I do not have much to add, also. Yes, it looks like a slender puñal criollo. In those times the most expensive part of a silver mount was the handworking of silver, or silversmithing, as silver itself was not much expensive and Argentina was a producer of this metal (the name of this country comes from the latin word "argentum", or silver, so it means "silvery"). Seeing the work on this knife, it doest looks expensive, although it´s historic value is important. So, it could be carried by a soldier or other person involved in military matters, related to the wars and other civil conflicts which Argentina, as many of the old colonies in the world, had in the 19th Century. Berkeley´s pointings are very valuable. The ornamentation is very "militant".
Argentina´s attitude toward napoleonic dynasty is interesting. Napoleón I was seen as the bearer of the ideas of liberty, of a new world free of the monarchy and it´s oppression over the colonies, and as the ally against the common enemy: Spain. Most of the civil codes of America´s countries are molded over the napoleonic civil code, and the same apply over the justice system as a whole, which is also the indirect legacy of the roman right. Also, it must be taken on account that the Geat Britain had many military interventions against argentineans with colonial purposes, interventions that argentineans frustrated with the use of war. And the napoleonic dynasty was a traditional enemy of the Great Britain.
It must be pointed, also, that a group of argentinean "corsairs" gave some steps to free Napoleón I from it´s confinement in british hands, but that proyect never went too far. British supremacy on the sea could not be ignored.
Though the Great Britain and France tried to breake an argentinean blockade over Paraguay, an intent frustrated by argentineans in the Battle of Obligado, it happened in 1945, before the coup of Luis Napoleon Bonaparte, latter Napoleon III, to size the power in France. Even as Napoleon III made a military alliance with the Great Britain since the Crimean War, I don´t think he never attempted any intervention,or collaborated in any intervention, agains Argentina. So, that is the situation of the napoleonic dynasty in front of argentinean eyes, as far I can see. I don´t think the French Intervention in México, ordered by Napoleon III, has any consecuence on this situation, as Argentina and México are almost as as far as Mexico from Europe, and had no political close relations or military alliances.
Maybe the reference to Napoleon III on the knife allows to locate it between 1850-1870, but there would be other opinions.
My best regards
Gonzalo
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