El momento Mitre. Rhetoric and aporias of a riverplate liberal nationalist republic

Abstract

There is a certain consensus among Argentine contemporary historians
about the existence of a gradual process of transformation of political
languages in the riverplate ́s 19th century. The thesis is that the political
elites that survived the rosista order justified and contributed to the transfer
of a social republican moment (1820-1852) to a liberal nationalist one
(1852-1880). In this paper we suggest the existence of an intermediate
political moment to those two most distal, which we will call Mitre moment
(1852-1874). The incorporation of this moment allows our understanding to
properly capture the gradualness and particularity of that political process of
semantic transformation. In this general context, our specific objectives are
three. In the first place, we will proceed to reconstruct the conceptual
displacements existing in the second half of the 19th century in three
especially relevant words: republic, federation and nation, as a political
context of enunciation and justification of the liberal nationalist mitrista
order. Secondly, we will explain the beginning, development and
paradoxical decline of that intermediate political moment, stopping us in its
rhetorical contributions to the nationalist liberal turn enunciated. In the third
place, we will offer arguments in defense of the hypothesis according to
which the liberal nationalist rhetorical apparatus mitrista allows to
demonstrate certain peculiarities and aporias of the riverplate nationalist
liberalism of the second half of the 19th century.