page_title: Gregorio Funes
section_title: The May Revolution
hierarchical_section_title: Gregorio Funes / Biography / The May Revolution
caption_attribution_description: Español: Gazeta extraordinaria del 15 de abril de 1811 acerca de la revolución de los orilleros.
context_page_description: Gregorio Funes, also known as Deán Funes, was an Argentine clergyman, educator, historian, journalist and lawmaker who played a significant role in his nation's early, post-independence history.
context_section_description: Funes was the first Córdoba official to support the May Revolution of 1810, and contributed significantly to its success by informing the Argentine government, the Primera Junta, of an alliance between Governor Juan Gutiérrez de la Concha and former Viceroy Santiago de Liniers, who was organizing a counter-revolution. This report prompted a campaign against the latter by the Army of the North, which captured Liniers and the governor, and which established patriot control over Córdoba. Funes himself urged the army to return the captured leaders alive, though these were ultimately executed en route to Buenos Aires.
  He was elected as a representative to the Junta Grande upon its replacement of the Primer Junta regime on December 18, 1810. The inclusion of representatives from the hinterland to the government was not unanimously supported, however, and Funes attempted to placate tensions by proposing a system of provincial juntas.  The decree, enacted on February 11, 1811, also provided for the establishment of local juntas, and became the first form of federal government in Argentina, as well as the guarantor of continued political unity during the Argentine War of Independence.
  Funes supported Junta President Cornelio Saavedra, who shared by federalist outlook, and was appointed to the Junta following a failed, April 5 uprising by forces partial to Buenos Aires, and opposed to a Junta they viewed as unacceptably dominated by provincial figures. Funes directed the Gazeta de Buenos Ayres, the official Junta newsletter, and El Argos de Buenos Aires, the leading business publication, during his tenure, and encated laws bolstering freedom of the press despite the ongoing conflict with opponents. He also pressed for direct Junta control the granting of charters, deeming this the most important of the body's jurisdictions.
  Saavedra's absence led to a crisis on September 8, when the former was unseated. Funes was appointed to replace Saavedra as head of the Junta, which was stripped of executive authority and placed under the aegis of a Triumvirate. He attempted to compromise by enacting a Decree of Organic Regulation to more clearly define separation of powers and other considerations. This decree, the first legal code in the fledgling nation's history, was nullified by the Triumvirate's First Secretary, Bernardino Rivadavia, however, who refused to offer or accept concessions to the now powerless Junta.
  The Triumvirate's own frictions with the Regiment of Patricians, which they believed too autonomous for a military force of such scale, provided Funes with an opportunity to unseat the new regime when, on December 6, the Patricians rebelled against the regime in what became known as the Mutiny of the Braids. A counterinsurgency attack by Colonel José Rondeau quelled the revolt by December 11, however, and Funes was formally charged with sedition. The Junta was formally replaced by the Triumvirate on December 22, and Funes' sentence was commuted the following January.
caption: Communiqué authored by Dean Funes in defense of the Junta, printed in the Gazeta de Buenos Ayres
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