1837 generation

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The 1837 generation (Spanish: Generación del '37) was an Argentine intellectual movement named after the date a literary hall with most of its members was established. Influenced by the new romantic ideas, they rejected the cultural Spanish heritage of the country. They did not acknowledge any national roots in the indigenous peoples or the period of European colonization, focusing instead on the Revolution as the birth of the country, as it gave them freedom, the possibility to behave as free people. They considered themselves "sons of the May Revolution", as they were born shortly before or after it, and wrote some of the earliest Argentine literary works. The group established a literary hall in 1837 in Buenos Aires, hence the name. This Salón Literario closed six months after it was created because of the reiterated warnings from the government. Initially, they claimed to be neutral in the Argentine Civil Wars, they wrote works biased against the federalist governor Juan Manuel de Rosas (such as El Matadero by Esteban Echeverría or Facundo by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento) because Rosas was the Buenos Aires governor of that time, but they were also against the former Unitarian governments, with whom they didn't agree in their absolutist manners that they deemed a mere restoration of the manners of the Spanish colony. Their efforts to install a full democratic Republic and guarantee civil rights by means of peaceful propaganda were vain, and shortly afterwards they ended up exiled or assassinated. After Rosas was overthrown in 1852, their writings inspired the first Argentine Constitution in 1853, and the promotion of the Organización Nacional, the articulation and organization of the political divisions, infrastructure and institutions of the country. They were called "unitarians" in a loose sense and by Rosas's propaganda. Some notable members of this generation were Esteban...