When this happened, he secretly stirred up the provinces into a renewal of the earlier disturbances, until the evidence became overwhelming that Rosas alone could bring peace and progress out of turmoil and backwardness.
Reluctantly the legislature yielded him the power it knew he wanted.
This he would not accept until a "popular" vote of some 9000 to 4 confirmed the choice.

In 1835, accordingly, he became dictator for the first of four successive terms of five years.
Then ensued, notably in Buenos Aires itself, a state of affairs at once grotesque and frightful.

Not content with hunting down and inflicting every possible, outrage upon those suspected of sympathy with the Unitaries, Rosas forbade them to display the light blue and white colors of their party device and directed that red, the sign of Federalism, should be displayed on all occasions.

Pink he would not tolerate as being too attenuated a shade and altogether too suggestive of political trimming! A band of his followers, made up of ruffians, and called the Mazorca, or "Ear of Corn," because of the resemblance of their close fellowship to its adhering grains, broke into private houses, destroyed everything light blue within reach, and maltreated the unfortunate occupants at will.

No man was safe also who did not give his face a leonine aspect by wearing a mustache and sidewhiskers--emblems, the one of "federalism," and the other of "independence." To possess a visage bare of these hirsute adornments or a countenance too efflorescent in that respect was, under a regime of tonsorial politics, to invite personal disaster! Nothing apparently was too cringing or servile to show how submissive the people were to the mastery of Rosas.