Posadas, Gervasio Antonio de (1757–1833)

Gervasio Antonio de Posadas (b. 19 June 1757; d. 2 July 1833), Argentine political leader of the independence period. Born in Buenos Aires to Felipe Santiago de Posadas and María Antonia Dávila, Posadas studied languages, philosophy, and theology in the Franciscan convent of that city. Despite his initial ambivalence about the revolutionary cause, an uncertainty that landed him in jail in 1811, Posadas eventually held various high-level positions in the patriot regime. They included membership in the general assembly and the triumvirate in 1813 and the supreme directorate the following year. Bartolomé Mitre described him as an "objective observer with common sense in whom seriousness and humor were combined." Posadas was not seen in that light, however, by his enemies. In 1815 he was exiled for almost six years after the revolt against Carlos María de Alvear, his relative and a political ally. His autobiography was completed before his death. An 1833 order for a monument honoring Posadas to be erected in the Recoleta Cemetery of the capital has yet to be implemented.

See alsoArgentina: The Nineteenth Century .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Carlos Alberto Silva, El Poder Legislativo y la Nación Argentina (1937).

Jacinto R. Yaben, Biografías argentinas y sudamericanas, vol. 4 (1938–1940), pp. 701-704.

Arturo Capdevila, Vidas de grandes argentinos, vol. 2 (1966), pp. 381-385.

Additional Bibliography

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

                                      Fidel Iglesias