Quesada, Vicente Gregorio (1830–1913)

An Argentine legal adviser, essayist, and politician, Vicente Quesada was born on April 5, 1830, in Buenos Aires and moved to the province of Corrientes in 1853. In that year Buenos Aires backed down from the commitment made by all Argentine provinces, in the Pact of San Nicolás, to ratify a new national constitution. In 1856 Quesada was elected deputy to the Paraná congress for the province of Corrientes, and he also worked as a journalist. In 1871 President Domingo F. Sarmiento appointed him director of the Buenos Aires Public Library, which later became the National Library.

In 1875, following a trip to Europe, he published his controversial book, La Patagonia y las tierras australes del continente Americano, which made the claim, against that of Chile, that Argentina was the exclusive heir to Patagonia. In 1877 he was appointed minister of government for the province of Buenos Aires and in 1878 was elected deputy to the National Congress. In 1881 he published El vierreinato del Río de la Plata, 1776–1819, again motivated by the border disputes between Argentina and Chile. In this book he forcefully developed the legend of the Viceroyalty of La Plata as a great nation conceived by Charles III of Spain and forever lost by the actions of incompetent Argentine governments. This legend was to create a school within Argentina's liberal or revisionist territorial nationalism. In 1883 President Julio Argentino Roca appointed Quesada to be a special envoy to the empire of Brazil. He continued diplomatic life in the United States, Mexico, France, Spain, and Germany until 1904. On his return to Argentina, he chaired the Academy of Philosophy and Letters at the University of Buenos Aires. In 1910 Quesada published his renowned work, La vida intelectual en la América española durante los siglos XVI, XVII y XVIII. He died in Argentina on September 19, 1913.

See alsoArgentina: The Nineteenth Century; Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cavaleri, Paulo. La restauración del Virreinato: Orígenes del nacionalismo territorial argentino. Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, 2004.

Halperín Donghi, Tulio. Una nación para el desierto argentino. Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1995.

Quesada, Vicente G. [under the name Víctor Gálvez]. Memorias de un viejo [1888]. Buenos Aires: Academia Argentina de Letras, 1990.

                                Vicente Palermo