ABSTRACT
With the ratification of the federal status of Buenos Aires on December 6, 1880, the so-called cuestión capital (the “capital” issue) of the Argentine Republic was resolved—leaving behind a toll of 2,500 dead and injured out of the 20,000 who had participated in the last and most violent chapter of the seventy-year dispute to define the seat of political authority. The battle for Buenos Aires was the end of a long confrontation between national and provincial governments, between civilians and the military, between political parties, between opposing figures, between different sectors of economic power. But it was also, without doubt, a fight for a place, for a city, that would bring together the material conditions necessary to house the federal government of an evolving modern nation.
