Historians Santafesinos, liberals and vindicators: two views on Estanislao López. A comparative perspective

Abstract

From the last quarter of the nineteenth century a set of vindicatory stories about the national past appeared in the Argentine provinces. In Santa Fe, Ramón Lassaga opted with his Historia de López (1881) for "redressing" the memory of the warlordism accused in the porteño-centric stories of "localist", to "demonstrate" his contributions to national unity. This work operated as a precursor of a local vindicatory historiography that, from the 20th century, found in J. L. Busaniche one of its continuators. In Estanislao López and the federalism of the coast (1927), the latter tried to "prove" that the federal leaders had been the true initiators of liberal democracy, contrary to the insults expressed by the "unitary" and "official" historiography.Therefore, in this article we will analyze the stories of these two authors from Santa Fe, Liberals and Vindicators, to demonstrate that in the period in which both works emerge the historiographical landscape was richer and more varied than what was thought for a long time. Even, certain features that, in the following decade, were presented as "novel" by the revisionists can be noticed.