“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

Urquiza struggled to reorganize his forces. In an effort to lure his soldiers back to
camp, Urquiza issued a decree absolving the Basualdo deserters. By October, he had
gathered a new, smaller army, only to watch it again dissolve in another open revolt. 24 News
of the second uprising radiated throughout the borderlands. Salto’s newspaper, El Eco de los
Libres, openly asked what had become of the “loyal and honorable soldiers of Entre Ríos,
that, full of patriotism, had stood with their illustrious caudillo through all the tides of war?” 25
The same question could have been asked about Urquiza’s ability to mobilize military forces.
Urquiza no longer appeared to have the power to summon his native province to support
his political projects. Following the second uprising, Urquiza effectively surrendered. He
returned to San José and resigned himself to sitting out the war.
The mutinies signaled Urquiza’s decline in the province and the rise of men like
López Jordán who openly opposed the war and the national government. 26 With each
successive revolt, the strength of the forces threatening to pull apart the fragile Argentine
union grew. Conversely, Urquiza’s ability to leverage his personal reputation and his vast
network of reciprocal connections to act as the glue that could hold both federalist and
nationalist interests together within a single political system grew weaker. The distance
between borderlands legalities and Mitre’s porteño-centered sovereign model remained too
great for even Urquiza to bridge. Mitre correctly perceived the implications of the uprisings,
writing that “of course General Urquiza has fallen at Basualdo and that a revolution has
occurred in Entre Ríos, a revolution that will have repercussions later.” 27
24 Whigham, The Paraguayan War, 405-06.
25 El Eco de los Libres, n. 151 (November 20, 1865), 1.
26 Whigham, The Paraguayan War, 342.
27 Bosch, Urquiza y Su Tiempo, 628.
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