Money shot #2: Día de San Martín
José de San Martín, 5 peso note.
Today is a big holiday in Argentina, Día de San Martín. It commemorates one of South America’s great revolutionaries. José de San Martín was born in Argentina but educated in Spain during the great struggles that occurred on both continents. He returned to Argentina to help it throw off the yoke of the French viceroyalty, but the struggle soon turned into a war with Spain itself. San Martín is not only an Argentine hero; he also played key roles in liberating Chile and Peru. The Spanish royalists in Chile were prepared for an attack on the Pacific coast, but it never occurred to them that anyone could move an army over the Andes. San Martín could and did, in just 17 days leading over 5,000 men (and twice as many mules, plus artillery…) over a pass 4,300 meters high, and succeeded in surprising the very hell out of and defeating the Spanish forces in Chile. Then, reinforced by British sea power, he took his army north into Peru.
Although Día de San Martín commemorates the anniversary of his death rather any of his many famous battles, it is this crossing of the cordillera that is remembered with the day’s traditional dish, locro. Locro is a rich and hearty stew which is eaten in memorial solidarity with those poor soldiers who suffered over the Andes to reach the west coast. It is mainly made out whatever you’ve got, a meal of expediency. It uses ample quanitities of animal parts, not all of which are identifiable, and even if they could be identified I doubt you would want anyone to do it for you. They would probably be the last ones you would eat and only if you were starving in the Andes and had not read Alive. On my first dinner out in Argentina, my hostess leaned across the table and asked me in a clear, genteel voice, “How are you enjoying the bowels? Have some more bowels! Do you eat a lot of bowels in North America?” Stop saying ‘bowels’, for the love of god. I am trying to eat here. Granted, bowels, but that’s my point exactly.
The hero of the five-peso note was active at the same time as Simon Bolivar. While San Martín was liberating Argentina and marching across the cordillera into Chile and north into Peru, Bolivar had been achieving comparable things in Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador. The two liberating forces met up at Guayaquíl, Ecuador, in July 1822 (the detail at left shows the famous encounter between San Martín and Bolivar). To this day no one knows exactly what took place in their secret meeting, but its result was that Jose de San Martín quietly bowed out of the unfinished campaigns of liberation, leaving Bolivar in unchallenged control, and returned to Europe, where he drifted in self-imposed exile until his death in Bolougne, France on this date in 1850.
In Money shot #1 I wrote about the 1,000 SIT note.
Comments (3)
How interesting that you write this while staying at our electricity free house… have you been sneaking out at night?
Comment by Airdna — Friday 19 August 05 @ 03.03 MDT+2.00
It’s magic, isn’t it?
Comment by sgazzetti — Saturday 20 August 05 @ 17.56 MDT+2.00
Believe it or not, in Athens there is an Argentine Republic Square, in the middle of the busy Alexandra Avenue. They have a monumental bust of San Martín in it and a plaque reading in Greek and Spanish: “José de San Martín, Liberator of Peoples”. When on a recent trip to Athens, the Peruvian Ambassador had left a wreath… it was 17.VIII.
Comment by Loxias — Tuesday 29 August 06 @ 15.29 MDT+2.00