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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
As a Part of the Centennial celebration of the death of José de San Martín, the year 1950 was designated by the Congress of Argentina as the “Year of San Martin.” Article 2 of Law 13,661 reads as follows: “From the first day of January until the thirty-first of December of the year 1950, all official documents of national, provincial and municipal authorities; the titles and diplomas granted by institutions of learning of all ranks and jurisdictions, be they of the State or incorporated; diplomatic dispatches and the notations and colophons of books, periodicals, dailies, reviews and every other class of publications whether they be official or private, national or foreign, shall be preceded by the denomination of ‘Year of the Liberator General San Martin’ to indicate the year 1950.”
José Francisco de San Martín is best known as the military genius on whose successes was founded the political independence of Argentina, Chile and Peru. In writing the account of his life, biographers have used such titles as “Captain of the Andes” and “Saint of the Sword.” Born of Spanish parents on the Argentinian frontier at Yapeyu, February 25, 1778, he accompanied them to Spain at the age of seven and was educated for a military career. Joining the Spanish army, he fought in Africa and defended the mother country against Republican France, England, Portugal and Napoleon Bonaparte.
1 Noticias Gráficas, Buenos Aires, December 14, 1949. Quotations from Spanish sources have been translated by the writer.
2 Bartolomé Mitre’s Historia de San Martín y de la Emancipación Sudamericana (3 volumes, Buenos Aires, 1887–1888), and José Pacífico Otero’s Historia del Liberador Don José de San Martin (4 volumes, Buenos Aires, 1932), are the two most comprehensive biographies of Argentina’s famous hero of the independence epoch.
3 Valega, J. M., La Gesta Emancipadora del Perú (10 volumes, Lima, 1941), III, 1–20 Google Scholar.
4 The Hispanic American Congress of History, meeting in Madrid in October, 1949, after discussing the problems of independence agreed that the Spanish American revolutions were not isolated episodes, the explanation of which was to be sought in the brusque actuation of one or more concrete causes, but constituted a complete spiritual process, grounded in universal history, for comprehension of which the profound understanding of pre-revolutionary history is essential. El Comercio, Lima, October 30, 1949.
5 Quirós, Mariana Santos, Colección de Leyes, Decretos, y Ordenes (7 volumes, Lima, 1840), I, 21 Google Scholar.
6 Ibid., 23.
7 Ibid., 16, 24, 30, 52, 65, 74, 83.
8 San Martín to Torre Tagle, March 15, 1821, in Correspondencia Inédita del General José de San Martín con el Marqués de Torre Tagle en los Años de 1820 a 1822 en el Perú. Indice extractado por el Doctor Don José Ortiz de Zevallos Vidaurre y Tagle (Asunción, 1933), No. 22.
9 Quirós, op. cit., I, 52.
10 Gaceta del Gobierno de Lima Independiente, January 5, 1822. This government organ will be referred to hereafter as Gaceta.
11 Gaceta, October 17, 1821.
12 Quirós, op. cit., I, 92.
13 Gaceta, January 25, 1822.
14 Quirós, op. cit., I, 102.
15 Oviedo, Juan, Colección de Leyes, Decretos, y Ordenes Publicadas en el Perú desde el Año de 1821 hasta 31 de Diciembre de 1859 (Lima, 1861), L 15 Google Scholar.
16 Juan Basilio Cortegano in an inedited manuscript entitled Historia del Perú and located in the archives of the National Library in Lima gives an instructive account of this society in chapter 1 of volume 11. It was written in 1858.
17 Monteagudo’s Memoria sobre los Principios Políticos que Seguí en la Administración del Perú y Acontecimientos Posteriores a mi Separación (Santiago de Chile, 1823), claims credit for a number of the reforms attributed in this paper to San Martin Written in Quito, the original manuscript of the booklet is now in the library of San Andrés University, La Paz, Bolivia.
18 Gaceta, January 12, 1822.
19 Quirós, op. cit., I, 39.
20 Gaceta, September 16, 1822.
21 Quirós, op. cit., I, 20.
22 Gaceta, October 17, 1821.
23 Gaceta, August 24, 1822.
24 Gaceta, September 18,1822.
25 The cause of San Martin’s retirement is a subject of controversy among South American historians. His own explanation, written in a letter to William Miller, April 19, 1827, from self-imposed exile in Brussels, was that he withdrew in order to make possible the coming of General Simón Bolívar with sufficient reinforcements from Colombia to guarantee victory over the strong Spanish army in Peru. This viewpoint is the theme of a book by Capitán de Fragata Jacinto R. Yaben, Por los Fueros de Gral. San Martín (Buenos Aires, 1950). It is contradicted by Vicente Lecuna in La Entrevista de Guayaquil, Publicaciones de la Academia de la Historia de Venezuela (Caracas, 1948), which incidentally was printed in Buenos Aires.
26 San Martin to Tomás Guido, January 6, 1827, Documentos del Archivo de San Martín (12 vols., Buenos Aires, 1910), VI, 512.
27 Rojas, Ricardo, El Santo de la Espada (Buenos Aires, 1940), 10 Google Scholar.
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