Alejo Peyret (; December 11, 1826 – August 27, 1902) was a French-born Argentine writer, agronomist, colonial administrator, and historian. Emigrating to Argentina when he was 25, he became a prominent figure in the history of Entre Ríos Province.
Youth in France Peyret was born in 1826 in Serres Castet, Canton Morlaàs, in the department of Basses-Pyrénées, today Pyrénées-Atlantiques,Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Últimos Días, film nº1813365. the son of Alexis Augustin Peyret and Marie Angelique Cecile Armance Vignancour. He entered the Royal College of Pau at the age of ten. In 1844, at the age of eighteen, he earned a bachelor's degree in science and letters. He avoided compulsory military service by hiring a paid substitute to serve in his place.The law of September 5, 1798, establishing compulsory military service was reformed in 1802. Military substitution was permitted until 1855. He studied law at the Collège de France, where his professors included the philosopher Edgar Quinet and the historian Jules Michelet. He became involved with political radicalism, writing editorials in support of republicanism, democracy, anticlericalism, and socialism, and of the Revolutions of 1848 in particular. He was tried for his activities, but acquitted of wrongdoing.Alexis Peyret, de Serres Castet à Buenos Aires, Centre Social Alexis Peyret, Orthez, France, Ed. Gascogne, 2002, p. 21.
In the 1852 election, Peyret stood as a candidate for the Department of Basses-Pyrénées. Following the electoral landslide of the Bonapartists and the establishment of the Second Empire under Napoleon III, Peyret left the country APAPP, Copybook, p. 13. Alejo Peyret to his cousin Louis Casamajor Salenave, Colón, June 21, 1871:"I would rather leave France than see her humiliated, debased, disgraced".
Arrival in Argentina Peyret arrived in Montevideo on November 4, 1852. Here, he wrote for El Comercio del Plata, a periodical edited by José María Cantilo. Alberto Larroque, president of the College of Uruguay (in Concepción del Uruguay) offered him a professorship.MHRSJ, AAP, Notes 1881, 1891, 1892, Buenos Aires, 16 diciembre 1891, sin nº de pp. The minister of Justice, Worship, and Public Instruction, Juan María Gutiérrez, designated him head of the French and Geography departments beginning June 5, 1855.Parliamentary Archive, National Senate of Argentina, Expte. jubilatorio P-1563-98, fjs. 4; also in the National Registry of the Argentine Republic, 1853-1857, decree 183 of July 11, 1855. He remained in this position until September 4, 1856. He served as an editor of the biweekly El Uruguay under the direction of Benjamín Victorica.General Archive of the Nation (abbrev. AGN), Victorica Archive, volume 3129, #323. He spearheaded the creation of La Cosmopolita Society of Mutual Aid Revista Voces Entrerrianas, Buenos Aires, June 1969, publication of the Asociación Entrerriana of General Urquiza, directed by Domingo Canale. on August 31, 1856, in Concepción del Uruguay. In September of that year, Peyret relocated to Paraná to assume control of El Nacional Argentino, an organization in support of the Confederation. He remained in Paraná until July 1857 "except for one month's interruption (May – June) which I spent in Uruguay [Concepción del Uruguay] to see Euristela".MHRSJ, AAP, Notes, 1891- 1892, December 16, 1892 "Euristela" is a reference to Josefa Auristela Caraballo, with whom Peyret had his two first children, Nieves Emilia and Luis Alejo.
Colonialism and agriculture On July 11, 1857, he was appointed administrator and director of San José Colony by President Justo José de Urquiza.Manuel Machi, Urquiza colonizador, Buenos Aires, 1949, p. 56. In fulfillment of his instructions, he published a series of articles in El Uruguay during April, May, and June 1860 in which he called upon the colonists to be hardworking, "whatever may be their religious opinions or the beliefs to which they subscribe".Beatriz Bosch, Alejo Peyret, Administrador de la Colonia San José, Buenos Aires, National Academy of History, offprint of the Third Congress of Argentine and Regional History, Santa Fe – Paraná, 1977, p. 60. The notes were translated into French and collected in a pamphlet entitled Emigration et Colonisation: La Colonie San José.Emigration et Colonisation: La Colonie San José, Concepción del Uruguay, Imprimerie du Journal L’Uruguay, 1860, 60 pp.
Under his direction, the colony began cultivating peanuts, potatoes, sweet potatoes, beans, onions, sugar beets, maize, and tobacco. Peyret also introduced superior techniques for growing wheat and he lobbied Urquiza for new land on which to establish an experimental station for growing cotton. He experimented with caper spurge and the adaptability of silkworms to the local climate. He built a factory for the manufacture of peanut oil. For his work with potato farming, he received an honorable mention Bulletin, Official Publication, Vol. 3, p. 405. at the National Exposition of Córdoba Bulletin, Official Publication, Vol. 1, Buenos Aires., 1869, pp. 62 and 74. held between October 15 and January 21, 1872. On January 3 he sent the chief commissioner of the Exposition a report on the state of Colonia San José and Villa de Colón and the prospect of future colonization of Entre Ríos Province.Alejo Peyret, "Consideraciones sobre la colonia, Villa Colón y la provincia de Entre Ríos" in the official bulletin of the National Exposition of Córdoba of 1871, Vol. 7, Buenos Aires, 1873, pp. 269 -308; available by request at El Porvenir Library in Concepción del Uruguay.
Over the course of thirteen years Peyret served as administrator, director, justice of the peace, commissioner, president of the municipality of San José and officer of the first civil registry, which was created in 1873 in Colón to settle disputes between brides belonging to different religions.Godofredo Daireaux, et al., Alejo Peyret, 1826-1902, Buenos Aires, 1902, p.16. Beginning in 1865 he was a member of the Public Works Commission of Colón, whose function was to oversee the construction of the church, collecting funds and reporting to the government on their investment.Report presented by the General Ministry to the Legislative Chamber of the Province of Entre Ríos, Concepción del Uruguay, Imprenta de El Uruguay, 1868, Anexo F, Acuerdo, pp. 49-50. Peyret resigned from the commission on December 31, 1872.Recopilación de Leyes... 1872, p. 663 When President Domingo Faustino Sarmiento made a visit to Colón and San José on February 6, 1870, it fell to Peyret, as chief of the "party committee", to arrange the official welcome.Oscar F. Urquiza Almandoz, History of Concepción del Uruguay, Santa Fe, Ed. de Entre Ríos, 2002, Book II, p. 346.
Peyret was married on July 7, 1866, to María Celerina Pinget, born in Vinzier, Haute-Savoie, the daughter of Gabriel Pinget and Luisa Viollaz.Parish of San José, Book I. vol. 47.
Freemasonry Initiated into Freemasonry in France, Peyret became an active member of George Washington Lodge #44 in Concepción del Uruguay,Alcibiades Lappas, La masonería argentina a través de sus hombres, Buenos Aires, Offset Difo S.H., Third Ed., 2000, p. 343. which he joined in 1864.Alcibiades Lappas, La logia masónica Jorge Washington de Concepción del Uruguay, in the Revista de Historia Entrerriana, Buenos Aires, 1969, #4–5, p. 366. In 1868 he received the third degree and became a master mason.lcibiades Lappas, La logia masónica Jorge Washington de Concepción del Uruguay, in the Revista de Historia Entrerriana, Buenos Aires, 1969, #4–5, p. 368. He served two consecutive terms as Orator, from 1877 to 1878 and 1878 to 1879. On October 25 he inaugurated the public conferences of the lodge.Discursos: Alejo Peyret, Buenos Aires, 1907, pp. 373-385. In Buenos Aires he had already assisted, on January 16, 1887, in inaugurating the Lodge L'Amie des Naufrages, and had been named an honorary member.MHRSJ., AAP., Notes quotidiennes, avril 1884- mars 1887
Political activism In August 1871 he drafted Letter to his brother Emile, August 14, 1871, in APAPP, Copybook, p. 220. 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.Letter to his brother Emile, August 14, 1871, in APAPP, Copybook, p. 45. The preface was later published in La República in November 1871.MHRSJ., AAP., notebook 7, pp. 82-85.
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. SarmientoLaw #587 passed May 21, 1873, approved the decree of executive power in declaring an intervention against the Province of Entre Ríos (2nd Jordanist Rebellion). Cf. The Legislative Power of the Argentine Nation, Historical Institute of the Argentine Parliament, Buenos Aires, Book VIII, 1996, p. 771. 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.As well as against Urquiza, the criticism had been leveled at Sarmiento in no uncertain terms. Cf.: M. Macchi, Formation and Development of an Argentine colony, Paraná, official imprint of the Province of Entre Ríos, 1977, p. 15. Peyret used this argument in response to accusations of crypto-Jordanism.He said of the uprising: "This damn rebellion has done a lot of damage. Many refugees remain in Montevideo and Brazil." PSJ., Archive, box 13, folder 109. Cf.: Letter from Rodolfo Siegrist to José Balestrin, in which he transcribes one by Alejo Peyret, December 4, 1874.
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".Buenos Aires, 1873, 105 pp. The copy may be found in the Alberto Larroque Library, at the National College of Uruguay, Concepción del Uruguay. 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.G. Daireaux, in "Introducción": Cf. A. Peyret, The Evolution of ..., p.19. 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".AGN., Victorica Archive, volume. 3149. In March 1874 he resigned his position as head of the colony and was replaced temporarily by Rodolfo Siegrist until April 30;PSJ., Archive, cabinet 106, folder 403. 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.PSJ., Archive, cabinet 57, folder 463, letter of July 27, 1874.
Academic and literary career