Viamonte, Juan José (1774–1843)
Viamonte, Juan José (1774–1843)
Juan José Viamonte (b. 9 February 1774; d. 31 March 1843), Argentine military officer and governor of Buenos Aires. Born in Buenos Aires, Viamonte began a professional military career in the late colonial period. He opposed the British Invasions of 1806–1807, and after the May Revolution of 1810 he joined the first disastrous expedition of the Argentine patriots to Upper Peru. He later took part in the struggle against Federalist dissidents of the littoral provinces and their Uruguayan protector, José Gervasio Artigas.
Viamonte retired from the military in 1822 but remained active in public life, serving as acting governor of Buenos Aires in 1829, just before the first governorship of Juan Manuel de Rosas. He became governor again in 1833, but his essential moderation and evenhanded treatment of Rosas's enemies infuriated the latter's supporters, who unleashed a campaign of terrorism. In 1834 Viamonte resigned, paving the way for Rosas to return to office. Increasingly disaffected, he moved in 1840 to Uruguay, where he died in Montevideo.
See alsoArgentina: The Colonial Period .
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Armando Alonso Piñeiro, Historia del general Viamonte y su época (1959); Vidas de grandes argentinos, vol. 3 (1963), pp. 305-312.