Felipe Pigna
05/29/2020 - 7:01
- Clarín.com
- Live
His name was Manuel Belgrano and he had been born in Buenos Aires on June 3, 1770. He studied at the Colegio de San Carlos and then in Spain , at the Universities of Valladolid and Salamanca.
He arrived in Europe in the middle of the French Revolution and lived intensely the climate of the time. Thus he was able to come into contact with the ideas of Rousseau, Voltaire, Adam Smith and Quesnay.
He became interested in the physiocracy, which emphasized the land as a source of wealth, and in the liberalism of Adam Smith , who had written in 1776 that "The wealth of the Nations" was in the work of its inhabitants, in the capacity of transform raw materials into manufacturing. Belgrano thought that both theories were complementary in a land with so much natural wealth to exploit.
Manuel Belgrano was a firm promoter of the national industry. / Archive
In 1794, he returned to Buenos Aires with the title of lawyer and with the appointment of First Secretary of the Consulate , granted by King Carlos IV. The consulate was a colonial body dedicated to promoting and controlling economic activities.
From that position, Belgrano set out to put his ideas into practice.
Bearer of an innovative thought for his context, he was the first to speak of the environment, warning about the contamination of rivers and the need to take care of the soil , promoting the rotation and innovation of crops.
He arrived in Europe in the middle of the French Revolution and lived intensely the climate of the time. Thus he was able to come into contact with the ideas of Rousseau, Voltaire, Adam Smith and Quesnay.
Felipe Pigna Historian
He promoted popular education from his famous Memories of the Consulate , in the mid-1790s, where he proposed that this fundamental item for the development of societies should be compulsory and at the expense of the State; He also donated the cash prize awarded for his successes in Salta and Tucumán for the construction of four schools.
He was the first to speak of gender in these lands, proposing that women have equal access to all levels of education.
He was a notable promoter of the industry, creating the technical drawing school, laying the foundations for the necessary complementarity between livestock and agricultural productions. He gave practical advice for the best performance of the land and recommended the system used in Germany, which made parish priests true guides for farmers.
Manuel Belgrano, creator of the national flag. / Archive
He criticized the merchants who had the exclusivity of trade with Spain and called to avoid "the great monopolies that are run in this capital, by those men who only aspire to their own interest, or who cares nothing about the most useful class to the State , the productive class, lives in the misery and nudity that is a consequence of these procedures so repugnant to nature, and that the same religion and laws detest ”.
In Memory of the Consulate of 1802, he presented an industrialist plea: “All educated nations strive to ensure that their raw materials do not leave their states to be manufactured, and all their efforts to achieve, not only reshape them , but even attract those from abroad to execute the same. And then sell them. "
It is a wise thought, advanced for the time, of an actuality that amazes, admires and saddens at the same time, because more than 200 years have passed since they were written and many of the problems raised by our first economist are still waiting to be addressed and prosecuted , and the solutions proposed by one of the most lucid minds of our revolution, continue to find no echo in those who could take advantage of them by fulfilling Belgrano's last dream expressed on his deathbed, in the midst of strict poverty, on June 20, 1820: "I hope that the good citizens of this land will work to remedy their misfortunes."
EM