Taboada, Antonino (1814–1883)

A military man born in Santiago del Estero, Argentina, Antonino Taboada opposed Juan Manuel de Rosas's administrations (1828–1833 and 1835–1852) and battled the last federalist caudillos in the northern provinces in the 1860s. The child of an affluent and politically prominent family, Taboada was educated in Buenos Aires, where he tightened his links to the anti-Rosas unitarists led by General Juan Galo Lavalle. Persecuted by the Rosas police, in 1839 Taboada fled to Montevideo, Uruguay. Between 1840 and 1841Taboada led battles in Entre Ríos and Córdoba, where he was captured and sent to prison in Buenos Aires. Taboada escaped and returned to Montevideo. In 1849 he moved to Santiago de Chile and reinforced his political contacts with exiled politicians such as Bartolomé Mitre and Domingo Faustino Sarmiento.

After the fall of the Rosas regime in 1852, Taboada came back to Santiago del Estero. In 1853 Taboada defeated the troops led by General Celedonio Gutierrez, the governor of Tucumán, who had partially occupied Santiago. When Bartolomé Mitre became president of Argentina in 1862, the Taboada family was instrumental in making Santiago del Estero a liberal, pro-Mitre bastion in a mostly anti-Mitre region. Taboada organized the national army in the northwestern provinces and directed successive military campaigns against the montoneras (irregular troops) led by the last federalist caudillos. Taboada's troops claimed a major victory in April 1867: In Pozo de Vargas, La Rioja, they defeated the troops led by the rebel caudillo Felipe Varela. Historians consider that battle a landmark in Argentina's nation-making process.

See alsoArgentina: The Nineteenth Century; Lavalle, Juan Galo; Mitre, Bartolomé; Rosas, Juan Manuel de; Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino; Unitario.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Source

Los Taboada: Luchas de organización nacional, documentos seleccionados y coordinados, 3. vols. Buenos Aires: Bernabé y Cía., 1937.

Secondary Sources

Bazán, Armando. Historia del noroeste argentino. Buenos Aires: Plus Ultra, 1995.

Tenti de Laitán, María Mercedes. Historia de Santiago del Estero. Santiago del Estero, Argentina: Copistería Sigma, 2000.

                                    Valeria Manzano