To situate San Juan politically, let us remember that in 1810 it depended on the viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata and had the category of “Arms Command” dependent on the governorate-intendance of Córdoba. Damián Hudson, in his “Historical Memories of the Province of Cuyo” paints San Juan at the beginning of the 19th century, as a town where its inhabitants “lived patriarchally, in the manner of primitive societies, without aspiring to another position for themselves or their children.” and grandchildren, than that narrow and diminished one that his ancestors bequeathed to him.”
Juan Rómulo Fernández, a former member of the National Academy of History, agrees with this view when he says: “The May pronouncement came to wake up this people that was sleeping its secular dream, nestled at the foot of the Andes. Perhaps the visionaries, walking through valleys and gorges, had had the premonition. But it was a great day in 1810 when the emissary of the Junta de Buenos Aires got off his horse and immediately delivered the documents of the case to the Cabildo.” He was referring to June 17, 1810 when the news of the “porteño” May 25 arrived in San Juan.
> San Juan and Mendoza in search of mining
At the same time, for the journalist Rogelio Díaz Costa, who wrote for many years in DIARIO DE CUYO, these were times “when the colony already had defined agricultural and pastoral activity, but the search for the mines did not stop,” since “they are the same councils of Mendoza and San Juan and the missionaries themselves, those who were looking for mines and routes.”
And after the change registered with the May Revolution of 1810 and then in 1816 with the Declaration of Independence, the colonial city of San Juan survived until 1870 with the same physiognomy”, according to Horacio Videla in his “History of San Juan, volume I ”, who adds: “Nothing would alter his face, nor his spiritual structures. The homeland city continued in a small form, dotted with large vacant lots even in the main square. The straight but very narrow streets, twelve yards wide, lacked trees and ditches. Along a ridge drawn in the middle of the blocks, nine ditches ran from west to east, touching the bottoms of the houses with a view to irrigating the family garden, and the transversal streets that ran from south to north, full of humps (editor’s note : humps), they ran into country houses of two or three blocks framed by four wide tree-lined streets, dubbed “callanchas” by general speech.”
Juan Rómulo Fernández, former member of the National Academy of History, said: “May’s pronouncement came to wake up this people who were sleeping their secular dream, nestled at the foot of the Andes.” June 17, 1810 was a glorious day when the news of the “porteño” May 25th reached San Juan.
> Intellectual training
At the same time, from the angle of the intellectual formation of that time, a good part of the people of San Juan had preparation if we stick to the statement made by Margarita Mugnos de Escudero, mother of our “greatest poet”, Jorge Leónidas Escudero, when she assured that San Juan “was always distinguished by his culture and his aspiration to learn. When the Revolution of 1810 enlivened the air of the Colony with its auras of freedom, there existed in San Juan, in addition to the convent schools, the primary Escuela del Rey (later de la Patria), the Latinidad classroom and an establishment of private teachings attended by the priest Mr. Manuel Torres.”
> Taxes that had to be paid to the Spanish crown
In another area of San Juan life in 1810, Videla also writes that there were already taxes that the neighbors had to pay to the Spanish crown, since Spain had brought to America, or implanted, not only its language and religion, but also the pesos and measures, monetary regime at that time: “The silver coin circulated with notable profusion, especially the ‘cuarto de real’ or ‘cuartillo’, the last effective currency in America, but not the gold coin that had no circulation in the Cuyo region of appreciable way.” Nor did the “real vouchers” circulate here, Spanish banknotes considered “true paper money”, and intended “for the payment of contributions, but not to pay salaries”, which had a high nominal value.
That is why in San Juan in those early years of the 1800s, discs of lead, tin, wood or leather, called “señas”, were used, which were issued by merchants and grocers, due to the lack of “dividing or fleece currency”. There was also barter (sale or payment of wages in clothes, jars, tar, fat, poultry, tallow, wood, wheat, potatoes, olives, cheeses, sheep, horses, rams and bulls), which the Jesuits of San Juan “between 1733 and 1764”.
By Luis Eduardo Meglioli
Journalist
Author of “This is how San Juan was when the Homeland was born”, Cícero, Ed. S. Juan, 2010.
Other sources: “Nosotros los sanjuaninos”, Rogelio Díaz C., SPAE, SJ, 1972; “Historical Memories about the Province of Cuyo”, Damián Hudson, Ed. “Revista Mendocina de Cs.”, Mendoza, 1931; “Contribution to the History of the Culture of San Juan”, Margarita M. de Escudero, Ed. Sanjuanina, 1968; “San Juan, 1810-1862”, Juan R. Fernández, Imp. de la Universidad, Buenos Aires, 1941, “History of San Juan” T1, Horacio Videla, Academia del Plata, Buenos Aires, 1962.
