The role of Tucumán in the construction of the national state: sovereignty, territories and supra-provincial powers, 1832-1838

Abstract

This article remarks the roll of Tucuman and the argentinian north provinces during the national state building in the XIX century, specially between the years 1832-1838. The purpose is to explore the plot of interprovincial cooperation and conflicts, the ways of understanding and practicing provincial sovereignty, and its eventual impact on the conformation of the federal system prior to the constitutional pact of 1853. The present work aims to document the representations about the nation and the formation of the state during the context indicated on the analysis of the institutional innovations recorded during this period. This last it imbricates with the study of the practices and forms of political representation in provincial, interprovincial and supraprovincial key, specifically during the time of the Northern Protectorate in 1836 and the years of war between the Argentinian confederation and the Peru-Bolivian confederation between 1837-1838 about the testimony of the protagonists. The central hypothesis of this article indicates that the Tucumán case revolts as a laboratory of the provinces of northern Argentina between 1832-1838 in the regulations and practice, forming an interregional power scheme that highlighted the confederal format as an instrument of political cohesion subject to relatively settled national political identities.