Juan Manuel Rosas ruled over the Argentine provinces through edicts that he personally issued. Rosas had a group of secretaries who took his correspondence. One of the secretaries was Antonino Reyes, who worked for Rosas through 1840. His manuscript memoir resides in the Notre Dame Libraries.
On the pages shown here, Reyes describes working for Rosas. Each secretary must be in good health to keep up with Rosas’ frenetic schedule of working for several hours every day and usually into the early morning hours. Sundays and holidays meant little to Rosas, he worked through them. When Rosas traveled to his ranch, he often required a scribe to travel with him. If a scribe did not travel with him, he regularly requested that a scribe join him. This important memoir gives us a view of Rosas’ style of governing on a day-to-day basis.
Ironically, Reyes would live in exile in Uruguay after the fall of Rosas, just as many of Rosas' critics did during his rule.
