Republic of Entre Ríos

The Republic of Entre Ríos was the short-lived South American republic of the early nineteenth century, covering some 166,980 square kilometres of what are now the Argentine provinces of Entre Ríos and Corrientes. The caudillo General Francisco Ramírez, styling himself supreme chief, founded it in 1820, and it lived barely a year before the campaign consumed its founder. Despite the republic in its title, Ramírez never truly meant an independent Entre Ríos; the name was a political statement against the monarchist and centralist ideas that then filled the politics of Buenos Aires. When Ramírez opened in April 1821 the campaign that killed him, he issued his proclamation as governor of Entre Ríos and supreme chief of its republic to the compatriots of Buenos Aires and its countryside. On 28 September 1821 Lucio Norberto Mansilla was elected governor of the province, and the republic was dissolved.