The federalization of Buenos Aires is, in Argentine law, the process of assigning federal status to a territory with the purpose of making that territory the national capital.
The federalization of Buenos Aires politically separated the city from the Buenos Aires Province to put it under direct control of the national government. That had been a constant aspiration of the other provinces of Argentina since the formation of the national state. However, harsh political debates around the issue prevented the federalization until 1880, more than sixty years later.
Argentine Constitution
The first successful Constitutional Convention, which took place in 1853, defined in Article 3 the status of Buenos Aires:
The Authorities that exercise the Federal Government reside in the City of Buenos Aires, which is declared capital of the Confederacy by a special law.
The terms Argentine Confederacy were used in those days to designate Argentina (the usage would evolve, and the term Argentine Republic is now used instead). The article could not be enforced, as Buenos Aires withdrew from the convention and formed a separate state. When the province rejoined the country in 1860, an amendment was made to the constitution, which subtly changed Article III:
The Authorities that exercise the Federal Government, reside in the city that is declared Capital of the Republic by a special law of Congress, previous cession made by one or more provincial legislatures from the territory to be federalized.
The change did not declare Buenos Aires as the national capital right away, and it left an open door for another city to be declared so. Although the city was made capital in the end, the change was satisfactory for the porteños as well as the rest of the country and so it remained.
History
Buenos Aires and the provinces
The weight of a larger population and the economic and commercial importance of the city as the only deep water port of the country were decisive factors in the relationship between the federated provinces. That inequality was seen since the first years of the state, when after the May Revolution the Buenos Aires porteños were reluctant to accept the deputies of the interior in the First Junta, and became more severe during the long period of political instability of the First and Second triumvirates and the Directory. The attempts of 1819 and 1826 to dictate a Unitarian constitution to centralize in Buenos Aires the direct administrative power over the entire national territory pushed the situation, and the political measures taken by the provinces in the successive years, such as the Federal Pact, were oriented on avoiding such situations from taking place.
During the Assembly that dictated the first constitution in 1853, the egalitarian representation with two delegates for each province in the Constitutional Convention provoked the rejection of Buenos Aires, which claimed a representation proportional to the population and considered that its interests were highly threatened by a federal government.
Trying to attenuate the conflict, the constitutional delegates fixed the federal condition of Buenos Aires city not in the constitution itself but though a special law, which was sanctioned a few days after the signature of the constitution.
Buenos Aires ignoring the powers of the constitutional convention drove the province to revolt and to separate from the Argentine Confederation until 1860, when it reincorporated in exchange of several modifications of the original constitutional text and the suspension of the federalization.
Federal government, guest in Buenos Aires
Between 1860 and 1880, the federal authorities resided in Buenos Aires but lacked direct administrative authority in the territory in which they were located. When Nicolás Avellaneda, candidate of the provinces, was elected for the national elections, the defeated Bartolomé Mitre headed the revolution of 1874. The forces loyal to the federal government defeated Mitre at the Battle of La Verde on November 26, and José Miguel Arredondo at the Battle of Santa Rosa; General Julio Argentino Roca was the most beneficed, victorious at Santa Rosa, he consolidated his political influence that would take him to the presidency for the following mandate.
The relationship between the federal authorities and those of Buenos Aires continued to be hostile; Mitre's Partido Unitario Nacionalista urged for electoral abstention, and Buenos Aires governor Carlos Casares strengthened the separation of his power of administration and police, of the federal one. Avellaneda attempted reconciliation by pardoning the revolutionaries, but the measure had little effect.
