Importance of Unitary and Federal (Argentina)

They were the two political doctrines that in the first decades of the 19th century confronted discursively and militarily in Argentina for the type of organization they wanted to confer on it. to the territory already independent from Spain: centralized government from the powerful city of Buenos Aires (unitarian), or a system that guarantees provincial autonomy (federal).

Despite the extent of the conflict that lasted until near the end of the 19th century, and claimed many lives, the dispute was the seed from which the territorial organization that Argentina finally adopted, already converted into a sovereign state: Republic, Democratic, Representative and Federal.

The most significant ideological and political conflict that occurred in modern Argentina

They unleashed a conflict that became emblematic and from which the decision was born policy opting for a federal system, which in theory was the one that best expressed the spirit of equality, independence and sovereignty that the nascent nation wanted.

They contributed to the development of a discussion on the economic direction of the country: a traditionally rich Buenos Aires, absolute owner of the profitability of a single customs office and a single port, to the detriment of the provincial economies, or a synthesis of both positions that remove the territory from the erratic destiny to which the triumph of one of the two extreme factions and so dissimilar.

Notable political cadres on one side and the other

They were responsible for the birth of many brilliant personalities in Argentine politics of those times, supporters of one side and from the other: Bernardino Rivadavia, Juan Lavalle, José María Paz (Unitarios) and Juan Manuel de Rosas, José Artigas and Justo José de Urquiza (Feds).

The dictator Rosas

In particular, they marked the long domain exercised by Juan Manuel de Rosas in the Argentine territory (1829-1852), first as governor of Buenos Aires, and then as leader and quasi-dictator of the confederate states, with such power that said period is recognized in the history politics of the country as rosismo or epoch of Rosas.

The rivalry was also the trigger for the creation of a huge number of artistic and literary works, films, among others. others, who showed the conflict from different perspectives, and from which the authors also assumed and published their opinions. positions.

Differences that are still perceived

Responsible for the birth of a historical rancor, which even prevails today, between the interior of the country and porteños, the first associated with simple people, from the countryside, who worship and strictly defend the traditions national and all autochthonous products, while the second is linked to the most intellectual elites and professionally trained who profess a more liberal feeling in every sense and a cosmopolitan vision of world.

Fotolia images. AllaBond, Jack F.