[1] Justo was the son of Domingo Arteaga Rojas, who was later a lieutenant colonel in the Chilean Army, and Ana Josefa de las Cuevas.

His father, who was a great friend and aide to the liberator Bernardo O'Higgins, made him enter the Army with the rank of cadet when he was just 9 years old.

During the period known as the Patria Vieja, he finished his youth training and in 1819 he was promoted to the rank of second lieutenant of the "Grenadiers of the Honor Guard" Regiment which was in charge of escorting the supreme director.

[2] The then lieutenant Justo Arteaga was the second assistant of the Argentine colonel José Luis Pereira, commander of the Guard of Honor, so he followed his chief and stuck to the opposition flags.

Lieutenant Arteaga, aware of the danger his father and the supreme director were running, told them that there was a group of riflemen who were going to open fire on them when they approached the barracks.

In 1823 he was promoted to captain and in January 1826 the second campaign against Chiloé took place, culminating in the capture of the island, after a resistance by the forces of Antonio de Quintanilla.

He also participated in the Treaty of Tantauco on 19 January 1826, in which the royalist general Antonio de Quintanilla handed over the island of Chiloé to the Chilean forces, after 7 years of resistance.

On 20 September 1829 he was promoted to the rank of Sergeant Major and was assigned to the Army of the South, remaining under the orders of General Joaquín Prieto, becoming his right-hand man and participating the following year in the Battle of Ochagavía.

He fled to Cobija, Bolivia where he learned of the uprising in La Serena, under the command of José Miguel Carrera Fontecilla, son of the war hero of the same name.

[3] Meanwhile, the officers and the troops disavowed their boss and continued the fight until 31 December 1851, when they withdrew to Copiapó, where the revolution had broken out under the command of the merchant Bernardino Barahona.