Community: San Martín at the Jockey Club

One would imagine that after almost two centuries there would be nothing new to say about Argentine independence hero José de San Martín, but lawyer Horacio Méndez Carreras has approached the subject from an original perspective – “San Martín as seen by his British contemporaries” was the title of his talk to the Jockey Club last Wednesday.

Several British veterans of the independence wars wrote up their memoirs (of which Méndez Carreras has a priceless collection, often first editions) upon their return but these invaluable sources have been neglected by Argentine historiography – sometimes out of ignorance, sometimes out of nationalistic prejudice and sometimes a refusal to accept any criticism of the national hero (Admiral Lord Thomas Cochrane’s account is especially acid due to disputes over the spoils of war).

These foreign observers always had an external perspective and sometimes a pri- vileged standpoint – thus Joseph Andrews witnessed the entire battle of San Lorenzo (1813) from the convent steeple, timing it (15 minutes) and counting the patriotic dead (eight). Several other British names came up in an informative talk with details of their military contributions and some interesting anecdotes – General William Miller (wounded seven times and a close friend who visited San Martín in European exile from Kent), John and William Parish Robertson, Samuel Haigh, Basil Hall (a sailor who met Napoleon in Saint Helena on his way out to Argentina in 1817) and Robert Proctor.

A decade of war from San Lorenzo to Junín and Ayacucho in 1824 fully narrated but just to put the military exploits in perspective, Méndez Carreras concluded by quoting Juan Bautista Alberdi as to the independence struggle breeding a cult of heroism at the expense of sound governance.