Colonial Administration
He was named Inspector of Colonies by a decree of president Miguel Juárez Celman on February 12, 1887. As a consequence of this role, he wrote A visit to the colonies of the Argentine Republic, written in Spanish in two volumes and submitted by the government to the Exposition Universelle in Paris. It was simultaneously published in French as Une visite aux colonies de la République Argentine.
On May 10, 1889, the national government commissioned Peyret to study the agricultural machinery displayed at the Exposition. He received six thousand pesos to cover his expenses and was to present a descriptive report before the end of the Exposition. His report was titled The Agricultural Machines at the Universal Exposition of Paris.
He left for France on June 5, 1889 aboard the Río Negro with his wife Celerina Pinget and daughter Alfonsina. Thirty-seven years had passed since his self-imposed exile to Argentina. The International Socialist Congress met in Paris between July 14 and 21, during which it established the Second International. Peyret reported his activities during these days in a letter addressed to the governor of Entre Ríos, Clemente Basavilbaso, published on July 28 in a Paraná daily. According to his letter, he spent only the 20th at the Socialist Congress, whose sessions lasted the entire day. He left a more detailed account in his personal diary: on July 20, Saturday, he went to the congress, at the salon de Folies Parisiennes on the Boulevard Rochechouart. "I was announced as a delegate from the Argentine Republic, there was applause, but at that very moment I was leaving the room." The day's speaker was a member of the House of Commons, who spoke on the eight-hour workday On behalf of the Italian republicans of Buenos Aires, Peyret delivered a plaque commemorating the French Revolution to the Paris city council.
On April 1, 1892 he recorded: "I would have liked to have had the money I spent without reason in Concepción del Uruguay and Colonia San José. Had I put that money in a bank, I would be able to live off those savings. And my father: what he spent in Serres Castet! When I came to France the current owner of the property proposed to sell it to me, and I told him that no, he had taken me for a millionaire".
Peyret was named the representative of the Province of Entre Ríos to the 1st Provincial Agricultural Congress held in Esperanza, Santa Fe from May 24 to June 2, 1892. He was commissioned on June 1892 to write the history of Argentine colonization and was for a year granted a monthly salary of $500 "including his salary as Inspector of Colonies". In 1898 he decided that he had collected the necessary research to write the history and had begun the work, "to be completed when my health permits". He served as Inspector General of Colonies from early 1895 until January 16, 1900, when he retired.
Read more about this topic: Alejo Peyret
Famous quotes containing the word colonial:
“In colonial America, the father was the primary parent. . . . Over the past two hundred years, each generation of fathers has had less authority than the last. . . . Masculinity ceased to be defined in terms of domestic involvement, skills at fathering and husbanding, but began to be defined in terms of making money. Men had to leave home to work. They stopped doing all the things they used to do.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)