The Rio de la Plata revolution: enthusiasm, discouragement and foundational myth

This article intends to explore the images and evocations of the revolution spread in the Rio de la Plata public and private discourses, from 1810 to 1816, as well as the changes produced after the middle of the 1830s, when collective memory. at least of a group engaged with the building of the Nation. State. begins to shape a narrative referred to the recent political past. Two tasks are involved in this analysis: first, the examination of the intellectual context in which there is shift from a rhetoric of political regeneration associated with what was thought to be a foundational event. the formation of an autonomous Junta on 25th May 1810. to a discourse whose main topic was the building of an order that required the closure of the revolutionary process; second, the approach to the role played by historical memory in the fostering of a revolutionary foundational myth. The first period exhibits a sort of "overuse" of the "revolution", both as a concept and as a political experience that exhausted the local society. This can be seen in the local press, when, for instance, it is said that European and North. American public opinion believes that South. American use the word "revolution" to name any event in which they are involved, or that it is impossible to live in a continuous revolution. Moreover, this perspective is revealed in the very 1816 Independence Act, when it states: "End of the revolution, beginning of order". In the second period, on the other hand, the narrative on revolution expresses a critical regard upon the current political regime. rosism., which is blamed for the interruption of the process begun in 1810 whose aims should be pursued to stand in the way to progress.