Another May 25 is coming. On Wednesday we will celebrate 212th anniversary of the Revolution, in commemoration of the first cry of freedom of the Creoles, which would be formalized, six years later, in 1816, with the Declaration of Independence, in Tucumán.
To talk about the imminent national date, and its projection on today’s Argentina, I summoned two historians, such as Pacho O’Donnell y Camila Perochena who with different converging nuances (and not so much) discussed the subject in Talk about something else, the program that I lead by LN+. During the talk, the antagonism between liberal historiography and revisionism was discussed; also on the Kirchnerization of history, based on two key facts: Néstor Kirchner assumes his presidency on May 25 (next year it will be twenty years since that fact) and the remembered massive celebration of the Bicentennial, in 2010.
Pacho interprets: “It is common for politicians to make use of history; some do it with more intensity”. And he adds: “Liberal history is a vision from a position of power”, which Camila also believes happens to revisionism when Cristina Kirchner is the highest authority in the country and that alternative version becomes “official history.”
The removal of the statue of Christopher Columbus, its replacement by that of Juana Azurduy (which Mauricio Macri will later run to the square in front of the CCK) and the transfer of the saber of San Martín to the National Historical Museum with the leading role of Cristina Kirchner These are two of the many actions that the current vice president undertook when she occupied the Casa Rosada.
“The crack always existed -Pacho points out- because it is the confrontation of interests, sometimes bloody, between dominant sectors and others that are not. The current crack is loud and thankfully non-violent.” And Camila warns that “history is always rewritten.”
Passionate about their studies of the past, Camila and Pacho contributed “papers” that brought me closer to them after the recording of the program to enrich the discussion and better elucidate those events that laid the foundations for the birth of the Homeland.
The meeting took place in the beautiful Isaac Fernandez Blanco Museum, which served as a framework for the conversation. Close to celebrating its centenary, the Palacio Noel turned out to be a more than adequate setting since furniture and other very valuable pieces from the viceregal period are kept there.
To begin with, we asked the interviewees to distinguish the differences between the two Argentine national dates, May 25 and July 9. For Perochena, in the first “there is no reference to independence since not necessarily all the revolutionaries wanted it in 1810; they had autonomy more in their heads than independence. Only a minority thought of cutting ties with Spain, a minority in which Moreno is, but they did not say it very loudly. The rest had a more moderate stance.”
Para O’Donnell the May Revolution is a myth of origin, but neither does he believe that it was a formal independence project. “The support that the revolutionaries were looking for was from England, which had kept the Río de la Plata market. That is why the idea is maintained that sovereignty had been recovered to return it to Ferdinand VII when he was released from Napoleonic prison, ”he explains.
Camila clarifies a little more: “It is usually believed or transmitted in public discourse that the Argentine nation was born on May 25, 1810. And that is not quite so. It is not that in 1810 the revolutionaries were already thinking of a country like Argentina. 1810 is not the founder of a nation. There begins a process that after many decades will shape what we know today as Argentina. But that was not in the heads of the protagonists of the time. In addition, it is not a process that is triggered by nationalist feelings or by a feeling or search for independence from Spain. Moreover, at first, it was not a movement against the Spanish crown. Mariano Moreno did have a more emancipatory vision.”
Pacho emphasizes that beyond the enlightened sectors that motorized the removal of his representative, Viceroy Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros, also there was a popular movement that precipitated the course of the episodes. “They are the ‘infernal’, as they called themselves, the members of the ‘gang’ led by a postman, Domingo French, and an employee of the viceregal administration, Antonio Berutti, whose action has wanted to be reduced to cockade deliverers ”, details O’Donnell.
“There is a first meeting – recalls Perochena – which is not the first, since it is chaired by Cisneros thinking that in this way he would achieve legitimacy, but he had lost the support of someone very important who was Cornelio Saavedra, the head of the Patricians.” He refers that after the two English invasions, in 1806 and 1807, there was a central role of the people in arms. The Creole militias became a political factor.”
Pacho recalls that “Buenos Aires worked hard on the idea of bringing European princes” and Camila adds the fact that “in 1816 the only republic in the world was the United States and that the Revolution inaugurated legal equality.”
Then, the conversation leads to the fact that “Peronism is essentially revisionist in relation to history”, according to O’Donnell, and that The great revisionist action of Juan Domingo Perón was to highlight the figure of José de San Martín. He is reminded that Bartolomé Miter had already done this in the previous century with his stories of San Martín and Belgrano. And also that when the trains were nationalized, Perón appealed to names from classical history to baptize the different branches (San Martín, Belgrano, Miter and Sarmiento). “Perón was not an enthusiast of revisionism,” Pacho finally had to concede.
Perochena, author of the recently published book Cristina y la historia, highlights the rituals that the current vice president began to put together after the Bicentennial to generate political identities. “The Bicentennial -she underlines her- was a way of staging her interpretation of history”. O’Donnell claims “the great popular mobilization that took place” then, which also gave him “confirmation that there is a patriotic gland that is alive.”
Perochena pays attention to the fact that of the 1,592 speeches that Cristina Kirchner gave during her two presidential terms, 51% spoke about history”, but that she always goes back in search of antagonisms with a polarizing use. Instead, he reports that Raúl Alfonsín sought to amalgamate past events more with his present, while Carlos Menem, upon repatriating the remains of Juan Manuel de Rosas and embracing Admiral Isaac Rojas, in addition to the controversial pardons, thought of the story more from a place of reconciliation.
Talk about something else It is broadcast on Saturdays at 10 pm on LN+.