(CNN Spanish) — On the morning of May 25, 1810, the viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, with its capital in Buenos Aires, still stood as one of Spain’s largest colonial administrations in America.
By the afternoon, it practically no longer existed, and the seed of what would become Argentina—and also Peru, Chile, and Bolivia, among others—was planted.
A week of crisis and tension in the colony, which began on May 18, after news arrived about the imminent fall of the Supreme Central Board in Spain, culminated with the revolution of the 25th, when the resignation of Viceroy Baltasar Cisneros and the formation of a neighborhood government.
It was the beginning of the end.
Spain would try in the following years to recover the rebellious territories, and a long war took place to ensure the independence of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata and the eventual formation of the Argentine Republic.
Napoleon’s troops fight against the Spanish forces of General Benito de San Juan at the Battle of Somosierra, on November 30, 1808 in Segovia, Spain. (Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
How was arrive to this situation?
The viceroyalty of Río de la Plata was created by the Spanish crown in 1776, as a division of the much older viceroyalty of Peru that was founded at the beginning of the Spanish conquest of America.
The city of Buenos Aires, the largest in the far south of the Spanish empire, was designated as the capital of this new viceroyalty, but it also became the center of an independence movement inspired by the ideas of the Enlightenment and the success of the revolution in United States in 1776 and in France in 1789, and fueled by the lack of representation in peninsular Spain and a tense commercial relationship with the metropolis.
Two invasions by the United Kingdom, then an enemy of Spain, in 1806 and 1807, underlined the distance from the Spanish peninsula and the loneliness of the colony – due to the lack of defenses, a local militia had to be created to expel the invaders. -, until in 1808 the situation took a dramatic turn.
Although Spain and France were allies at war against the United Kingdom – which maintained troops in Portugal – the French emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte, decided to occupy Spanish territory and forced the resignation of King Ferdinand VII in 1808, putting his brother in his place. Joseph Bonaparte.
“This political process that is happening in Spain is the cause of the revolution, which is an eminently political process with economic consequences,” Camila Perochena, a historian at the Torcuato di Tella University, told CNN Radio.
Joseph Bonaparte, crowned king of Spain by his brother Napoleon, in a portrait from 1810, replacing Ferdinand VII. (Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
The news plunged Spain into chaos, and began its own War of Independence against France, its former ally.
In the viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, the independence movement then gained even more strength with the weakness of the crown, but Buenos Aires was not yet ready for the uprising: in Spain a Central Supreme Junta had been formed, in the name of the deposed Fernando VII, to fight against France and maintain the authority of the king.
The colonies were then tied to that Supreme Central Board, at least until 1810.
But in January of that year, after suffering important defeats at the hands of the Napoleonic armies, the Central Supreme Junta had to abandon its base in Seville and move to the island of León, where it was dissolved. Everything seemed lost.
The May Revolution
The news about the fall of the Supreme Central Board reached Buenos Aires aboard the British warship Mistletoe, and generated enormous unrest in the city, which led to the holding of an open town hall, that is, an extraordinary meeting of the neighbors. of the city, on May 22.
At that meeting, independence was not yet discussed, nor the formation of a new nation, nor was the authority of the deposed King Ferdinand VII even put into discussion.
A representation of the week of May 1810, in front of the Buenos Aires Town Hall.
The objectives were more limited: to debate whether Viceroy Cisneros, who governed in the name of the king, had authority or not after the deposition of Ferdinand VII and the imminent fall of the Central Supreme Junta, which governed in his name.
If it did not have authority, the thesis was promoted that power should return to the people – the principle of retroversion of sovereignty – who would then organize their own governing board.
After hours of debate, that same day the gathered neighbors voted in favor of dismissing Viceroy Cisneros and forming their own Board.
It took two more days of discussions about the nature of the Junta and the role of viceroy in the transition, but finally on May 25, Cisneros’ resignation and the creation of his own government were announced to popular clamor, although he was still swearing loyalty to King Ferdinand VII, in whose name he also claimed to govern.
“That of 1810 is a revolution because from then on many things were going to change, but there was still no independence sentiment, we still did not want to break with the Spanish monarchy,” says Perochena.
This Provisional Government Board of the capital of the Río de la Plata, better known as the First Board, was chaired by Cornelio Saavedra, head of the Patricios regiment, and was also made up of other neighbors such as Manuel Belgrano, Mariano Moreno and Juan José Castelli, among others. , many of whom had been part of secret societies that promoted freedom in previous years, where, as historian José Luis Romero indicates, “they had learned the catechism of freedom from French authors.”
Celebration of May 25 held in 2015 in the old Buenos Aires Town Hall, during the 205th anniversary of the May Revolution. (Credit: Juan Mabromata/AFP via Getty Images)
What happened after?
The First Junta sent a communication to the provinces of the viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata so that they recognized its authority and sent representatives, as the Argentine historian Noemí Goldman points out in her book “The people want to know what it is about! Hidden history of the May Revolution”, but the agitation continued.
However, many of the cities, such as Córdoba, Montevideo and Mendoza, did not initially agree with Buenos Aires.
And in León, an island in the bay of Cádiz, Spain, where the remains of the Supreme Central Board had taken refuge, the Regency Council of Spain and the Indies had been formed months before, also in the name of Ferdinand VII.
The Regency Council, unknown to the First Junta, in turn rejected the events of the May Revolution that occurred in Buenos Aires and the authority of that First Junta, and by the end of 1810 the war between the two was already underway, with the victory of the patriots in the battle of Suipacha.
“The perception of several of the Spanish authorities was that the formation of the (First) Junta, although it was based on the assumption that the Peninsula was definitively subject to the French troops, had deposed a viceroy, which placed it on another path “Goldman writes.
Over time, and between battles waged by patriots – who defended the May Revolution and the resulting government – and royalists – who remained loyal to Spanish power – the government of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata would move further and further away. of the Spanish crown until proclaiming its independence in 1816 and becoming a republic.
After this milestone in Argentine history, which took place in parallel to similar processes in Colombia and Venezuela, the revolution would advance through the region and over time Chile (1818), Peru (1821), Mexico (1821), Ecuador (1822) and Bolivia (1825), among others.
