Alejo Peyret - Political Activism

Political Activism

In August 1871 he drafted a plan for a Constitution for the French Republic, dedicated to president Louis-Adolphe Thiers and with a preface founded in his juridico-political theory. The preface was later published in La República in November 1871.

Beginning on June 9, 1873, he sent a series of unsigned letters to the Buenos Aires daily La República in which he denounced the assassination of Urquiza on April 11, 1870, and condemned the federal intervention against the Province of Entre Ríos, arguing that it violated the principles of federalism and provincial autonomy. He declared that Ricardo López Jordán had embodied the hopes of the people of Entre Ríos, at the same time maintaining that the true aim of the armed intervention ordered by Domingo F. Sarmiento had been to assure the success of the presidential candidacy of Nicolás Avellaneda. He argued that although Dr. Leónidas Echagüe could not have remained in control of the government of Entre Ríos, Ricardo López Jordán should not have replaced him so soon after Urquiza's violent death. Peyret used this argument in response to accusations of crypto-Jordanism.

As only six of the fifteen letters sent were published, Peyret collected them into Letters on the Intervention against the Province of Entre Ríos, which he published under the pseudonym "A foreigner". The author's identity did not stay secret to his contemporaries, and this error in judgment cost him the job of administrator of San José and forced him to leave the province where he had spent eighteen years. In a letter to Benjamín Victorica written in Buenos Aires on March 3, 1874, he wrote "...It would have been better not to concern myself with politics. I don't know how I forgot the advice of Mr. Pedro de Angelis. I gave in to a moment of irritation and impatience, seeing that we had been thrown into yet another war which was to last an entire year. I am always at your service and believe you will remain always at mine, despite my recklessness". In March 1874 he resigned his position as head of the colony and was replaced temporarily by Rodolfo Siegrist until April 30; in June, in Buenos Aires, Dolores Costa de Urquiza designated him the agent in charge of selecting and transporting colonists to the colony of Caseros.