Mariano Moreno (politician)

Mariano Moreno

Mariano Moreno Valle (born September 23, 1778 in Buenos Aires , † March 4, 1811 on the South Atlantic ) was a lawyer and politician at the time of Argentina's independence .

Life

Mariano Moreno was born in Buenos Aires to a family of civil servants. His father, Manuel Moreno y Argumosa, came from Santander and worked in the financial administration of the Spanish colonial authority. Mariano learned to read and write from his mother, Ana María Valle. The family's financial resources made it impossible to study at the Colegio de San Carlos ; here Mariano Moreno only attended a few lectures as a guest auditor. The monk Cayetano Rodríguez gave him access to his monastery library and encouraged him to study at the (cheaper) Universidad San Francisco Xavier de Chuquisac in Charcas .

In November 1799 Moreno traveled to the highlands and began his studies at the beginning of the following year. At his father's request, he graduated in theology , which he followed up with studies in law .

In the circle of the students and friends of the cleric Terrazas he came into contact with the ideas of the Enlightenment ; his fellow students discussed political and social reforms.

In 1802 he visited Potosí and was shaken by the working and living conditions of the indigenous mine workers. Back in Charcas, he wrote his legal dissertation on the work duties of the Indians. After graduating, he joined the law firm of Agustín Gascón in 1803 and repeatedly defended miners against their employers. In the course of the trials, he made serious allegations against the mayor and the provincial governor. In 1804 he fell in love with a young woman from Charcas, María Guadalupe Cuenca, who was originally intended by her family for a life in the monastery; after a short time the two married. A year later the son Mariano was born.

Out of consideration for his young family, in view of the hostility and growing political pressure against him in Charcas, he decided to relocate to Buenos Aires. Here he worked as a lawyer from mid-1805. The Real Audiencia of Buenos Aires appointed him rapporteur and the city council also used his services.

The political situation in the Spanish colonies became more complex in the years that followed: Napoleonic troops occupied the motherland Spain in 1808 in order to enforce Joseph Bonaparte as king in place of Ferdinand VII , who was in French captivity. Juntas loyal to the king organized the resistance in Spain, and efforts were also made in the colonies in South America to take governance into their own hands.

Economically, the monopolized transatlantic trade between Spain and South America came to an almost complete standstill due to the war with France. Viceroy Baltasar de Cisneros then largely released trade; the Spanish overseas traders, who until then held the lucrative trade monopoly, protested violently, while the Argentine trading houses profited from the new opportunities.

In the landowners' association of Buenos Aires ( Representación de los Hacendados ) Mariano Moreno campaigned for free trade; In a book he criticized the trade restrictions between motherland Spain and its colonies. As editor of the Gaceta de Buenos Aires he fought for the independence of today's Argentina in the form of a republic. This made him one of the most radical within the newly emerging independence movement.

On May 25, 1810, in a heated meeting (at which Moreno was not present), the Cabildo Abierto of Buenos Aires deposed the viceroy and instead installed the Primera Junta, headed by the moderate federalist Cornelio Saavedra . Mariano Moreno was appointed to the junta as Minister of War and represented his social and political ideas, which were radical for the time. In August 1810 he wrote a Plan de Operaciones to carry the uprising against the Spanish colonial power into present-day Uruguay . Saavedra expanded the junta, which had become loose as a result of conflicts between centralists and federalists, as planned from the beginning to include representatives from the other provinces to form the Junta Grande. This happened against the will of the centralist Moreno and only after Saavedra had obtained his resignation.

The conflicts between Moreno and Saavedra were still in full swing when Moreno was sent to London as envoy for the new government in early January . He was supposed to get equipment and weapons ready for the Independence Army. On January 24, 1811, he left for Europe on board the English frigate Fame . After feeling sick before departure, his health deteriorated rapidly, there was no doctor on board, the captain probably gave him a strong emetic and Moreno died at sea in the South Atlantic.

Rumors that he had been poisoned were fueled by the fact that on February 9, a few days after Moreno's departure, the junta signed a contract with an Englishman named Curtis, which was practically identical to Moreno's mission and the one in the case of whose demise should apply. Soon after leaving, Moreno's wife received a package with a funeral fan and a note that she would use it soon. The fact that in the face of Moreno's illness the captain of the fame stayed on course instead of seeking medical help in Rio de Janeiro or Cape Town , and also that he continued to travel to London after Moreno's death instead of returning to Buenos Aires, left room for further speculation .

The Mariano Moreno bus station in Rosario, Argentina, built in 1950 , bears his name.

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• Biography (spanish)
• Biography (spanish)
• Short biography (Spanish)