CONCLUSIONS
This introduction has examined the extended period when liberal ideas had a significant bearing on Argentine political and social thinking. From the moment Hipólito Vieytes alluded to the “sublime Adam Smith” in Letter Twelve of his Semanario de Agricultura, Industria y Comercio, a weekly periodical, this trend garnered influences from the different schools that characterized the liberal tradition in the world.
In Argentina, liberalist ideas were embedded in a milieu marked by
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the changing fortunes of the new nation’s institutional development. It is important to review some of these specific features. First, the vast majority of those who expressed this kind of thinking were politicians rather than academics, and this sometimes affected the quality and consistency of their arguments. Second, the exposition of liberal ideas took place during the debates involved in building the key institutions of the Argentine nation. As we saw in connection with James Madison, this entailed one of the peculiar difficulties of liberal thought, namely, how to seek limits to power while at the same time generating and organizing it. This difficulty surfaced especially over the creation of a strong central power, which sometimes bore only a passing resemblance to the teachings of liberal thought. And last, these principles were imported from various European and U.S. schools and therefore had to be adapted to the realities and exigencies of the local environment.
For all these restrictions, liberal ideas made headway in Argentina, and—especially from the mid-nineteenth century onward—they played a vital role in the new country’s growth and consolidation. This contribution was expressed in the different fields of national endeavor, producing works and contributions of unquestionable analytical value.
As in many other parts of the world, the influence of liberal ideas began to wane in the 1930s. This decline is apparent in the decreasing quantity and originality of the contributions from the dwindling group of institutional players who still subscribed to this school of thought.
Argentine liberalism, however, has been left with a rich heritage of principles that also became a reality at the social and institutional levels. Aside from the intellectual works collected in this volume, perhaps the most permanent contribution of this body of ideas has been the promotion of an open and plural society with high social mobility.
NOTE TO THE READER
Original footnotes in this edition are identified with “[A.N.]”; those of the current editors are identified with “[E.N.].”
Natalio R. Botana and Ezequiel Gallo are both Emeritus Professors at Torcuato Di Tella University in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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| 1 | Liberalism during the Dictatorship of Rosas (1837–1850) |
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| 1 | JUAN BAUTISTA ALBERDI The Argentine Republic, Thirty-seven Years after the May Revolution (1847) * |
Toutes les aristocraties, anglaise, russe, allemande, n’ont besoin que de montrer une chose en témoignage contre la France:—Les tableaux qu’elle fait d’elle-même par la main de ses grands écrivains, amis la plupart du peuple et partisans du progrès. …
Nul peuple ne résisterait à une telle épreuve. Cette manie singulière de se dénigrer soi-même, d’étaler ses plaies, et comme d’aller chercher la honte, serait mortelle à la longue.
—J. Michelet1
Today more than ever, anyone who was born in the beautiful country between the Andes mountain range and the River Plate has the right to cry out with pride, “I am an Argentine.”
On the foreign soil on which I reside, not as a political exile, having left my home country legally, of my own free choice, just as an Englishman or a Frenchman can reside outside his country as it suits him; in the lovely country that receives me as a guest and provides so many pleasures to foreigners, without offending its flag, I lovingly kiss the Argentine colors and take pride in seeing them prouder and more honorable than ever before.
The truth be told to the discredit of none: the colors of the River
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Plate have known neither defeat nor defection. In the hands of Rosas2 or Lavalle,3 when they have not sponsored victory, they have presided over liberty. If they have ever fallen into the dust, it has been against their own; at war with their own family, never at the feet of the foreigner.
Save your tears, then, those generously sobbing over our misfortunes. In spite of them, no people on this part of the continent is entitled to feel pity for us.
In its life as a nation, the Argentine Republic does not have one man, one deed, one defeat, one victory, one success, one loss to be ashamed of. All reproaches, save that of villainy. Our right comes from the blood that runs in our veins. It is Castilian blood. It is the blood of El Cid, the blood of Pelagius.4
Full of patriotic warmth, and possessed of that impartiality that comes from the pure sentiment of one’s own nationalism, I wish to embrace them all and enclose them in a painting. Blinded sometimes by partisan spirit, I have said things that might have flattered the ear of zealous rivals: may they hear me now with less flattering words. Will there be no excuses for the selfishness of my local patriotism, when partiality in favor of one’s own land is everyone’s right?
Besides this I am led by a serious idea, namely, the need of every man in my country to reflect today on where our national family now stands: what political means do we, its sons, possess; what are our duties; what needs and desires are the order of the day of the famous Argentine Republic?
It would not be strange for someone to find this pamphlet Argentine, as I shall write it in blue-and-white ink.
If I say that the Argentine Republic is prosperous in the midst of upheaval, I recognize a fact that everyone can sense: and if I add that it has the means to be more prosperous than all, I am writing no paradox.
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There can be no man alive who would deny that it is in a respectable state and has nothing to be ashamed of. Why not say it once and for all with our heads held high? The Argentine Republic has moved foreign sensibilities with the images of its civil war. It has seemed barbarous, cruel. But it has never been the butt of anyone’s ridicule. And misfortune that does not reach the point of mockery is far from being the ultimate misfortune.
At all times, the Argentine Republic has appeared at the forefront of the movement of this America. For right and for wrong, its power to take the initiative is the same: when it does not imitate its liberators, it mimics its tyrants.
In the revolution, Moreno’s5 plan encompassed our continent.
In the war, San Martín6 showed Bolívar the road to Ayacucho.7
Rivadavia8 gave the Americas his plan of progressive improvements and innovations. What statesman before him put on the order of the day the question of roads, canals, banks, public education, staging posts, religious freedom, abolition of privileges, religious and military reform, colonization, trade and shipping treaties,