page_title: Mariano Moreno
section_title: Historical perspectives
hierarchical_section_title: Mariano Moreno / Legacy / Historical perspectives
caption_attribution_description: Español: El doctor Ricardo Levene durante la conferencia que pronunció el 23 de septiembre de 1936 sobre la personalidad de Mariano Moreno, en el salón de actos del Colegio, en presencia del Ministro de Justicia, el Rector, profesores y alumnos
context_page_description: Mariano Moreno was an Argentine lawyer, journalist, and politician. He played a decisive role in the Primera Junta, the first national government of Argentina, created after the May Revolution.
  Moreno was born in Buenos Aires in 1778. His father was Manuel Moreno y Argumosa, born in Santander, Spain, who arrived in the city in 1776 and married María del Valle. Mariano was the firstborn of the Moreno family and had thirteen brothers. During his youth he studied Latin, logic, and philosophy at San Carlos Royal College, followed by college studies of law at Chuquisaca. During these studies, he learned the new ideas of the Spanish Enlightenment. He married María Guadalupe Cuenca and returned to Buenos Aires, becoming a prominent lawyer for the Cabildo. Unlike most other criollos, he rejected the Carlotist project and the administration of Santiago de Liniers, joining instead the ill-fated mutiny of Álzaga against him. He worked for the next viceroy, Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros. He wrote the economic paper The Representation of the Landowners, which persuaded the viceroy to open trade with Britain.
context_section_description: Early Argentine historians described Mariano Moreno as the leader of the Revolution and a great historical man. Later liberal historians would embellish this portrayal even more. An example of this tendency is La Revolución de Mayo y Mariano Moreno by Ricardo Levene. Biographers would describe him as a serene statesman, a notable economist, a decided democrat, and a great leader. For those historians, Moreno would have been an Anglophile, and "The Representation of the Hacendados", the government platform of the May Revolution.
  Subsequently, revisionist authors would formulate accusations against him, while promoting  Saavedra as a popular leader. According to those authors, Moreno was a British agent, a demagogic caudillo, a paranoid, a mere man of theoretical ideas applying European principles that failed in the local context, wrongly portrayed as the leader of the Revolution by the liberal historiography. Año X by Hugo Wast is considered the harshest work against Moreno. Moreno was still considered an Anglophile but in a negative light. They blamed Moreno for the harsh policies of the Junta, considering him a terrorist or a predecessor of Marxism; liberal historians usually concealed these policies.
  Modern authors like Ernesto Palacio, Norberto Galasso, and Jorge Abelardo Ramos attempt to rescue the image of Moreno by avoiding both extremes: the sweet liberal Moreno and the horrible one written by revisionists. Those historians do not consider Bernardino Rivadavia a successor of Moreno, and the proposals to seek an alliance with Britain are not seen as the product of Anglophilia, but just an example of the limited options available to the Primera Junta. Similarly, they do not attribute much influence to the Representation..., considering it a mere work for a client that didn't really influence Cisneros, who would have allowed free trade for international contexts. The harsh policies are acknowledged, but not attributed specifically to Moreno, but rather to the whole Junta, and compared with similar royalist measures used to punish the Chuquisaca, the La Paz revolution, and the indigenous rebellion of Túpac Amaru II.
caption: Argentine historian Ricardo Levene during a conference about Mariano Moreno.
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