Rosas, Juan Manuel Ortiz de in the cellar of Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, Russia, on July 17, 1918 In a historical irony, the Ipatiev House had the same name as the Ipatiev Monastery in Kostroma where the Russian Assembly of the Land had offered Mikhail Romanov the Russian crown in 1613 In June 1991 the bodies of Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, and three of their five children were exhumed from their 70-year-old graves, and the exhumers discovered that two of the family were missing The other two graves were found in 2007 After the bodies were exhumed, they languished for years in laboratories while Russians fought over whether they should be buried in Yekaterinburg or Saint Petersburg Finally, a Russian commission chose Saint Petersburg, and the last Romanovs were buried with their ancestors The Romanov family still exists in the 21st century, with Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna of Russia having the strongest claim to the Russian throne Despite the collapse of the Soviet Union and zealous campaigns by her supporters to recognize her as the constitutional monarch, it is not likely that she will gain the throne because there is little popular support for the resurrection of a Russian monarchy See also Crimean War; Russo-Ottoman Wars; RussoTurkish War and Near Eastern Crisis Further reading: Bain, Robert The First Romanovs Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2005; Cockfield, Jamie White Crow: The Life and Times of Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich Romanov, 1859–1919 Portsmouth, NH: Praeger Publishers, 2002; Meier, Andrew Black Earth: A Journey Through Russia After the Fall New York: Norton, 2005; Van der Kiste, John The Romanovs, 1818–1959: Alexander II of Russia and His Family Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton Publishing, 1998 Brian de Ruiter Rosas, Juan Manuel Ortiz de (1793–1877) Argentinian dictator Juan Manuel Ortiz de Rosas dominated the Argentine political scene from 1829 until 1852 as governor of Buenos Aires and then supreme chief of the confederation Although professing federalism, Rosas was a centrist and a dictator, and his model of rule was to be followed by many of the Latin American dictators of the 20th century 361 Born in Buenos Aires, Rosas’s paternal grandfather, a career soldier, had emigrated from Burgos, Spain, in 1742 His mother’s family was extremely wealthy, and Rosas’s parents controlled one of the largest cattle ranches in Argentina Rosas only spent a year in school— apparently his teacher told him that he would spend his life in farm management and need not be troubled by books As a teenager, Rosas was an ammunition boy during the British invasion of 1806, and when his father died, instead of taking over the family property (he was the eldest son), he gave it to his mother to divide among the rest of the family Rosas was determined to make his own fortune, which he did in a meat-salting plant in Quilmes, now a suburb of Buenos Aires In 1820 his business partner Colonel Maunel Dorrego, governor of Buenos Aires, put Rosas in charge of the provincial militia By this time he had a loyal band of supporters gathering around him, and soon after the resignation of Bernardino Rivadavia, Dorrego became president He was overthrown in 1828, and Rosas worked to bring down the new governor of Buenos Aires, Juan Lavalle At this time, Rosas was head of the Federalist Party, which sought to build up the power of the provinces against that of Buenos Aires He managed to get the former legislature to reconvene, and on December 5, 1829, Rosas was elected governor, deposing Lavalle In 1832 Rosas stepped down when his three-year term ended, but returned in 1835 with the promise that he would have dictatorial powers At that time Argentina was in a perilous state, with strong regional warlords, or caudillos, seeking to wrest power from the government in Buenos Aires Although he still professed federalist beliefs, Rosas gradually centralized power in Buenos Aires During the 17 years that Rosas was dictator of Argentina, he used police and spies to destroy his political opponents His mazorca, the political police, arrested and tortured with impunity His wife, Encarnación, also used the mazorca against her enemies, and a century later journalist Fleur Cowles, in her dual biography, Bloody Precedent, was to draw startling parallels between the ruthlessness of Juan and Encarnación Rosas and that of Juan and Evita Perón Much is made of Rosas ordering his portrait to be displayed in public places and in churches Putting aside his treatment of political opponents, Rosas managed initially to achieve economic stability and massively increase the prosperity of Buenos Aires The period coincided with an increase in the cattle industry, with tanning and salting works, and also a rise in migration from Europe to Argentina Although