The Mitrista Opinion Republic. Republican Rethoric and Liberal Nationalist Public Sphere

Abstract

In previous works we argument in favor of the existence of a gradual and complex transformation of public spaces on political opinion in the nineteenth century of the River Plate, which goes from a social republican moment (1820-1852) to one liberal nationalist (1852-1880). In this article we suggest the existence of an intermediate political moment to those two more distal, which we will call Mitre moment (1852-1874) which evidences a different conception of political opinion in public spaces. The incorporation of this intermediate moment and its correlative conception of the discursive public sphere in the River Plate allows us to grasp adequately the gradualness and complexity of that transformative political process. In this general context, our specific objectives are two. In the first place, we will proceed to reconstruct the conceptual displacements existing in the second half of the 19th River Plate century in the term political opinion, thus specifying the context of enunciation and justification of the liberal nationalist mitrist order. Secondly, we will offer arguments in defense of the hypothesis according to which the liberal nationalist mitrist rhetorical apparatus allows to demonstrate certain peculiarities and aporias of the concept of political opinion sustained by the nationalist liberalism of the second half of the 19th River Plate century.