Dorrego, Manuel

(1787 –1828) was governor of Buenos Aires in 1820, and then again from 1827 to 1828. He joined the Army of the North, under the command of Manuel Belgrano and fought in the battles of Tucumán and Salta. He studied federalism in the United States, and came to the conclusion that each state of a country should have some autonomy, rejecting the strong centralization into a single government. He returned to Buenos Aires in 1819 and was appointed as interim governor, and fought against the army of Alvear. He was banished in 1820 and moved to Peru, where he met Simón Bolívar. He supported his ideas of unifying the entire continent into a giant federation. Dorrego opposed the government of the Unitarian Bernardino Rivadavia, the first president of Argentina. When Rivadavia resigned the legislature appointed Dorrego as governor of the Buenos Aires province. He took measures to support the poor people and promoted a federal organization of the country. The Argentine troops were not happy with Dorrego , and encouraged by the Unitarian party, Juan Lavalle led a coup against Dorrego, who was defeated, and then executed. Lavalle began a period of political violence against the Federals, but he was defeated and forced to resign by Juan Manuel de Rosas, who restored the institutions that existed before Lavalle’s coup.