Political Armies, Revolutionary Warfare: The Army of the Andes after Rio de la Plata State's Collapse, 1810–24

In the Rio de la Plata landscape, after the legitimacy crisis opened by Ferdinand VII’s capture, Revolution and War became the two faces of one single struggle. The revolutionary government knew that its fate lay as much in military victory over the Royalists as in the type of militarization that would be implemented in order to achieve it. If a centralized State was to emerge from the ashes of the colonial administration, the population would have to be mobilized in a disciplined and subordinated fashion. All efforts were thus focused on the creation of regular armies, capable of at once winning the war and reestablishing political order. However, this project was soon condemned as the coming of a second tyranny, and the type of military mobilization it proposed met fierce popular resistance. Irregular local forces emerged and, in 1820, the Central State finally collapsed.

This paper examines the fate of the lone regular army that survived this crisis. Refusing to dissolve itself, this force began acting as an independent entity endowed with quasi-political attributes. It signed alliances with foreign States, attacked enemy territories and even partook in the creation of new independent republics. Through the study of this anomalous case, this paper will shed light on the particular nature of both military forces and political institutions in a revolutionary context. In situations of extreme political instability and protracted warfare, the line that usually divides military forces from political entities becomes blurred, giving way to a complex dynamic of fragmented state-building and civil struggles.