory character of this relationship has baffled students, but certain new evidence uncovered in the Buenos Aires archives and new interpretations of the historical roles of Urquiza and Sarmiento throw light on the problem and suggest a re-evaluation. When the two men met for the first time at Urquiza's headquarters at Gualeguaychu toward the end of 1851, their personalities immediately clashed. They were both ambitious and both had great pride. Neither allowed for these features in the other. They had entirely different backgrounds and political philosophies and, as a result, their ways of thought, as well as their personalities, soon clashed.