Directores, Dictadores y Protectores. Las formas de la política revolucionaria en el Cono Sur, 1810-1824

Abstract

Throughout the revolutionary process in South America, rulers walked away from the collegiate bodies in which they had initially believed, and placed their trust in increasingly concentrated forms of government. This led to the appearance of supreme directories, protectorates and even dictatorships. This article suggests that the collegiate government was an extraordinary solution to put a stop to the factional disputes generated by the 1810 revolution. This governmental experiment was swiftly replaced by figures who refused to bow to a monarch, while exercising a similar type of personal power themselves. The explanation must be sought in the repercussions of the civil war between the revolutionary armies and the royalist forces of Peruvian viceroy, Jose Fernando de Abascal, and in the disputes between different factions over supremacy of the revolution. Indeed, the war effort tipped the political balance in favour of the military, in turn concentrating power in the hands of a few. In the Southern Cone this process was led by the Logia Lautaro, the faction which, under the influence of Jose de San Martin, successively ruled over the main cities of the Rio de la Plata, Chile and Peru.