Buenos Aires: a new capital for a modern nation (1850-1888)

Abstract

With the ratification of the federal status of Buenos Aires on December 6, 1880, the so-called cuestión capital (the “capital” issue) of the Argentine Republic was resolved—leaving behind a toll of 2,500 dead and injured out of the 20,000 who had participated in the last and most violent chapter of the seventy-year dispute to define the seat of political authority. The battle for Buenos Aires was the end of a long confrontation between national and provincial governments, between civilians and the military, between political parties, between opposing figures, between different sectors of economic power. But it was also, without doubt, a fight for a place, for a city, that would bring together the material conditions necessary to house the federal government of an evolving modern nation. Through the example of Buenos Aires, I propose to revisit debates over the definition of the capital city from the viewpoint of theoretical political schemes that cross into the field of material representation, seen within the processes of nation-state formation in the mid-nineteenth century.