La Rioja

“ To make the ruin and decadence of civilization and the rapid progress of barbarism perceptible to the reader, I must select two cities—one already annihilated, the other insensibly proceeding towards barbarism—La Rioja and San Juan. La Rioja was formerly a city of some account, but its own sons would fail to recognize it in its present condition. When the revolution of 1810 began, it contained a large number of capitalists, and men of note, who have figured in a distinguished manner in arms, at the bar, on the bench, or in the pulpit. ”

“ Rioja (80) , a province of W. Argentina, embraces some of the most fruitful valleys of the Andes which grow cereals, vines, cotton, &c.; some mining in copper, silver, and gold is done. The capital, Rioja (6) , is prettily planted in a vine and orange district at the base of the Sierra Velasco 350 m. NW. of Cordoba.
Riom (10) , a pretty little French town in the dep. of Puy-de-Dôme, noted for its many quaint old houses of the Renaissance period; does a good trade in tobacco, linen, &c. ”

“ The province of San Juan, which adjoins that of Mendoza, occupies the space between the great Cordillera and the mountains of Cordova, as far north as the Llaños, or plains, of La Rioja. It is said to contain about 25,000 inhabitants, governed, at present, like those of Mendoza, and occupied very much in the same manner, in the cultivation of their vineyards and gardens, and in agricultural pursuits. ”

“ The Argentine province of La Rioja embraces vast tracts of sandy desert. Destitute of rivers, bare of trees, it is only by means of artificial and scanty irrigation that the peasant can cultivate a narrow strip of land. Inclosed by these arid wastes lies, nevertheless, a fertile region entitled the Plains, which, in despite of its name, is broken by ridges of hills, and supports a luxuriant vegetation with pastures trodden by unnumbered herds. The character of the people is Oriental ”

“ What chiefly brings these reminiscences of the East before my imagination is the truly patriarchal appearance of the country people of La Rioja. Thanks to caprices of fashion, there is now nothing unusual in seeing men with full beards, according to the immemorial practice of Eastern nations; but yet this fact would not wholly prevent the surprise naturally occasioned by the sight of a Spanish-speaking population among whom full beards, frequently descending to the chest, are, and always have been worn; a population of melancholy, silent, sedate, and crafty demeanor ”

“ The city of La Rioja, the Capital, is still in a state of arrested development, similarly with Catamarca, only even more so. It has not yet experienced sufficient prosperity to enable it to recover from the paralysing effects of the civil disturbances which raged in and around it for very many years after the overthrow of the Spanish rule. The people, the great majority of whom have a large admixture of native Indian blood, are, however, of a rather more lively and energetic disposition than their Catamarcan neighbours. ”

“ The portion skirting the Ebro forms a spacious and for the most part fertile undulating plain, called La Rioja, but in the south Logroño is considerably broken up by offshoots from the sierras which separate that river from the Douro. In the west the Cerro de San Lorenzo, the culminating point of the Sierra de la Demanda, rises 7562 ft., and in the south the Pico de Urbion reaches 7388 ft. The products of the province are chiefly cereals, good oil and wine (especially in the Rioja) , fruit, silk, flax and honey. ”

“ Facundo returned to La Rioja covered with glory, his country's creditor; and with testimonials of his conduct, to show in the Llanos, among gauchos, the new titles which justified the terror his name began to inspire; for there is something imposing, something which subjugates and controls others in the man who is rewarded for the assassination of fourteen men at one time. ”

“ What was the state of society, it will undoubtedly be inquired, in which the defeat of a handful of men could result in such a despotism? We have already glanced at the people of La Rioja,—at their dreamy, Oriental character, at their pastoral pursuits. ”

“ The Llanos of La Rioja are now deserted; their population has emigrated to San Juan; the cisterns are dry which once gave drink to thousands of flocks. Those Llanos which fed those flocks twenty years ago, are now the home of the tiger who has reconquered his former empire, and of a few families of beggars who live upon the fruit of the carob-tree. ”

“ San Juan has grown in population,—owing to the progress of agriculture there, and to the emigrants driven by hunger and wretchedness from La Rioja and San Luis,—and its buildings have sensibly increased in number; facts which prove the natural wealth of the region, and the progress that might be made under a government which cared to foster education and culture, the sole methods of elevating a nation. ”

“ A community of herdsmen, scattered over an extensive territory, and deprived at one blow of the two great families to whom they had been accustomed to look up, with infantine submission, as their God-appointed chiefs,—these were not the men to stand up, unprompted by a single master-mind, to rid themselves of one whose oppression was, after all, only a new form of the treatment to which, for an entire generation, they had been subjected. La Rioja and San Juan were the only two provinces in which Quiroga's heavy hand was felt continuously ”

“ During this anarchical period, the famous Artigas was harrying the Banda Oriental; Rosas and Lopez were preparing for their blood-stained careers; Bustos, Ibarra, and a host of other caudillos, ruled the interior provinces; and Juan Facundo Quiroga was raised to irresponsible power.
In his native province of La Rioja the mastery had for many years been disputed by two powerful houses, the Ocampos and the Dávilas, both descended from noble families in Spain. In the year 1820 the former were triumphant, and possessed all the authority then wielded in the province. ”

“ Facundo, a man imbued with the genius of barbarism, gets control of his country; the traditions of government disappear, established forms deteriorate, the law is a plaything in vile hands; and nothing is maintained, nothing established, amid the destruction thus accomplished by the trampling feet of horses. Freedom from restraint, occupation, and care, is the supreme good of the gaucho. If La Rioja had contained statues, as it contained doctors, they would have had horses tied to them, but they would have served no other purpose. ”

“ His “Apollo and Daphne” is partly in ridicule of the culto style.
[918] “Desengaño del Amor en Rimas por Pedro Soto de Rojas,” Madrid, 1623, 4to. He was of Granada, and, as his sonnets show, a great admirer of Góngora.
[919] The poetry of Rioja was not published till near the end of the eighteenth century, when it appeared in the collections of Sedano and Fernandez in 1774 and 1797. The two odes of Rioja and Caro are printed together in the Spanish translation of Sismondi’s “History of Spanish Literature,” Sevilla, 1842, in the notes to which is the best account to be found of Rioja. ”

“ The laborer defends his master from all kinds of danger, even at the risk of his own life. These customs will of themselves furnish a partial explanation of the phenomena we are to witness.
After the event that occurred in his favor at San Luis, Facundo made his appearance on the Llanos invested with the prestige of his recent exploit, and fortified with a recommendation from the government. The parties dividing La Rioja were not slow to solicit the adhesion of a man regarded by all with the respect and dread always felt for deeds of unusual daring. ”

“ From La Rioja to Cordova it is 114 leagues, to Mendoza 159, and to Buenos Ayres by the nearest beaten route 287. To Guasco or Copiapo, the nearest towns in Chile, the length of the route by the Cordillera of Guandacol is 130 leagues:—this pass is said to be easy of transit, and has been often used to convey goods across the Cordillera from Chile, when the communication with Buenos Ayres has been closed.
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The people, as might be expected, are in a lamentable state of ignorance. ”

“ Brizuela was a sponge with vast capacity for imbibing brandy, a sort of wine-bottle, who governed admirably in Rioja. Some left the people to take care of themselves while they got up cock-fights and races; others shut up the government offices and passed months without making a decree or using any administrative forms whatever; others let things slide on easily, tolerating everything, but an intelligent lawyer or judge. ”

“ This final view from the culminating point of the roadway is one of the most striking of all.
In Spain it seems never permissible to travel entirely for pleasure. The gossips provide you a business if you have none ready to hand. In the Rioja district you are branded as a wine-bibber. In the Asturias you are promptly consigned to the mines. Such was my fate at Carreño, the little hamlet which sits astride the watershed. An aged crone was squatting on the hearth in the Venta, performing the functions of a meat-jack over the smouldering embers of the fire. ”

“ Such a man is a Grecian horse like that which the Trojans made haste to bring into the city.
At this time occurred at San Juan the unfortunate insurrection of the first regiment of the Andes, which had returned from Chili for reorganization. Francisco Aldao and Corro, foiled in the objects of the rebellion, undertook a calamitous retreat towards the north to join Güemes, a partisan chieftain of Salta. General Ocampo, Governor of La Rioja, took measures to bar their passage, and for that purpose called out all the forces of the province and made ready for a battle. ”

“ If the establishment of the present federal system be found of any real advantage, or gratifying to the ambition of some other provinces, the local situation and means of which may induce them to look forward with any confidence to improving their social condition; on the other hand I fear it must be fatal to those which, like La Rioja, are necessarily thrown by it upon resources which are palpably inadequate either to ensure them any tolerably efficient government for the present, or any likelihood of an improvement in their condition hereafter. ”

“ He chooses the most toilsome, the most unintellectual, but, at the same time, the most remunerative handicraft,—that of the tapiador, or builder of mud walls. At San Juan, in the orchard of the Godoys,—at Fiambalá, in La Rioja, in the city of Mendoza,—they will show you walls which the hands of General Facundo Quiroga, Comandante de Campaña, etc., etc., put together. Wherever he works, he is noted for the ascendency which he maintains over the other peons. They are entirely subject to his will; they do nothing without his advice ”

“ Facundo ordered all the inhabitants of Rioja to emigrate to the Llanos under pain of death, and the order was literally obeyed. It is hard to find a motive for this useless emigration. Quiroga was not apt to fear, yet he might have feared at the moment; for the Unitarios were raising an army in Mendoza to take posession of the government; Tucuman and Salta were on the north; and on the east, Cordova, Tablada, and General Paz ”

“ Catamarca, divided from Tucuman by the sierras of Aconquija, is one of those subordinate provinces which, like Rioja, owes its independence rather to its insignificance and secluded situation than to any pretensions which the people can have to govern themselves; properly it should be a dependency of the government of Tucuman, to which the Congress annexed it in 1814. ”

“ Facundo Quiroga sent several hundred gauchos from Rioja to aid the three colonels of Mendoza, who had assembled a considerable number of mountaineers. The government troops were exasperated at the inactivity in which they were kept by Albarado, and rebelled, insisting upon being led to battle. Finally the very sufferings of those who had felt the power of the Aldaos aroused them, and they went out to seek their enemies. ”

“ When the brothers Aldao were all powerful in Mendoza, and had not left in Rioja one man, old or young, married or single, who was able to carry arms, Facundo transported his head-quarters to San Juan, where there were still many wealthy Unitarios. ”

“ The northern face of the Montes Obarenes is much more broken than the southern; and as we run down from the pass into the pretty little town of Miranda, we may see, far away on our right,{284} that other great notch to the eastward where the Ebro forces its passage out into the Rioja plains. The Ebro is but young up here in the Vizcayan highlands; yet it is already a fine broad river; and the massive old stone bridge of Miranda, flanked by quaint houses and churches, makes a singularly attractive sample of Spanish scenery to the tourist newly arrived from Bayonne. ”

“ Was the least educated man most capable of judging of difficult political questions? Were such thinkers as Lopez, Ibarra, and Facundo, with their great historical, social, geographical, philosophical, and legal information to solve the problem of the proper organization for a state? Ah! let us lay aside the vain words that have deceived so many. Facundo turned against the government by which he was sent to Tucuman, for the same reason that he turned against Aldao who sent him to Rioja. ”

“ The name Lucronio or Logroño is first{201} mentioned in a document toward the middle of the eleventh century. The date of its foundation is absolutely unknown, and all that can be said is that, once it had fallen into the hands of the monarchs of Castile (1076) , it grew rapidly in importance, out-shining the other three Rioja cities. It is seated on the southern banks of the Ebro in the most fertile part of the whole region, and enjoys a delightful climate. Since 1850 it has been raised to the dignity of an episcopal see. ”