Notwithstanding The Fact That The Insurgents Were Said To Be
Defeated, The President, Dr. Celman, Fled From The City, And The
Amusing Spectacle Was Seen Of Men And Youths Patrolling The Streets
Wearing Cards In Their Hats Which Read:
"Ya se fue el burro" (At
last the donkey has gone).
A more serious sight, however, was when
the effigy of the fleeing President was crucified.
Thus ended the insurrection of 1890, a rising which sent three
thousand brave men into eternity.
What changes had taken place in four short days! At the Plaza
Libertad the wreckage was most complete. The beautiful partierres
were trodden down by horses; the trees had been partially cut down
for fuel; pools of blood, remnants of slaughtered animals, offal,
refuse everywhere.
Since the glorious days of the British invasion - glorious from an
Argentine point of view - Buenos Ayres had never seen its streets
turned into barricades and its housetops into fortresses. In times of
electoral excitement we had seen electors attack each other in bands
many years, but never was organized warfare carried on as during this
revolution. The Plaza Parque was occupied by four or five thousand
Revolutionary troops; all access to the Plaza was defended by armed
groups on the house-tops and barricades in the streets, Krupp guns
and that most infernal of modern inventions, the mitrailleuse, swept
all the streets, north, south, east and west. The deadly grape swept
the streets down to the very river, and not twenty thousand men could
have taken the Revolutionary position by storm, except by gutting the
houses and piercing the blocks, as Colonel Garmendia proposed, to
avoid the awful loss of life suffered in the taking of the Plaza
Libertad on Saturday morning.
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