Caudillos were seen as saviours, it seems, to the poor, as they seemed to fight for reform and social change so that the gap between the healthy and poor would lessen. However, caudillos appealed to the masses because they needed support and numbers to fight the state. Some of caudillos, such as Juan Manuel de Rosas, had the Church as a chief element in their stance. This drew much of the working class population to him, because religion was a very influential and central part of people lives (still is for many). All in all, caudillos fought for the social and economical independence, interests and identity of each particular country, and they did so by mustering as much support as possible, and making the most out of the respective population's hardships.
The Slaughterhouse is a very stark and dark telling of the misery and hunger experienced during Lent in the 1830s, in Buenos Aires. To me, it seems that Echeverria used a lot of sarcasm when talking about how normal it is for the Church to dictate who gets to eat and who does not, as he mentions "A time may come when it will be forbidden to breathe fresh air, take a walk, or even to have a conversation with a friend, without first obtaining permission from the competent authorities. This was how it was, more or less, in the happy times of our pious grandparents, which the May Revolution unfortunately disrupted" (Dawson, 2014, p. 62). The scene he depicts of everyone sucking out as much juice as they could out of intestines, or kids running around smacking each other with livers, and smearing each other with blood, is not a pretty picture. The decapitation of the boy is beyond grotesque and shocking. The death of the "Unitarian" paints a picture of the hatred felt by different political values and how misery and desperation can lead human beings into doing horrendous acts of violence to one another.
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