On May 4, 1805, a group of residents of the then town of Arroyo de la China wrote the Representation of the council of Concepción del Uruguay to King Carlos IV. The text addresses the requests to regularize the settlement of the population that had been pending after its foundation by Rocamora in 1783.
The residents of Concepción del Uruguay, when it was still a town and named Arroyo de la China, wrote the first sketch of the history of their place and surroundings. Tomás Rocamora had done something similar a few years before on his founding tours. But it is the first written by Uruguayans or Arroyochinenses?
It wasn’t deliberately a story but it came out that way. It was a request to the Majesty of the King of Spain, that distant and alien lord, who governed these lands.
The petition that they properly called ‘Representation to His Majesty King Carlos IV of the council of Concepción del Uruguay, on May 4, 1805’ was a claim on various issues with the addition of a detailed overview of the situation of the town and its ejido. .
Following the chronicle of the historian Oscar F. Urquiza Almandoz – in his History of Concepción del Uruguay – the writing addresses the requests to regularize the settlement of the population that had been pending after its foundation by Rocamora in 1783. Among others issues, the removal of the “obstacles and obstacles that have hindered and delayed the completion of their erection, increase and development of their neighborhoods” is requested and that they be “provided with the necessary aid to achieve their desired goals of becoming advantageously known to the Public, to your Royal Treasury, to Religion and the State.”
In more detail they mention the various rulings on lands resolved by the Superior Board of Finance that harmed the new populations; the lack of establishment of ejidos, pastures, community lands for their own, sorts of farms and ranches; the omission of the limits of the jurisdiction – the ejido – of each town.
INDIANS AND OUTLAWS
But what is interesting is reading between the lines of the historical context of the time.
In this voluminous document of almost 100 pages, testimonies are presented about the relationship between the urbanized settlers and the inhabitants scattered among the surrounding mountains as they were Indians and “elements of bad living.” They warn about “the fearsome neighborhood of the infidel Indians of the two nations of Charrúas and Minuanes” who prevented the settlement of “white” migrants except for “some poor individuals and families who, facing danger, began to pass them by the Bajada de Santa Faith, to form their huts and subsist on the benefits of some livestock.”
They also mention the punitive actions ordered by the government of Buenos Aires to “cleanse” the region of undesirable natives who were driven to the border with Brazil.
But they weren’t just Indians. Also other criminals, gauchos, vagrants -according to the terminology of the time- infested the territory.
They say in the report that “the void of the infidel Indians was partly occupied by a not small number of vicious men, who, fleeing due to their excesses from the cities of this province (Buenos Aires) and its borders in Tucumán and Paraguay, sought refuge in the thick mountains and forests that these places abound with.”
The main activity of these “misentertainers” was cattle ranching to slaughter animals and obtain the leather for marketing. Also, as indicated in the representation, they served to help smugglers who transported property to Brazil.
As can be seen, in a society under construction, the clash between the settlers settled in villages, the indigenous natives and landless wanderers was inevitable. It is known that the original settlement of Arroyo de la China was formed by the thirty families that the landowner Justo García de Zuñiga had expelled from his Campos Floridos. In other words, the original core of the town founded by Rocamora were also nomadic inhabitants who wandered from field to field to find their place in the world. Rocamora gathered those he could in the three towns that he managed to found, granted them a plot of land where they could settle permanently, organized the territory and incorporated them into the civilized life that meant being within the current laws. But thousands remained on the margins, enjoying the fictitious freedom of living without law, disputing among themselves the resources to survive.
LAND GRABBERS
In the representation submitted by the Uruguayan Cabildo to the King, it is clearly pointed out that “some individuals are less fond of the common and public good than of their interests, to revitalize and advance views entirely opposite to the continuation and further development of these new towns. The main of these businessmen being Don José Teodoro Larramendi and José de Vera y Mujica, intended successors by various titles in the four types of stay of Don Mendo de la Cueva, being governor and captain general of this province of Buenos Aires, it is said to have granted by mercy.”
As we see, there were land grabbers who, otherwise, had never populated or exploited. Both Vera and Larramendi sought recognition of the ownership of the immense types of ranch that had been graciously granted from the founding of Santa Fe in “the other side of the Paraná” and that, according to their argument, extended over 80 leagues to reach the shores of the Uruguay River and that the Superior Board of Finance validated.
These measures prevented residents from accessing ownership of the lots distributed by Rocamora and accessing types of farms. The towns of Concepción in Uruguay, like those of Gualeguay and Gualeguaychú, ran the risk of being evicted if ownership of the land was confirmed to the landowners.
We do not know who the royal pens were who wrote the document, but it bears the signatures of the ordinary mayor Tomás Antonio Lavín and the councilors Bartolomé Ferrer, Juan Rial, José Aguirre, Juan Suárez and the attorney general Sebastián López.
To continue reading
POENITZ, Erich L WE, First historical chronicle of Entre Ríos: the ‘Representation to His Majesty the King’ of the council of Concepción del Uruguay (1805); in Cuadernos de Estudios Regionales, No. 2, Concordia, IIC-C., 1982. Available in the General Archive of Entre Ríos
URQUIZA ALMANDOZ, Oscar F. ; History of Concepción del Uruguay, Volume I, 2002.
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