San Martín, O'Higgins, and the Southern Liberating Campaign

In the Río de la Plata, an open cabildo in Buenos Aires deposed the viceroy on 25 May 1810, installing the First Junta; formal independence followed only in 1816, when the Congress of Tucumán proclaimed the "United Provinces of South America" on 9 July. In the Banda Oriental (present-day Uruguay), José Gervasio Artigas led a separate insurrection from 1811 and championed a federalist project against centralization from Buenos Aires, implementing an early land reform in 1815 for the benefit of the poor, Indigenous people, and freed Blacks, before Portuguese invasion and defeat at Tacuarembó in 1820 drove him into permanent exile.