General J.J. de Urquiza, 1801-1870

General Urquiza's elegant palace, Argentina's finest from the 1840s.

I was in Concepcion, rural Argentina, two hundred miles north of Buenos Aires, because I wanted to visit a nearby palace, the former home of General J.J. de Urquiza.

Urquiza was a 19th-century Argentine warlord, born in 1801, murdered in 1870. He started as a merchant, mastering the European export market. Later he bought up ranches and cattle, and built a plant to produce the salted beef so prized by sailors. He was a gentleman and a scholar who worked tirelessly to bring about peace and prosperity.

Urquiza's palace was 20 miles out of town but the price for the round trip by taxi--plus two hours waiting while I explored--was only $8.

Urquiza's elegant palace turned out to be all columns and arches, Argentina's finest from the 1840s. The palace is U-shaped, one-story, with four large rooms at the base of the U and 20 smaller rooms on each side. The inside of the U is divided into two patios. Urquiza, his wife and their young children, and personal guests lived around the patio at the base of the U. Staff, including key players in Urquiza's army, lived around the outer patio.

Urquiza had a remarkable memory. He knew every man in his 6,000-man army, their names and faces, where they came from, their families, their strengths and weaknesses. These gaucho soldiers, really just rogue, savage cowboys, were afraid to lie to Urquiza because he remembered so much about them; they figured they'd get caught.

On April 11, 1870, at 7:30 p.m., the 69-year-old Urquiza was sitting in his palace talking with his secretary. I saw where he was sitting, saw the chair he was sitting in. He heard a ruckus coming from the rear of the palace, and knew immediately what was up. "They've come to kill me." Urquiza raced to his room to get a weapon, but before he got there the intruders shot him in the face. Then they stabbed him in the heart, over and over, in front of Urquiza's wife, small children, and several others. No one else at the palace was harmed, but Urquiza's two sons were murdered at the same time in another part of the state.

Three days later the man who ordered the hit, Ricardo Lopez Jordan, had himself elected governor to replace Urquiza.

Paul Terhorst
For International Living

P.S. Lopez Jordan was one of life's pathetic overachievers, a man who unfortunately never gave up. He tried three times to become governor by force, and finally succeeded by sending fifty armed men to kill the unarmed Urquiza. Although Urquiza was aware of a plot to kill him, he kept only a small guard at his home. Reason: even the most bloodthirsty of men wouldn't kill a man in his home, in front of his family.

Lopez Jordan lasted only a few days as governor, until an army from Buenos Aires threw him out. Meanwhile, Urquiza was interred in the cathedral he'd built in Concepcion. In 1967 his remains were moved to a special mausoleum inside that cathedral. After visiting the palace I went to see the mausoleum, and paused a minute. Then I visited the school Urquiza founded--the first lay school in Argentina--next to the cathedral; and around the corner the town house he was building at the time of his death. Then I went to the bus station, bought a ticket, and moved on.