Colonialism and Agriculture
On July 11, 1857, he was appointed administrator and director of San José Colony by President Justo José de Urquiza. In fulfillment of his instructions, he published a series of articles in El Uruguay during April, May, and June 1860 in which he called upon the colonists to be hardworking, "whatever may be their religious opinions or the beliefs to which they subscribe". The notes were translated into French and collected in a pamphlet entitled Emigration et Colonisation: La Colonie San José.
Under his direction, the colony began cultivating peanuts, potatoes, sweet potatoes, beans, onions, sugar beets, maize, and tobacco. Peyret also introduced superior techniques for growing wheat and he lobbied Urquiza for new land on which to establish an experimental station for growing cotton. He experimented with caper spurge and the adaptability of silkworms to the local climate. He built a factory for the manufacture of peanut oil. For his work with potato farming, he received an honorable mention at the National Exposition of Córdoba held between October 15 and January 21, 1872. On January 3 he sent the chief commissioner of the Exposition a report on the state of Colonia San José and Villa de Colón and the prospect of future colonization of Entre Ríos Province.
Over the course of thirteen years Peyret served as administrator, director, justice of the peace, commissioner, president of the municipality of San José and officer of the first civil registry, which was created in 1873 in Colón to settle disputes between brides belonging to different religions. Beginning in 1865 he was a member of the Public Works Commission of Colón, whose function was to oversee the construction of the church, collecting funds and reporting to the government on their investment. Peyret resigned from the commission on December 31, 1872. When President Domingo Faustino Sarmiento made a visit to Colón and San José on February 6, 1870, it fell to Peyret, as chief of the "party committee", to arrange the official welcome.
Peyret was married on July 7, 1866 to María Celerina Pinget, born in Vinzier, Haute-Savoie, the daughter of Gabriel Pinget and Luisa Viollaz.
Read more about this topic: Alejo Peyret
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“In past years, the amount of money that has had to be been spent on armaments, great and small, instead of on productive industry and agriculture and the arts, has been a disgrace to all of us in every part of the world.”
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