“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

outing them from Upper Peru. Royalist forces pursued Castelli, eventually advancing as far
as Tucumán before porteño forces could check their advance. 16
Twice more in 1813 and again in 1815, porteño armies attempted to retake the Andean
highlands and restore the capital’s old connections to Potosí’s silver mines. Each campaign
ended in failure as local opposition and royalists from Peru overwhelmed the “liberating”
armies from the Río de la Plata basin. The failure to restore the Andean highlands to
Buenos Aires’ control shredded plans for a seamless transition from the old colonial
viceroyalty to a new, autonomous American polity. More importantly, Buenos Aires lost the
central pillar sustaining its economy – the silver trade. The defeat quickly led to the collapse
of the revolutionary junta, deepening the sense of crisis in the capital as rival factions
struggled for control.
Opponents of the new government seized upon the reversals in the highlands to
reject porteño authority altogether. Upriver in Paraguay, the small community of Creole elites
clustered along the Paraguay River in Asunción had expressed suspicions of porteño
intentions for the region. Like in Upper Peru, Buenos Aires responded to local wariness
with force. A column from the capital marched upriver under the command of Manuel
Belgrano in January of 1811. Expecting to be welcomed, Belgrano instead found fierce local
opposition to any perceived outside interference in Paraguayan affairs. The Paraguayans
defeated Belgrano, driving him from the country for good by March. Fearing that the
remaining colonial officials in Asunción might turn the province over to the Portuguese, the
Creoles then seized power in Asunción in May. The Paraguayans formed their own Junta
Superior. Doctor José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia quickly came to dominate the institution.
16 Rodríguez O., The Independence of Spanish America, 130-32, Jorge Siles Salinas, La
Independencia de Bolivia (Madrid: Ed. Mapfre, 1992), 197-241.
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