When Argentina launched its independence campaign in 1810, military leaders turned to the enslaved and free Black population to fill frontline infantry ranks. The Assembly of Year XIII enacted the "Freedom of Wombs" (libertad de vientres) in 1813, declaring that children born to enslaved mothers would be free upon reaching adulthood. Yet true emancipation remained conditional: enslaved men gained immediate freedom only by enlisting in the revolutionary armies for multi-year campaigns.
Few figures embody this service like María Remedios del Valle. An Afro-Argentine woman born in Buenos Aires, Del Valle joined the Army of the North under General Manuel Belgrano. She fought in major engagements including Tucumán, Salta, and Ayohuma, surviving bullet wounds, captivity, and public floggings by royalist forces. Belgrano conferred upon her the rank of army captain, earning her the title Madre de la Patria (Mother of the Homeland).
Despite her sacrifice, Del Valle spent her final years living in extreme poverty, begging outside Buenos Aires churches until General Juan José Viamonte recognized her on the street and petitioned the legislature for an overdue military pension in 1827. Her postwar abandonment presaged how the nascent state would treat its Black veterans: celebrated during frontline crises, then excised from the national portrait once boundaries were secured.
