Juan María Gutiérrez, and Juan Antonio Argerich—doubted the utility of joining the Spanish project, suspecting it was intended to restore peninsular culture to the country, to the detriment of Argentine culture. Argerich argued that such an academy would constitute "a branch that is a vassal of Spanish imperialism," and he counterproposed the creation of "an Argentine Academy of the Spanish Language" that would create its own dictionary. Obligado, on the other hand, argued publicly in favor of establishing an academy linked to the Royal Spanish Academy. In 1903, Estanislao Zeballos, in his contribution to Ricardo Monner Sans' Notas al castellano en la Argentina, unsuccessfully proposed that the Argentine correspondent members of the Royal Spanish Academy at the time—Bartolomé Mitre, Vicente Fidel López, Vicente G. Quesada, Carlos Guido Spano, Rafael Obligado, Calixto Oyuela, Ernesto Quesada, and himself—form an Argentine section of the academy. It was not until seven years later, through the efforts of the marquess of Gerona, Eugenio Sellés, who came to Argentina as part of the entourage escorting the Infanta Isabella to the festivities commemorating the country's centenary, that those same men founded the first Academia Argentina de la Lengua. Of the 18 academics who were founding members, Vicente Quesada and Calixto Oyuela were chosen as president and secretary for life, respectively. Obligado came up with a plan of action that included not only the work of editing and expanding the local lexicon contained in the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy but also working with the other Latin American academies to coordinate a register of local phrases, with the aim of creating a separate Latin American dictionary. With this he sought to avoid issues of nationalistic zeal and purism from the Spaniards, which had already caused friction with other correspondent academies. The Diccionario de americanismos would be available for the Royal Spanish Academy to use, but it would primarily constitute a separate undertaking. The group was expanded at Zeballos' insistence, with the addition of several new members of the academy: Samuel Lafone Quevedo, Osvaldo Magnasco, José Matienzo, José María Ramos Mejía, and Enrique Rivarola. However, a lack of political support and mutual friction with the Spanish academy led to the rapid dissolution of the body, which was never able to publish its research. Founding On August 13, 1931, the de facto president José Félix Uriburu decreed the creation of the Academia Argentina de Letras. The name change (from