"... without Union with the Others..." San Luis, between Material Constraints, Interprovincial Agreements and Constitutional Organization (1820-1824)

Abstract

The paper is concerned with the limitations of Argentinean provincial governments in meeting the costs of politics at the beginning of the 1820s. In particular, we examine the way in which these limitations manifested themselves in the province of San Luis, which was marked by successive wars and a deteriorated economic scenario. We start from the idea that, in the process of shaping a common political horizon, material constraints were always present, not only as one of the motivations for the maintenance of interprovincial links, but also, paradoxically, as one of the obstacles to the effective participation of the provinces in supra-provincial projects and, in that sense, as an object of negotiation with the power groups in Buenos Aires. On the basis of these assumptions, the terms of the pacts and treaties signed by San Luis prior to the constituent congress of 1824-1827 and the material conditions for its participation in that meeting are analysed. For this purpose, unpublished sources from the Archives of the Province of San Luis and the Archivo General de la Nación are used, complemented with the available published documentation.