National Emblem Anniversary: the mysteries of its creation and its authors

Agustín Donado, the Morenista who operated the printing press in Buenos Aires, is exiled to San Luis, a province that elects him as a deputy to the Assembly of the Year XIII after his captivity ends. Donado is responsible for crafting the Assembly's seal. The Peruvian engraver Juan de Dios Rivera creates the die for the first coat of arms. Did Isidro Antonio de Castro design our coat of arms? Who was Juan de Dios Rivera?

Agustín Donado, who was the concessionaire of the only existing printing press in Buenos Aires, operated by the "Niños Expósitos", had been exiled to San Luis due to the uprising of April 5 and 6, 1811, because he was an important Morenista leader who  needed to be removed so that the Saavedrismo, which dominated the Junta Grande, could seize the printing press from their political adversaries.

San Luis thus inaugurated its tradition of becoming, at that time, along with Carmen de Patagones, the "Siberia" of Argentina. That is, it became a place where leaders, politicians, or rulers who had fallen from grace were confined, in a locality that was then isolated from everything by the vastness of the Cuyo desert. There, Donado himself, Juan Martín de Pueyrredón, the royalist prisoners captured after the battles of Chacabuco and Maipú, and also Bernardo de Monteagudo were confined.

Soon after, in September 1811, the government of the Junta Grande fell and the First Triumvirate was formed, which ordered the release of all the Morenista leaders deported in April. Thus, Donado was able to return to the Capital, not without having left good friendships in San Luis that would prove beneficial in the near future.

The Patriotic Society and the Assembly of the Year XIII

Back in Buenos Aires, Donado regained control of the printing press and became involved with the resurgent Patriotic Society which, led by Bernardo de Monteagudo, became a mandatory reference in political discussion at the time. Monteagudo printed his newspaper Mártir o Libre at Donado's press, which gradually became an opposition focus to the First Triumvirate.

With the arrival of José de San Martín and Carlos de Alvear to the Plata, in March 1812, the Lodge of Rational Knights (misnamed "Lautaro Lodge") was established, to which Monteagudo and his friend Donado soon joined. Close to San Martín, Donado donated twenty horses to form his famous Regiment of Grenadiers.

Soon the First Triumvirate would fall, the Second would be formed, and the Assembly of the Year XIII would be convened. On this occasion, the residents of San Luis, knowing that the exiled Morenista they had hosted for several months now had direct access to the new ruling group in Buenos Aires, decided to entrust him with their representation. Thus, San Luis, which had always treated him correctly in his misfortune, chose Agustín Donado to join the new national legislative body.

Donado is responsible for crafting the Assembly's seal

The Assembly began to meet on January 31, 1813, with the presence of seventeen deputies. Shortly thereafter, Donado, an expert in drawing and graphic arts at the time, took charge of crafting a new seal for the Assembly, so that the King's arms would no longer be used to authenticate public documents issued by that body.

It is not very clear what happened next.  We do not know if Donado himself was the author of the design of the coat of arms we know today, since he was a draftsman, or if it was the Peruvian artists Isidro Antonio de Castro or Juan de Dios Rivera, as other authors claim. What is known is that the latter crafted the definitive die of the seal, which would become our National Coat of Arms, made of silver and bronze.

Indeed, in the few session minutes of the Assembly of the Year XIII that have been preserved to this day, none specify the authorship of the National Coat of Arms. That is, we do not know if in any session it was debated who was the inspirer, author, or original draftsman of the Coat of Arms; if it was inspired by any other source or what the meaning of each element that constitutes it is. This information has also not been recorded in the newspaper El Redactor de la Asamblea, which reported the main decisions and debates caused within it.

Juan de Dios Rivera creates the die for the first coat of arms

Now, how do we know, then, that the Peruvian Juan de Dios Rivera was the material author of the seal used by the Assembly? In the National General Archive, a claim has been found made by this artist to the Government, requesting payment for two seals he crafted (one for the Assembly and another for the State Executive Power), which had been commissioned by the deputy for San Luis, D. Agustín Donado.

From this document, we know that Donado commissioned Rivera to craft the two seals  and that he would have acted on the Assembly's instructions, which later used the seal extensively, without objections. However, we can't assure (because Rivera doesn't express it) that he was also the intellectual author of the coat of arms.

Did Isidro Antonio de Castro design our coat of arms?

The version that claims the intellectual author of the Assembly's seal was the artist, also Peruvian, Isidro Antonio de Castro, is based on the following facts. The Assembly began to meet on January 31, 1813, and the first record of that body's seal dates from February 22 of that year.

Such a narrow time frame and the absence of minutes from which the debate, commissioning, and approval of the seal arise lead some authors to think that, in reality,  the initiative for the design of a new seal was originally commissioned a year earlier by the First Triumvirate (more specifically, by the triumvir Bernardino Rivadavia) to Isidro Antonio de Castro, who was residing in Chile at that time.

There is evidence that Castro sent, in August 1812, two seal designs or projects to Rivadavia for the Executive Power, that is, for the First Triumvirate. These sketches were kept, and their implementation was never carried out. Shortly thereafter, this Triumvirate fell. Some believe that Donado, with access to the new Government (the Second Triumvirate), had access to Isidro Antonio de Castro's drawings, chose one of them, and passed it to Juan de Dios Rivera so that he, based on it, would craft the die of the seal that the Assembly itself would later use.

However,  this hypothesis is entirely based on conjectures, as we have no precision. And more importantly: none of Castro's sketches have been preserved to know what they looked like.

Therefore, the only thing we can assure is that, undoubtedly, the author of the drawing or project of the future National Coat of Arms was an artist with strong Peruvian influence, as denoted by the markedly Inca sun that crowns the seal and the Phrygian cap, which ends in a tassel characteristic of the peoples inhabiting the highlands, and which is not observed in the  original Phrygian caps or in those we see in works of  art emanating from European artists.

This makes us rule out Donado himself, a native of Buenos Aires who never was in Peru, as the designer of the Coat of Arms, and makes us suspect Juan de Dios Rivera.

Who was Juan de Dios Rivera?

Juan de Dios Rivera Túpac Amaru was born in the imperial city of Cusco, in the Viceroyalty of Peru, around the year 1760. He was the son of the Spaniard Alonso de Rivera and the ñusta Juana de la Concha Túpac Amaru. In the ancient Incas, the "ñustas" were the princesses of the Inca Empire. His original name in Quechua was Quipte Tito Ahpauti Concha Tupac Huáscar Inca. This position made Juan de Dios Rivera a cousin of Túpac Amaru II, the last of the Incas, protagonist of the most important indigenous independence uprising in Hispanic America during the 18th century.

From a young age, he had an inclination toward silversmithing,  specializing in metalwork and engravings. At the age of twenty, around 1780, he was settled in Potosí, where he likely arrived attracted by the metals extracted from the famous hill of that Imperial Villa. The failure of his cousin's uprising in Peru, in 1781, along with the brutal execution of Túpac Amaru II at the hands of the Spaniards,  forced him to flee from an area so close to the events and seek safer refuge in Córdoba. Later, in search of better prospects, he ended up settling in Buenos Aires, the city where he would die in 1843, nearing eighty-three years old, and which  would witness his most famous works.