Elío, Francisco Javier (1767–1822)

Francisco Javier Elío (b. 4 March 1767; d. 4 September 1822), last viceroy of the Río de la Plata. Born in Navarre, Spain, he began his military career as a lieutenant in the defense of Oran and Ceuta in North Africa. Elío was sent to the Río de la Plata in 1805 with the rank of colonel, to command the Banda Oriental. Shortly after the first English invasion (1806), Viceroy Santiago de Liniers y Bremond named Elío interim governor of Montevideo. After the second English invasion (1807), he became one of Liniers's chief opponents and assumed the post of viceroy. After Liniers's successor, Cisneros, was relieved of his post by the Cabildo Abierto in May 1810, Elío returned to Spain and convinced the Regency Council to appoint him viceroy. The junta established in Buenos Aires refused to recognize his appointment, however, so he governed from Montevideo until he was forced from power by an anti-royalist uprising in the Banda Oriental. Elío returned to Spain in 1812 and became involved in Spanish political life. He was executed at Valencia.

See alsoBanda Oriental .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sociedad Rural Argentina, El virreinato del Río de la Plata, 1776–1810 (1976).

Guillermo F. De Nevares, Como se desintegró el virreinato del Río de la Plata y se consolidó Brasil (1987).

Additional Bibliography

Acevedo, Edberto Oscar. Controversias virreinales rioplatenses. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Ciudad Argentina, 1997.

Szuchman, Mark D., and Jonathan C. Brown. Revolution and Restoration: The Rearrangement of Power in Argentina, 1776–1860. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994.

                                      Susan Socolow