The first effective response to the porteño control came from the Banda Oriental (now Uruguay), where the caudillo José Artigas denied the capital the right to govern his province.
The dissent followed to Santa Fe Province, which revolted against porteño dominance in 1815 and again in 1816 under the command of Mariano Vera, later succeeded by Estanislao López.
In April, a peace treaty signed between the governments of Buenos Aires and Santa Fe gave hopes of a solution to the internal quarrels, and the offices believed they would go back to the northern front.
Arriving at Arequito, on January 8, 1820, General Bustos, supported by Colonels Alejandro Heredia and José María Paz, directed the military rebellion.
The arrested Colonels Cornelio Zelaya and Manuel Guillermo Pinto in the middle of the night, traveled to a short distance from Fernández de la Cruz encampment, and decided to negotiate with him.
Seeing that he could not continue forward, Fernández de la Cruz decided to give his army to Bustos and returned to Buenos Aires almost alone and followed by only a few loyal officers like Lamadrid.
In one of those letters he clarified: "The weapons of the motherland, distracted from their main objective, as they were not used but to spill the blood of their citizens, the same ones from which sweat and labor insured their subsistence.
"After meeting with López's envoys at La Herradura, by the Tercero River, Bustos moved his army to Córdoba Province, where he was triumphantly received.
Which will respond with all its efforts and what depended on its resources to fight the enemies of common freedom, even when the federation had not yet been organized in the provinces...."That means the same sentiments that Bustos and the other participants of the Arequito rebellion had.
There was not to be a new Supreme Director because of pressure from López and Ramírez, Buenos Aires designated a provincial governor who signed the Treaty of Pilar with the Federalists.
At the same time, interim Governor Díaz announced that he was thinking of an association with the Littoral Caudillos (Santa Fé, Entre Ríos and Corrientes Provinces) in their fight against Buenos Aires; that is, the signing of some alliance pact with José Gervasio Artigas, Ramírez or López.
He sent Colonel Heredia with a portion of the army to the provinces of the north, as an advance party of the promised march to resume war with the royalists.
The remaining forces were used for the defense of the province against the Pampas and Chaco native tribes and the following year to repel the combined attack of Francisco Ramírez and José Miguel Carrera.
The chronicles by Lamadrid and Paz called it treason to the motherland or an obscure event organized to place Bustos in the Córdoba government house and nothing more.
Nobody dared to defend Bustos and his followers, and as the defeat of the federalist party in the civil wars carried forward their enemies, that point of view was the one which survived.