Caaguazú, Battle of
Caaguazú, Battle of
Battle of Caaguazú (28 November 1841), a major victory of Unitarist general José María Paz in the Argentine civil wars. It was fought on the bank of the Corrientes River in the province of the same name, which was maintaining a precarious independence vis-à-vis the dictatorship of Juan Manuel de Rosas. Corrientes had placed its forces under the command of Paz, who faced a large invading force led by Rosas's ally General Pascual Echagüe, governor of neighboring Entre Ríos. Having worn down the invaders by delay, Paz employed a masterful combination of battlefield tactics to virtually annihilate the enemy force. The victory gave Corrientes a breathing spell but did not break the power of Rosas, whose armies had meanwhile crushed Unitarist forces elsewhere in the country. Moreover, disunity among Paz, the governor of Corrientes, and their ally Uruguayan president Fructuoso Rivera precluded taking full advantage of the military success.
See alsoPaz, José María; Rosas, Juan Manuel de; Unitario.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
José María Paz, Memorias, vol. 4 (1968), chaps. 30-31.
Pablo Santos Muñoz, Años de lucha (1841–1845): Urquiza y la política del litoral rioplatense (1973), chaps. 1-2.
Additional Bibliography
Goldman, Noemí and Ricardo Donato Salvatore. Caudillismos rioplatenses: Nuevas miradas a un viejo problema. Buenos Aires: Eudeba, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universdad de Buenos Aires, 1998.
Halperín Donghi, Tulio, and Jorge Raúl Lafforgue. Historias de caudillos argentinos. Buenos Aires: Extra Alfa-guara, 1999.
Szuchman, Mark D., and Jonathan C. Brown, eds. Revolution and Restoration: The Rearrangement of Power in Argentina, 1776–1860. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994.