Read down for an insight into the period of Argentina's independence.
The drive for independence in Argentina was partly a response to events in Europe, where Spain was initially allied to Napoleonic France. In 1806 and 1807 the British, at war with Napoleon and attracted by what they thought were revolutionary tensions in Buenos Aires, made two attempts to seize the city but were defeated. In 1808 Napoleon invaded Spain, deposing King Ferdinand VII, and provoking widespread resistance from Spanish guerrilla armies. Throughout Spanish America the colonial elites debated where their loyalties lay: to Napoleon's brother Joseph, now officially King? to Ferdinand, now in a French prison? to the Viceroy? to the Spanish resistance parliament in Cadiz?
On 25 May 1810, the cabildo of Buenos Aires deposed the viceroy and established a junta to govern on behalf of King Ferdinand VII, when the city's people gathered in front of the cabildo wearing pale blue and white ribbons, soon to become the colours of the Argentine flag. This move provoked resistance in outlying areas of the viceroyalty, Paraguay, Uruguay and Upper Peru (Bolivia) breaking away from the rule of Buenos Aires. Factional rivalry within the junta between supporters of independence and their opponents added to the confusion and instability.
Six years later, in July 1816, when Buenos Aires was threatened by invasion from Peru and blockaded by a Spanish fleet in the Río de la Plata, a national congress held at Tucumán declared independence. The declaration was given reality by the genius and devotion of José de San Martín, who boldly marched an Argentine army across the Andes to free Chile, and embarked his forces for Peru, where he captured Lima, the first step towards liberation. San Martín was aided by an extraordinary feat from a local caudillo in the north, Martín Miguel de Güemes, whose army of gauchos was later to liberate Salta. Caudillos were local warlords who governed areas far larger, even, than today's provinces, organizing their own armies of local indigenous groups and gauchos. The caudillos did not recognize the Tucumán declaration, but so it was on 9 July 1816 that the United Provinces of the River Plate came into being.
