Ángel Vicente "Chacho" Peñaloza (October 2, 1798 – November 12, 1863) was a military officer and provincial leader prominent in both the history of La Rioja province and the Argentine civil wars that preceded national unity.

Quiroga's defeats in the latter two, however, enabled the formation of the Unitarian League by José María Paz, against which the La Rioja forces were of little match.

Rosas had, by then, been overthrown at the 1852 Battle of Caseros, and Peñaloza offered the new President of the Argentine Confederation, General Justo José de Urquiza, his support.

As a caudillo, Peñaloza amassed power through the client-patron relationship and personal interactions like card games, attending horse races, and participating in construction projects.

[1] The 1858 assassination of Nazario Benavídez, San Juan's Federalist governor, by Liberals allied to Buenos Aires centralists inflamed tensions between the Confederation and the State of Buenos Aires, and President Urquiza commissioned Peñaloza to seize control of San Juan, which the latter would administer on a receivership basis.

The breakdown of the peace obtained at the Pact of San José de Flores in 1859 prompted Peñaloza to seek an alliance with Tucumán governor Celedonio Gutiérrez.

The invasion of Bartolomé Mitre's Unitarian Party forces led to their retreat during 1861 and 1862, culminating in a siege on the city of San Luis by Peñaloza's decimated troops.

Resolute in his losing struggle, Peñaloza wrote to Mitre (by then President of Argentina) in March 1863, to explain that: These governors-turned-executioners of the provinces banish and kill without trial respectable citizens whose only crime was to have belonged to the Federal Party.

All men who have nothing more to lose than their existence, would sooner sacrifice themselves in battle.Peñaloza won victories in La Rioja and entered the city of Córdoba on June 14, 1863.

His severed head was displayed on a pike at Olta's main square, and his wife, Victoria Romero, was forced into servitude, sweeping the streets of San Juan in chains.

The rebellion was decisively defeated at the Battle of Pozo de Vargas, in the outskirts of La Rioja, by the forces of Santiago del Estero´s governor, Antonino Taboada, on 10 April 1867.