There was a tendency in the 19th century for our rulers to have eastern allies. Rosas had the invaluable assistance of the “head-cutter” Oribe, Sarmiento with Ambrosio Sandes and Miter with Venancio Flores. Flores’ biography is varied and abundant in both Uruguay and Argentina. A special chapter to mention would be the seizure of power by force over the government of the Banda Oriental and the subsequent involvement of his country in the war against Paraguay in 1865. For the Cephaleuta, an important fact is his participation as general of the Army of Buenos Aires in the Argentine civil wars. In the battle of Cañada de Gómez, today a street suggestively located in La Matanza (in addition to Ezeiza and Hurlingham), the unitary victory over the Confederation troops is commemorated.
After the Battle of Pavón, on September 17, 1861—in which Urquiza was winning until he retreated and in which Miter was retreating until he was told that he had won—a good number of Confederation troops were quartered in Cañada de Gómez waiting for Urquiza’s orders. The orders never arrived. Urquiza barricaded itself in his province and the National Army remained guarding the passage of the Carcarañá River. On the night of November 22, 1861, a surprise attack by the Buenos Aires army, commanded by Flores along with Genoese troops, ended in the slaughter of hundreds of federal soldiers. The numbers are disparate. Flores himself gives the number 190 dead from the “Retrograde Party” against two of his slightly wounded soldiers. His superior, Gelly and Obes, horrified by the massacre, put the number at 300. The difference in casualties between both sides gives an idea of the kind of “executions” to which the taking of prisoners could have led. . Gelly y Obes himself writes to the governor of Buenos Aires, Don Pastor Obligado:
“The incident at Cañada de Gómez is one of those very common weapons incidents, unfortunately, in our wars, which after knowing its results terrifies the victor, when he is not from the school of terrorism. This is what happens to General Flores, and that is why he does not want to say in detail what has happened. “There are more than 300 dead, and about 150 prisoners, while for our part, we have only had two dead and five wounded.”
Among the survivors of the federal army was the poet José Hernández with the rank of sergeant. On the side of Buenos Aires, however, the writer-colonels Ascasubi, del Campo, Sarmiento and Miter participated. Ascasubi (streets in Glew, Wilde and Longchamps remember him) was, in fact, in charge of hiring Venancio Flores’ mercenaries in Europe. Due to the efforts of the poet Ascasubi, Martín Fierro’s great poem could well have not existed. Thanks to the work of the prose writer Sarmiento, it somehow exists: ten years after the events of Cañada de Gómez, José Hernández locked himself in a small hotel in the center since Sarmiento, then president of the Republic, had put a price on his head. And in confinement José Hernández—with nothing else to do—writes his Martín Fierro.
Local historiography remembers Cañada de Gómez either as a combat or as a massacre depending on the sensitivity, whether liberal or revisionist. Although the name was awarded as a celebration of the victory that it represented for the Buenos Aires Party, Cañada de Gómez Street is located, notoriously, in La Matanza. There are also them in CABA, (in the Mataderos neighborhood), in Hurlingham and in Ezeiza. The tourism of this story leads us to think that Pavón’s victory, and the bloody reaffirmation of Cañada de Gómez, opened the way to new toponyms. Without Miter in triumph, Glew, Wilde, Longchamps, Hurlingham—where Ascasubi and Cañada de Gómez are located today—perhaps they would have maintained the Creole dye of Centinela, Gaitán, Paso Morales and La Magdalena.
Flores died in 1868 from nine stab wounds in an ambush on a street in Montevideo. The crime occurred during a revolt of the White Party, although there is evidence that the murderers could have come from a faction of the same party, the Colorado.
In the heat of the moment, in the middle of February, Flores’ body was wrapped in a flag and left in the Cabildo while the Colorados settled scores for ten days against the whites of the city. Once revenge was satisfied, his supporters wanted to honor him. However, by that time the leader was already in clear decomposition. An outbreak of cholera inside the building caused the death of twenty people, including Manuel Flores, brother of the murdered man. At his time it was said that the presence of the corpse had contributed to infecting the building. An embalmer was called for the funeral. Some versions indicate that he was a German doctor, others an English or Irish doctor named Fleury. Also mentioned are an Italian bird taxidermist and a chemist, named Ísola, of the same nationality, finally a doctor from Buenos Aires with the last name Estrada. Most accounts agree that Flores’ body was so unrecoverable that the officiant—whether German, etc.—had to cut off the head and replace the body with a straw doll.
The existing photo of the funeral shows Venancio Flores displayed with saber and hat, recessed and vertical inside his coffin. His head is tucked inside his shoulders in a way that makes one suspect that the story is true. Here is a narration from Dr. Brendel who assigns the Irishman Louis Fleury the sad task:
«Not much could be done, due to the intense heat, the body rotted. Then she cut him off. [Fleury] the dead man’s head, placed the body in alcohol inside a barrel and replaced it with a uniformed straw doll. It was difficult to keep it steady at first, so a pole was chosen that was embedded in wood like a scarecrow. At some point during the official wake, the coffin had to be moved to another room, then the doll came loose, spread out, and they had to screw it down at shoulder height with wires and nails. With his head there was less luck, the heat ended up surrounding her with flies and since it was poorly adjusted, she sank completely rotten between the straw and the golden shine of the dress uniform. Finally, the body left in the barrel stank so badly that they ended up burying it at night and in secret.
The official history did not record these inconveniences, but the funerals agreed by the General Command of Arms for Wednesday, February 26, were suspended in view of the fact that the doctors “indicated how dangerous it would be” due to the possible typhus epidemic that devastated the city. eastern population every summer.
This is the second note in the series Goliath’s Body, about place names of beheaded people in the province of Buenos Aires.
