“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

advance their visions for a new national framework that above all aimed to resolve the
persistent crisis of order in the old viceroyalty. Alberdi’s vision, set down in his Bases y puntos
de partida de la organización política de la República Argentina, was of a strong central executive
who possessed sufficient authority to quell the divisive conflicts between warring provinces. 2
Urquiza seized Alberdi’s work, incorporating it into the 1853 Constitution that would
become his confederation’s founding law. At the same time, Urquiza personally tempered
federalist concerns by publicly pronouncing his respect for the autonomy of the various
provinces within the new national framework. As such, the new regime was a delicate
balance, reflecting the unresolved tensions between personal authority, unity and local
autonomy plaguing the putative Argentine state. 3
Attempts to paper over the gap between Buenos Aires and the interior with a new
constitution under Urquiza’s purview, however, only succeeded in pushing the two sides
further apart. Almost immediately after its ratification, Buenos Aires viewed the new
document with suspicion. Particularly alarming was the proposed division of the city of
Buenos Aires from the rest of the province. The move challenged Buenos Aires’ special
status as the primer entre pares of the provinces. Without its own governor, the port saw its
traditional power and autonomy threatened under the new framework. Worse still, Urquiza
was elected the first president of the Argentine Confederation in 1854. The presence of a
powerful federalist executive from the interior was too much for coastal elites to tolerate.
Buenos Aires refused to enter the new government. But separation did not end the city’s
ambitions to reunite the provinces into a national polity. Rather, porteño elites like Bartolomé
2 Juan Bautista Alberdi, Bases y Puntos de Partida para la Organización Política de la República
Argentina (Buenos Aires: Ed. Terramar, 2007).
3 Scobie, La Lucha por la Consolidación, 51-99.
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