Arroyo Grande, Battle of

Battle of Arroyo Grande, a major engagement in the Platine civil wars fought on 5 December 1842. In the midst of Uruguay's Guerra Grande, the gaucho army of General Fructuoso Rivera crossed into Argentine territory and campaigned successfully against the military forces of the Buenos Aires strongman Juan Manual de Rosas. At the beginning of December 1842, however, Rosista troops under the command of General Manual Oribe met Rivera's army at Arroyo Grande, on the right bank of the Uruguay River in Entre Ríos, and decisively defeated it, eliminating 3,000 men and capturing a wealth of munitions in the process. This victory made it possible for Oribe to carry the fight immediately onto Uruguayan soil, where his troops were soon besieging Montevideo. A very energetic participant in the Arroyo Grande struggle, under Oribe's command, was Justo José de Urquiza, who at that time was only a minor Entrerriano cavalry officer, but who would soon be the most important political figure in the Littoral provinces.

See alsoRivera, Fructuoso .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Telmo Manacorda, Fructuoso Rivera, el perpetuo defensor de la república Oriental (1946); The Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. 3 (1985), pp 645-647.

Additional Bibliography

Goldman, Noemí, and Ricardo Donato Salvatore. Caudillismos rioplatenses: Nuevas miradas a un viejo problema. Buenos Aires: Eudeba, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universdad de Buenos Aires, 1998.

Halperín Donghi, Tulio, and Jorge Raúl Lafforgue. Historias de caudillos argentinos. Buenos Aires: Extra Alfaguara, 1999.

Szuchman, Mark D., and Jonathan C. Brown, eds. Revolution and Restoration: The Rearrangement of Power in Argentina, 1776–1860. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994.

                                    Thomas L. Whigham