United Provinces of the Río de la Plata

United Provinces of the Río de la Plata Provincias Unidas del Río de la Plata United Provinces in South America Provincias Unidas en Sud-América
1810–1831
Flag (1819-1820) Coat of arms
Motto: En unión y libertad "In Union and Freedom"
Anthem: Marcha patriótica "Patriotic March"
Sol de Mayo[1] "Sun of May"
The United Provinces of the Río de la Plata in 1823
Status	Spanish provinces (1810-1816) Sovereign state (1816-1831)
Capital	Buenos Aires
Common languages	Spanish Indigenous languages
Religion	Catholicism
Government	1810-1811: Government Junta 1811–1814: Triumvirate 1814-1820: Directorial republic 1820-1826: Confederation (de facto) 1826-1827: Unitary presidential republic 1827-1831: Confederation (de facto)
Recognised Monarch
• 1810–1816	Ferdinand VII
Head of State
• 1810–1811	Cornelio Saavedra
• 1811	Domingo Matheu
• 1811-1812	First Triumvirate
• 1812-1814	Second Triumvirate
• 1814-1820	Supreme Director
• 1826–1827	B. Rivadavia
• 1827	V. López y Planes
Governor of Buenos Aires[a]
• 1820	Matías de Irigoyen
• 1820-1828	See full list...
• 1828-1827	Manuel Dorrego
• 1828-1829	Juan Lavalle
• 1829-1832	Juan M. de Rosas
History
• British invasions	1806–1807
• May Revolution	25 May 1810
• Independence	9 July 1816
• Battle of Cepeda	1 February 1820
• First Presidency	1826-1827
• Treaty of Montevideo	28 August 1828
• Federal Pact	4 January 1831
Population
• 1810 census	530,000
Currency	Real (1813-1815) Sol (1815-1826) Peso fuerte (1826-1881)
Preceded by Succeeded by Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata 1831: Argentine Confederation 1828: Uruguay 1825: Upper Peru 1815: Federal League
^ Between 1820 and 1826, the United Provinces functioned as a loose alliance of autonomous provinces put together by pacts and treaties (see Treaty of Pilar, Treaty of Benegas, Quadrilateral Treaty), but lacking any actual central government until the 1825 Constitutional Congress.

The United Provinces of the Río de la Plata or United Provinces of the River Plate (Spanish: Provincias Unidas del Río de la Plata), along with United Provinces in South America (Spanish: Provincias Unidas en Sud-América), are names used to refer to the emerging state that succeeded the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata after the May Revolution, from 1810 to 1831, encompassing the Argentine War of Independence, the Cisplatine War and the beginning of the Argentine Civil Wars. The aforementioned state is now the Argentine Republic. The name “United Provinces of the Río de la Plata” is recognised as one of the official names of Argentina according to Article 53 of its constitution.

The state that succeeded the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata in 1810 used different names depending on political interests and people's common usage.

• Provinces of the Río de la Plata (Spanish: Provincias del Río de la Plata): This name first appeared in a proclamation issued by the Junta of Cadiz, urging the Spanish American territories to create provisional government juntas while Ferdinand VII was imprisoned by Napoleon. After the May Revolution, the Junta of Buenos Aires adopted the name.^[2]
• United Provinces of the Río de la Plata (Spanish: Provincias Unidas del Río de la Plata): This name was adopted by the First Triumvirate during the final months of 1811, and became the most common name to refer to this period. It is also recognised as one of the three official names of Argentina in Article 35 of its constitution.^[3]
• United Provinces of the South (Spanish: Provincias Unidas del Sud): This was the name used to refer to the state in the Argentine National Anthem (’‘Marcha patriótica’’), composed in 1813. It was not used in official documents.
• United Provinces in South America (Spanish: Provincias Unidas en Sud-América): This name appears in the Argentine Declaration of Independence of 1816. It was probably chosen because it was a more encompassing name, and the borders of the new state were not clear yet. Besides, Río de la Plata was strongly associated with Buenos Aires, so changing it could seem a better option for supporters of federalism. However, the name was never widely used.
• Argentina: It became the most common name during the 1820s. Argentina comes from argentum, which means silver in Latin, so the name is related to Río de la Plata, which literally means “River of the Silver”. Since argentum means silver, Argentina could mean something similar to “made of silver”.
• Argentine Republic (Spanish: República Argentina): This name was officially adopted by the 1826 constitution. However, in 1827, the constitution stopped being applied. Nowadays, it is the most common official name used by Argentina.
• Argentine Confederation (Spanish: Confederación Argentina): This was a widely used name after the Federal Pact, although it was used before. It is also one of Argentina’s official names according to Article 35.

Río de la Plata can be translated as River Plate. This translation originated when plate could mean silver in English. One of Argentina's two largest football clubs is named after this translation (Club Atlético River Plate). A more accurate English version of Río de la Plata would be River of the Silver, but it is not used. Also, the Río de la Plata is not a river, but an estuary.

The United Provinces of the Río de la Plata were bordered on the south by the sparsely populated territories of the Pampas and Patagonia, home to the Mapuche, Ranquel, and Puelche peoples. To the north, the Gran Chaco was populated by the Guaycuru nations. To the northwest, across Upper Peru (modern-day Bolivia), lay the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru. Across the Andes, to the west, was the Spanish-controlled Captaincy General of Chile. To the northeast was Colonial Brazil, part of the Portuguese Empire (in 1815, the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves), later the Empire of Brazil in 1822.

However, the territory of the United Provinces changed repeatedly. Since the beginning, the government of Buenos Aires (the juntas, the triumvirates and later the Directory) wanted to control all the intendancies that belonged to the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata. Nevertheless, this goal was never achieved due to resistance by royalist governments. The Intendancy of Paraguay (modern-day Paraguay) rejected Buenos Aires’ authority and swore loyalty to the provisional government of Peninsular Spain (the Council of Regency of Spain and the Indies). Buenos Aires launched a military expedition known as the Paraguay campaign, but it was defeated and Paraguay became an independent country a few months later. The intendancies of La Paz, Chuquisaca, Cochabamba, Córdoba del Tucumán, Salta del Tucumán and the political and military governments of Moxos and Chiquitos were annexed by the Viceroyalty of Peru after the May Revolution; Córdoba del Tucumán and Salta del Tucumán were fully regained after the Second Upper Peru campaign, commanded by Manuel Belgrano, but the other territories (known as a whole as Upper Peru) were never retaken, and became Bolivia years later.

Montevideo did not acknowledge Buenos Aires’ government either, and was declared the new capital of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, where that administrative division continued to exist until 1814, when the city was conquered by the United Provinces. However, Montevideo became part of the Oriental Province (Banda Oriental, modern-day Uruguay) and acted as the capital of the League of the Free Peoples, a federal alternative to the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, which had a unitary government. This alternative state was composed of the provinces of Córdoba, Corrientes, Entre Ríos, Santa Fe, Misiones and Banda Oriental. In 1820, Banda Oriental was fully captured by Portuguese Brazil, and the League was abolished; the rest of its provinces came under Argentine control. Banda Oriental became an independent state (Uruguay) in 1828 after British intervention in the Cisplatine War.

The freedom of the provinces of the Río de la Plata was established through a lengthy process that started in May 1810, when the citizens and militias of Buenos Aires, the capital city of the Spanish Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, ousted the Viceroy Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros in the May Revolution. Although there was not a declaration of independence at the time, and the government that emerged from the revolution declared loyalty to the king Ferdinand VII, in fact it attempted to reorganise the social, political and economic structures of the provinces of the Río de la Plata. As it faced immediate resistance in some quarters (namely the Banda Oriental, under the new Spanish Viceroy Javier de Elío, Córdoba and Santiago de Liniers, the local government of Asunción in Paraguay and, notably, the royalist forces from the Viceroyalty of Perú), the revolution soon turned to be a War of Independence.

In the midst of the war of independence, during the entire 1810–1831 period there were serious conflicts among ever-changing factions regarding the organization of the state and the political aims of the revolutionary governments. These conflicts involved coups d'état, mutinies, politically motivated trials, banishments and imprisonments and finally developed into an outright civil war.

Ever since the revolution, there were serious conflicts among diverging views regarding the political organization of the provinces. While some advocated a strong and executive central government with little accountability to the regional interests, a position at first favored by the "enlightened" revolutionary and independentist elements, others sought to integrate representatives from the provinces in a larger deliberative assembly. As the latter position gained the upper hand, the Primera Junta grew into the Junta Grande to incorporate delegates from the provinces in 1811. However, as it became evident that such an arrangement was not effective enough to lead the war efforts, a triumvirate assumed executive powers while the assembly retained some controlling functions.

The Liga Federal (1815–1820), or Liga de los Pueblos Libres (League of the Free Peoples), was an alliance of provinces in what is now Argentina and Uruguay, organised under democratic federalist ideals strongly advocated by its leader, José Gervasio Artigas.

The government of the United Provinces of South America felt threatened by the growing appeal of the Liga Federal, so they did nothing to repel the incoming Portuguese invasion of Misiones Orientales and the Banda Oriental, the stronghold of Artigas. Brazilian General Carlos Frederico Lecor, thanks to their numerical and material superiority, defeated Artigas and his army and occupied Montevideo on 20 January 1817, but the struggle continued for three long years in the countryside. Infuriated by the passivity of Buenos Aires, Artigas declared war on Buenos Aires while he was losing to the Portuguese.

On 1 February 1820, Federal League governors Francisco Ramírez of Entre Ríos and Estanislao López of Santa Fe, defeated a Supreme Directorship diminished army, ending the centralized government of the United Provinces, and established a federal agreement with Buenos Aires Province. Similarly, the Federal League effectively came to an end when its constituent provinces rejoined the United Provinces.

Artigas, defeated by the Portuguese, retreated to Entre Ríos. From there, he denounced the Treaty of Pilar and entered into conflict with his former ally governor Ramírez, who crushed the remnants of Artigas' army. The former Protector of the Free Peoples was exiled in Paraguay until his death. The Eastern Province was annexed by Portugal to its Brazilian dependences in 1821.

The result of the wars was the independence of the provinces. Several new nations appeared, there were:

Five provinces would go on to become Bolivia: Charcas, Cochabamba, Mizque, Chichas, and Tarija.

The Eastern Province (Provincia Oriental) became independent as Uruguay as a consequence of the treaty of Montevideo, partly retaining its old name in its official name: the Eastern Republic of Uruguay. Due to the text of the aforementioned treaty, United Provinces and Imperial Brazil both renounced their claims to the province and agreed to grant it independence, but the treaty did not include nor ask the Orientals' opinion, and also omitted to detail the borders of the new state what would give Brazil a chance to move its borders further south. The Constitutional Assembly approved the Constitution of Uruguay on 10 September 1829 and it was sworn by the citizens on 18 July 1830.^[4]

The Misiones Orientales, after years of Portuguese dominion, were recovered with the 1828 Campaign of Fructuoso Rivera at the Misiones Orientales, but it was de jure recognized as Brazilian, following the outcome of the Cisplatine War.

Following a long civil war, the following provinces joined to become the Argentine Republic: Buenos Aires (The outpost of Carmen de Patagones in Patagonia is now part of Buenos Aires Province), Catamarca, Córdoba, Corrientes, Entre Ríos, Jujuy, La Rioja, Mendoza, Salta, San Juan, San Luis, Santa Fe, Santiago del Estero, and Tucumán.

#	Picture	Name	From	Until	Office
1		Cornelio Saavedra	25 May 1810	26 August 1811	Chairman of the Primera Junta and the Junta Grande
2		Domingo Matheu	28 August 1811	23 September 1811	Chairman of the Junta Grande
	-	First Triumvirate	23 September 1811	8 October 1812	Collegial governing body
	-	Second Triumvirate	8 October 1812	31 January 1814	Collegial governing body
3		Gervasio Antonio de Posadas	22 January 1814	9 January 1815	Supreme Director of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata
4		Carlos María de Alvear	10 January 1815	15 April 1815	Supreme Director of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata
5		José Rondeau	20 April 1815	21 April 1815	Supreme Director of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata (interim)
6		Ignacio Álvarez Thomas	21 April 1815	16 April 1816	Supreme Director of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata
7		Antonio González Balcarce	16 April 1816	3 May 1816	Supreme Director of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata
8		Juan Martín de Pueyrredón	3 May 1816	11 June 1819	Supreme Director of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata
9		José Rondeau	11 June 1819	1 February 1820	Supreme Director of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata
10		Juan Pedro Aguirre	1 February 1820	11 February 1820	Supreme Director of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata (interim)
	-	Power vacuum	11 February 1820	8 February 1826	Lack of central government
11		Bernardnio Rivadavia	8 February 1827	27 June 1827	President of the Argentine Republic
12		Vicente López y Planes	7 July 1827	18 August 1827	President of the Argentine Republic (interim)
	-	Power vacuum	18 August February 1827	4 January 1831	Lack of central government

• Name of Argentina
• Second Triumvirate (Argentina)
• Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata
• Rise of the Argentine Republic
• Argentine War of Independence
• Etymology of Argentina

Wikimedia Commons has media related to United Provinces of the Río de la Plata.

• Crow, John A. (1992). The Epic of Latin America (4th ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-07723-2.
• Kopka, Deborah (2011). Central & South America. Dayton, OH: Lorenz Educational Press. ISBN 978-1-4291-2251-1.
• Símbolos Nacionales de la República Argentina ISBN 950-691-036-7

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