Reason and general will. Between rosista unanimism and Alberdi's political Project

Abstract

After the independence revolutions in Latin America, a certain "traditionalism" would still persist in the Latin American societies that emerged after the rupture of the colonial bond. When the ideas and principles of modern politics were introduced into the
new American republics, they were to undergo a series of alterations or "deviations" as a result of the interaction with those traditional imaginaries. And it is this kind of mixture that will make possible the emergence of the caudillista phenomenon within
the Rio de la Plata area. The Rosas government was no exception to this interpretative matrix. The regime presided over by Juan Manuel de Rosas was characterized as a "unanimist" type of regime. Certain historiographical approaches have seen the
appearance of governments characterized as unanimist as unequivocal proof of the persistence of traditionalist prejudices in the region. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the series of controversies that occurred between the Rosista government
and Juan Bautista Alberdi between 1837 and 1842. The hypothesis that we will try to demonstrate is that the unanimism of the Rosas government and the criticisms made of it by the opponents of the Rosas regime do not have their origin in the survival of
certain traditional imaginaries in the rioplatense society and that that concept (unanimism) does not refer unequivocally to a traditional conceptual horizon, but, on the contrary, both unanimism and the criticisms made of it are not at all alien to modern
politics and have their origin, precisely, in the constitutive aporias inherent to political modernity.