State Formation and Political Movements in Argentina, 1860-1916

David Rock’s first book, Politics in Argentina, 1890–1914 (Cambridge University Press, 1975), was a pioneering work still widely cited in the field today. Having explored other venues in two subsequent books and various articles, Rock’s latest volume deals with a period and a topic that partially overlap with his initial concerns, but with a very different focus. While Politics in Argentina looked at a once- marginal party’s rise to influence against established political hegemonies, his present interests lie with those hegemonic groups: with the “methods and achievements of the national state builders headed by Mitre and Roca” (p. 1).The widely visited period between 1860 and 1916 were important decades of state and nation building, economic expansion, social change, and cultural modernization. Rock’s new book is a welcome contribution to the strong academic and public debates concerning this period. The volume is organized chronologically. In the introduction, Rock defines his temporal scope, encompassing both the decades of the Organización Nacional (1860–80) and those of nation-state consolidation (1880–1916). He defines the prevailing regimes of both periods as oligarchic, a definition that emphasizes their continuities rather than their differences. Rock also seeks to follow events across the whole of Argentina, shifting his attention back and forth from the national government to provincial elites and exploring the relationship among the different regional groups. In order to meet the challenge of this wide-ranging enterprise, Rock references both current secondary literature and extensive primary sources. His narrative takes the form of a chronological description that attractively portrays the men in power—their aspirations, their dealings, and their frustrations—and conveys the complexity of the political life of the period.This political life is, however, limited to “high” politics. Rock makes clear that this main focus did not result from any election on his part, but from the fact that “the popular forms of politics from the independence period disappeared around 1875 on the fall of Federalism and the caudillos” (p. 2). This highly controversial statement ignores much of the recent scholarship that discusses such “popular forms,” relies only on the authors that associate those forms with the Federalists, and leaves aside both the works that find a popular ingredient in liberal politics as well as those that question the application of the category of the popular to caudillismo. But it neatly condenses Rock’s main ideas on the politics of the whole period. Although his story portrays complexity, his main arguments are quite simple and familiar: the oligarchic governments of the period imposed their rule through the use of force, their power stemmed from their class origin and their capacity to control and manipulate the institutions of the state, and they had no popular support whatsoever. The game of politics was played by only a handful of men at the top, who spent most of their time struggling among themselves for the monopoly of power. The other side of this story, the “popular” side, spelt defeat from the 1860s to 1875, when the Federal caudillos were overpowered by the Liberals and their army. After 1890, a gradual revival took place under new forms—mainly represented by the Radicals, who finally reached power through elections in 1916.It would be misleading to reduce Rock’s book to this very traditional interpretation of the period. This reduction is, however, induced by the way the author tells his story. He has chosen to follow a single path and has put together a sequence of events based mainly on information provided by previous works by other scholars and by primary sources. Here and there he introduces his more general interpretations without fully situating them with the larger debates of the field. Thus, he avoids all references to current historiographical discussions and offers a single reading of highly controversial issues (such as the relationship between immigrants and politics, the caudillos’ source of support, the role of elections, or the nature of the Radical Party). His reading is frequently based upon an extensive use of consular reports and a handful of newspapers, which he regards as basically neutral sources of information rather than as partisan participants in the political realm.These questions notwithstanding, this book offers an attractive and comprehensive account of key political events in the Argentine past. By exploring a long time span, covering the whole territory, and offering well-researched and thorough descriptions of the struggles for power, he has produced an original and compelling work of political history

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