Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"A caudillo in office would be president; in opposition, he was the second most powerful man in the country. Caudillos were typically large landowners who could use their personal resources for patronage or for maintaining private armies. . . . Caudillos could be liberals or conservatives, but their folksy style fit more naturally with conservative traditionalism. Caudillos were defined by their army of followers, not by formal ranks, offices, and institutions. Sometimes they were generals in the regular army, sometimes not. . . . Juan Manuel de Rosas, who dominated Argentina from 1829 to 1852, exemplifies caudillo rule. . . . Rosas represented himself as a man of the people, able to identify with hard-riding gauchos of the pampa and poor black workers in the city, while depicting his liberal opponents as effeminate Eurocentric aristocrats, out of touch with the real Argentina. . . . Rosas made war on the indigenous people to expand the territory open to ranching, but he also negotiated with them skillfully, sometimes in their own language. Finally, Rosas won patriotic glory by defeating British and French interventions in the 1830s and 1840s." [Born in Blood & Fire, 4th Ed., p. 133, 135]