Argentine history
The history of Argentina is the chronology of events from the beginning of the first human settlement in the current territory of the Argentine Republic to our own present day.
It begins with the oldest traces of human beings on Argentine soil, detected in the extreme south of Patagonia, dating back about 13,000 years. The first agro-pottery civilizations were established in the Andean northwest from the 18th century BC. c.
The written history of what Argentina is began with the records of the German chronicler Ulrico Schmidl in the expedition of Juan Díaz de Solís in 1516 to the Río de la Plata, a fact that anticipates the Spanish domination that would be imposed in part of this region.
In 1776 the Spanish crown created the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, an entity that brought together territories from which, with the May Revolution of 1810, would begin a gradual process of formation of several autonomous States —called provinces— or independent, among them the one that took the name of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata.
With the declaration of independence on July 9, 1816 and the military defeat of the Spanish Empire in 1824, the sovereign existence was formalized. In 1833 the British Empire took possession of the Malvinas Islands, which at that time was a military headquarters of the United Provinces, whose return Argentina has claimed ever since.
After a prolonged period of civil wars, between 1853 and 1860 a federal republic was approved under the name of the Argentine Republic. Through wars against the Mapuche, Tehuelche, Ranquel, Wichi and Qom peoples, known as the Conquest of the Desert and the Conquest of the Chaco, the Argentine Republic took possession of the Chaco and Pampean plains and eastern Patagonia, forming its current territory, the eighth largest extensive of the world.
Between 1862 and 1930, a long period of constitutional stability elapsed, in which, due to a large wave of migration, mainly from Italy and Spain, the Argentine population grew five times faster than the world's.
The implementation of universal suffrage for men in 1912, completed with the recognition of the right to vote for women in 1951, gave rise to a series of governments elected by popular vote, which alternated in power from 1930 with military dictatorships, fraudulent governments and governments with limited legitimacy due to political proscriptions.
After the defeat in 1982 in the Malvinas war against the United Kingdom, the last dictatorship collapsed, its members being prosecuted for serious crimes against humanity. In 1983, an extensive period of democracy began that continues today, with nine presidents belonging to three parties succeeding one another since then: Raúl Alfonsín, Carlos Menem, Fernando de la Rúa, Adolfo Rodríguez Saá, Eduardo Duhalde, Néstor Kirchner, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Mauricio Macri and Alberto Fernandez.
Initial population
The first human beings that arrived in present-day Argentine territory seem to have arrived through the extreme south of Patagonia from what is now Chile. The oldest remains of human presence are found in Piedra Museo (Santa Cruz) and date back to 11,000 BC. C. Together with the deposits of Monte Verde (Chile) and Pedra Furada (Brazil) they constitute, up to now, the oldest settlement sites found in South America. These deposits support the theory of the early peopling of America (pre-Clovis).
These first inhabitants of the Argentine territory were dedicated to hunting milodones, (a mammal similar to a large camel-headed bear, now extinct)[citation required] and Hippidion saldiasi (South American horses that disappeared 8000 years ago),[citation needed] as well as graceful llamas, guanacos, and rheas.
Nearby, it is also possible to see the paintings of stamped hands and guanacos from 7300 BC. C. in the Cueva de las Manos (River Pinturas, province of Santa Cruz). It is one of the oldest artistic expressions of the South American peoples and has been declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco.
By the year 9000 B.C. C. the settlement of the pampa had already begun, while the northwestern part of the country began to be inhabited around 7000 BC. C..
Pre-Columbian history
The pre-Hispanic history of Argentina refers to the local cultural developments of the current territory of the Argentine Republic prior to the conquest and colonization of Spain.
The first population record of the territory currently controlled by Argentina dates back to 12.° or 13.♪ millennia AP, according to the findings of Los Toldos and Piedra Museo. Among the original villages, hunters and collectors inhabited Patagonia, Pampa and Chaco. The farmers settled in the northwest, Cuyo, the Sierras of Córdoba and then in the mesopotamia. Tastil, in the northwest, was the largest pre-Columbian city located in the current Argentine territory, with a population of 2000 inhabitants.
The Argentinean indigenous peoples were divided into two large groups: the hunters and collectors, who inhabited the Patagonia, the Pampa and the Chaco; and the farmers, installed in the north, Cuyo, the Sierras of Córdoba and, later, in the Mesopotamia.
The first traces of human life in this territory correspond to peoples of a paleolithic cultural level that three thousand years ago incorporated the first mesolytic and neolytic cultural contributions. Until the time of European conquest and colonization, the Argentine territory has been occupied by various indigenous peoples, with different social organizations that can be divided into three main groups:
- Hunters and collectors of basic oceanic canoes food, such as the Yagans or Yamana and the Haush in Tierra del Fuego and the canals of the Goblin. Hunters and collectors, who lived in Patagonia, the Pampa and the Chaco.
- Advanced hunters and collectors of foods such as pampides, in the center-east: hets in the meadows and steppes of the pampeana and north-patagononic region; and chonks in Patagonia —invaded from the s. XVIII by the alfarier mapuches from the Patagonian mountain range zone—and the qom and wichi in the Chaqueña region. Also belong to this group the pampidos charrúas y minuanes, which had incorporated the ceramics.
- Farmers with ceramics such as Guaraní and Andean and derivative cultures. From the second millennium, the ava (a heartened people known since the centuryXVII for the Spaniards as "guaranis" invaded the NEA and the Litoral Region; they were cultivators of cassava and avaty or corn in the form of chalk (tala and burning of flowers) and therefore semi-sedentary. The cultures centred on agriculture and cattle ranching in the north were purely sedentary, and had developed commercial networks encompassed in the current so-called "chechua" group; after establishing a quasi-state system around local lordships, they were subjected by the Inca Empire towards 1480. Influenced by these Andean cultures, other peoples such as the diaguitas, calchaquies and huarpes developed a less developed agriculture and livestock, adapted to the conditions of the llanas and serranas regions of the center of current Argentina and Cuyo.
In the 14th and 15th centuries, the Inca Empire conquered part of the current provinces of Jujuy, Salta, Catamarca, the western end of the province of Tucumán, the western part of the provinces of La Rioja and San Juan, the northwest of the province of Mendoza and, probably, the north of the province of Santiago del Estero, incorporating its territories to the Collasuyo, which was the southern part of the Tahuantinsuyo or regions of the region.
Traditionally, the conquest is attributed to the inca monarch Túpac Yupanqui. Several lordships of the region, such as the Quechuas, the likanantai (atacamas), the huarpes, the diaguitas and others, tried to resist, but the Incas managed to dominate them, moving to their territories to the mitimates or colonists deported from the tribes of the Chichas, who lived in what is the southwest of the current Bolivian territory. Others, like the Sanvirons, the Lule-tonocoté and the Henia-kâmîare (popularly called “comechingones”), successfully resisted the Inca invasion and remained independent lordships.
Agricultural and Textile Centres, Settlementscollca and tambos), roads (the "way of the Inca"), fortresses (♪) and high mountain sanctuaries. Some of the main ones are the pucará of Tilcara, the tambería del Inca, the pucará of Aconquija, the sanctuary of Llullaillaco, the shincal of London and the ruins of Quilmes.Argentina part of the Spanish Empire (1516-1806)
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The Spanish conquest of part of present-day Argentine territory was carried out through three independent efforts: expeditions from Spain to the Río de la Plata and Paraguay, expeditions organized in Peru to occupy the lands of Tucumán, and expeditions from Chile to Cuyo. From there arise the three great subdivisions: Nueva Andalucía (later divided into Río de la Plata and Guayrá-Paraguay), Córdoba del Tucumán, and the Corregimiento de Cuyo. The first two belonged to the Viceroyalty of Peru, the last to the General Captaincy of Chile. In 1779 the three became part of the new Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata.
Taking into account that in the Spanish Empire social unity was conceived through the unity of Faith of the Catholic Church, thanks to Pope Paul III's bull Sublimis Deus of 1537, the indigenous men were declared men with all effects and capabilities of Christians. Today, thanks to miscegenation, the population of Latin American countries share indigenous and European ancestors, to varying degrees.[citation required]
This period saw the death of most of the indigenous population in the demographic catastrophe in America after the arrival of the Europeans, which in turn led the Spanish Empire to introduce millions of kidnapped slaves into sub-Saharan Africa. Simultaneously, and despite the prohibition imposed by the clean blood statutes, there was a general miscegenation of the population, in which Spanish men had sexual relations—often forced—with dozens and even hundreds of indigenous and black women. This situation caused a process of acculturation in the sectors not born in Spain and ambiguity before the fact of the conquest. The Argentine artist Víctor Heredia expresses this dilemma in his work Taki Ongoy:
What we should find out once and for all at this point is who are we, the conquerors or the conquered?Victor Heredia
On November 20, 1542, King Carlos I of Spain signed in Barcelona by royal decree the so-called New Laws, a set of laws for the Indies among which he established the creation of the Viceroyalty of Peru replacing the old governorates of Nueva Castilla and Nueva León, while the headquarters of the Royal Audience of Panama was transferred to the City of Kings or Lima, capital of the new viceroyalty.
and we command you and command you that in the provinces or kingdoms of Peru reside a viceroy and a real audience of four oidors and the said virrey presiding in the said audience which will reside in the city of kings because it is in the most conventable part because from here on there must be no hearing in Panama.New Laws
The brand new viceroyalty comprised in the beginning and for almost three hundred years a large part of South America and the Isthmus of Panama, under various forms of control or supervision by its authorities. It covered an immense area that corresponded to the current territories that are part of the republics of Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Panama, Peru and the entire western and southern region of Brazil. Exceptions were Venezuela, under the jurisdiction of the Viceroyalty of New Spain through the Royal Audience of Santo Domingo, and Brazil, which was part of the Portuguese Empire.
During the viceregal period, most of the current Argentine territory could not be conquered by the Spanish Empire, due to the resistance put up by the indigenous peoples who inhabited those territories, mainly in the Chaco and Pampean plains and Patagonia.
In the pampas and Patagonia, the Tehuelche peoples dominated until the XVIII century when a large Mapuche contingent from the Arauco region, mapping the peoples that inhabited northern Patagonia and the pampas, a region that took the name of Puelmapu.
The Wichi and Kom peoples dominated the Chaco plain. In the region of the upper Paraná and upper Uruguay rivers, the Jesuits installed Guarani indigenous missions organized as community-type theocratic republics, in order to protect their members from the slavery practices of Spanish encomenderos and Portuguese bandeirantes, which led to the Guaranitic War between 1754 and 1756.
The area of the Río de la Plata was disputed in the period between the Spanish Empire and the Portuguese Empire, within the confrontation that both powers maintained on a global scale, generating a strong confrontation between Brazilians and people from Río de la Plata that led to the war in the Seven Years' War and then during the Spanish-Portuguese War of 1776-1777.
Initial expeditions to the Río de la Plata
The first Europeans who arrived in what is now Argentina, did so looking for a passage to the Asian continent. At that time America was only an obstacle between Spain and the riches of Cathay and Cipango in Asia. The zone, moreover, was located approximately on the Tordesillas Line, the division of the world that was established by treaty between Spain and Portugal and therefore had, for both countries, the condition of not yet occupied border.
Although there are many discussions about the authenticity of Américo Vespucio's travels, several historians accept as a fact that he participated in the first European (Portuguese) expedition to reach the current Argentine territory, more specifically to the Río de la Plata in 1502.
In 1516 the Spanish navigator Juan Díaz de Solís visited what is now known as Argentina, navigating the current Río de la Plata, which he called Mar Dulce due to its low salinity. He reached the present-day Martín García Island and died after navigating a short stretch of the Uruguay River. When the expedition returned to Spain, one of the caravels was shipwrecked in Santa Catarina, leaving eighteen shipwrecked there. One of them, Alejo García, was the first to learn about the legend of the White King, about a country rich in silver, making an excursion to the Potosí region where Cerro Rico is located, where made from a huge hoard of pieces of silver. Upon returning he died in a combat with the Payaguaes Indians.
In 1519 and 1520 Ferdinand Magellan traveled the entire coast of present-day Argentina during the Magellan-Elcano Expedition, up to the strait that bears his name, which he reached on October 21, 1520.
In 1525 Fray García Jofre de Loaísa led an expedition that toured Patagonia and even briefly settled in Puerto Santa Cruz to repair two ships.
In 1526, the Italian Sebastián Gaboto made contact in Santa Catarina (in Brazil) with the Guarani who had belonged to Alejo García's expedition and decided to go to the Silver Empire, sailing upstream the de la Plata River known then as Río de Solís. On June 9, 1527, Gaboto ordered the establishment of two forts: one in current Uruguayan territory (San Salvador) and another, which he called Sancti Spiritus, the first European settlement in current Argentine territory, in the current province of Santa Fe. An expeditionary de Gaboto, Francisco César, possibly arrived in Córdoba. Gaboto also went up the Paraná River, the Paraguay River and the Bermejo River.
Diego García de Moguer arrived in Sancti Spiritus shortly after Gaboto and tried to impose his authority. However, hunger and defeats against the Timbúes and Charrúas forced them to return to Spain, where they spread the news about the White King and the Río de la Plata.
The Portuguese and Spanish then accelerated plans to take possession of that region, which both considered to be on their side of the Tordesillas Line.
In 1531 Portugal sent a large expedition under the command of Martín Alfonso de Souza to take possession of the Río de la Plata and expel the Spanish. He reached the island of Martín García, which he renamed Santa Ana. He entered the Uruguay River and found out that the Spanish at the San Salvador fort had been defeated. He then decided to retire to Cape Santa María (where La Paloma, Uruguay is currently located). There he made astronomical measurements and came to the conclusion that he was on the Spanish side of the Tordesillas Line, so he returned to Portugal without making any foundation.
Colonization of the Río de la Plata (1527-1580)
In the exploration and conquest that Sebastián Caboto made of the Río de la Plata, on June 9, 1527, he built a fort at the mouth of the Carcarañá river in the Paraná river, about 50 km north of the current city of Rosario, to which he gave the name of Sancti Spiritus. This was the first Spanish establishment in what is now the Argentine Republic. Near its location, the town of Gaboto, in the province of Santa Fe, was later built to commemorate the event.
In a later expedition, in February 1528, Diego García de Moguer, commanding an expedition of three ships, stopped to explore the area of the Río de la Plata. Navigating the Paraná River in April, he unexpectedly found Fort Sancti Spiritus. Surprised and outraged, he ordered Captain Caro (appointed by Sebastián Gaboto) to leave the place, since this was a conquest that only belonged to him for having been designated by Castilla to explore those lands. But defeated by the pleas of Caro and his people to go to the aid of Gaboto, García continued upstream and between what are now the towns of Goya and Bella Vista he met the Venetian pilot, who forced him to cooperate in the search for the Sierra de la Plata, and together they explored the Pilcomayo River, to then continue towards the strait.
In spite of all this, in Sancti Spiritus, the Spanish neglected to defend the fort, and in September 1529, before dawn, the Indians stormed the fortress. Sebastián Gaboto and Diego García de Moguer were at that time in the settlement of San Salvador, preparing men and boats, and they knew nothing of what was taking place in Sancti Spiritus, until they saw Gregorio Caro arrive with the survivors, and the terrible news of the destruction of the fort. Gaboto and García immediately went to the fort trying to rescue their men. In the surroundings of Sancti Spiritus they found some completely mutilated corpses; the brigantines scuttled and sunk, the warehouses looted and set on fire. Only two cannons remained as witnesses of the first fortress that was built on Argentine soil.
On August 24, 1534, Diego García de Moguer, traveled again in the caravel Concepción towards the Río de la Plata, passing through the island of Santiago de Cabo Verde, then to Brazil, where the estuary of the Uruguay and Paraná rivers descends and founds the first settlement of the city of Santa María del Buen Aire.
In 1536 Pedro de Mendoza founded the Port of Santa María del Buen Ayre. However, the settlement failed due to famines and clashes with indigenous tribes. Some of the town's inhabitants, deprived of food and besieged by local indigenous people, found themselves driven to cannibalism. The city was abandoned, and its inhabitants settled in Asunción, which became the Spanish operations center in the region.
By 1573, there were no settlements made by Europeans along the Paraná River, a territory that chroniclers such as Martín del Barco Centenera called the “Argentine Reyno”. This is how Juan de Garay, starting from the city of Asunción, accompanied by the youths of the land and the plans of the city, founded Santa Fe on the banks of this great river, as a communication hub between the outlet of the Río de la Plata and Paraguay, with Tucumán and Cuyo, Upper Peru and Chile. It turns out that this historic city becomes the first planned in the territory, based on Renaissance architectural ideals. While in Europe, this model could not be carried out, America in general and Santa Fe in particular, are concrete evidence of this new urbanization process planned in grids, with a pre-established order unlike previous populations. Elements that today can be clearly seen in the Archaeological Park of Santa Fe la Vieja in Cayastá.
In this Argentinian Kingdom, only Santa Fe existed for several years and it is there where the first settlers who were called Argentinos live. Martín del Barco Centenera gives an account of this in his historical poem & # 34; La Argentina & # 34;, published in 1602.
In 1580, leaving Santa Fe, Juan de Garay refounded the City of Trinidad and Puerto de Santa María de los Buenos Ayres, which in time would be known simply as Buenos Aires. This city was part of the Governorate of Nueva Andalucía, within the Viceroyalty of Peru, based in Lima.
In the 17th century the Guarani Jesuit missions were established. They were missionary towns founded by the "Society of Jesus" among the Guarani and related peoples, whose purpose was to evangelize the Indians of the current provinces of Misiones and Corrientes, in Argentina, and of important territories currently in Paraguay. They successfully fulfilled their task until in 1768, when the Spanish King Carlos III ordered the expulsion of the Jesuits.
Colonization of Tucumán (1549-1593)
In 1549, Captain Juan Núñez de Prado was rewarded by the Viceroy of Peru. A few years before, the Spanish domains in the Inca territories had suffered a serious crisis. After the denunciations of Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, Emperor Carlos V issued new laws that gave great rights to the Indians: it was prohibited to enslave them, torture them, forcibly convert them to Christianity, and alienate their lands. The transmission of parcels by inheritance was also prohibited. This spawned the Great Encomenderos Rebellion, in which the royal government was barely able to enforce the new rights for the Indians. For his outstanding work, Juan Núñez de Prado received authorization to occupy and govern the lands of Tucumán.
The following year (1550) Juan Núñez de Prado and his companions founded the city of El Barco. This generated a protest on the part of Francisco de Aguirre, who claimed all of Tucumán as part of the Captaincy of Chile: in 1553 De Aguirre achieved his goal, and moved the settlers, founding the city of Santiago del Estero del Nuevo Maestrazgo. According to the studies of Narciso Binayán Carmona, three centuries later all the Creoles in the North of Argentina would be descendants of one of the 103 members of the Núñez de Prado expedition.
The Spanish sought to consolidate dominance in the region by founding cities at key points:
- In 1558 Juan Pérez de Zurita founded London of New England, in the current province of Catamarca. London was destroyed in 1560 during the first Calchaquí war, but later it was rebuilt. This indigenous uprising managed to keep the Spaniards out of some territories and caused the Tucumán to move from Chilean jurisdiction to Peruvian.
- In 1561 Juan Pérez de Zurita founded the city of Nieva, then recast as San Salvador de Jujuy.
- The nephew of Aguirre, Diego de Villarroel founded in 1565 the city of San Miguel de Tucumán.
- Jerónimo Luis de Cabrera founded in 1573 the city of Córdoba de la Nueva Andalucía
- In 1582, Hernando de Lerma founded the City of Salta.
Juan Ramírez de Velasco, head of the Tucumán Governorate, founded the city of Todos los Santos in the new Rioja in 1591, refounded the city of London in 1592, and founded San Salvador de Jujuy in 1593.
Colonization of Cuyo (1560-1594)
The Chronicle of Fray Reginaldo de Lizárraga contrasts the conquest of Chile with the less glorious (according to him) colonization of Cuyo. The colonization was not difficult and was completely peaceful, since a Huarpe embassy crossed the Andes to ask the Spanish to send priests and architects to teach them how to build cities. In 1561 the Spanish founded Mendoza del Nuevo Valle de La Rioja, followed by San Juan de la Frontera in 1562 and San Luis de la Punta de los Venados in 1594.
Jesuit influence until his first expulsion (1585-1767)
Although in 1512 the Spanish Monarchy undertook the necessary reforms to regulate their treatment officially and abolish indigenous slavery through the Laws of Burgos, it has been attributed to the bull of Pope Paul III Sublimis Deus of 1537, which declared the indigenous people men with all the effects and capacities of Christians, whose effect on the Spanish colonization was given by miscegenation, which was exceptional: the Catholic conquest would have sought to incorporate the indigenous people into their civilization and his Church, even at the cost of annulling their cultural identity.[citation required]
In 1585 the Jesuits arrived in Santiago del Estero and in 1587 in Córdoba. In 1588 they founded the first Guaraní Jesuit Missions and in the same year they arrived at the Salado River to evangelize the pampas.
Since their arrival, the Jesuits established Córdoba as the center of the Jesuit Province of Paraguay, in the Viceroyalty of Peru. For this they needed a place to settle and thus begin higher education. It was so that in 1599, and after expressing this need to the council, they were given the lands that are known today as the Jesuit Block.
The first cultural and scientific manifestations in present-day Argentine territory were carried out by religious orders, especially the Jesuits who have made numerous significant contributions to the development of science and have been described as "the main contributor to experimental physics in the seventeenth century."
In 1613 with the support of Bishop Trejo, the Jesuit University of Córdoba was founded, the oldest in the country and one of the first in America, which taught art, theology and, at the end of the century, XVIII, jurisprudence. That year the Librería Grande (today Biblioteca Mayor) was also created, which according to records had more than five thousand volumes. This, like the rest of the universities of the Spanish empire, actively participated in the cultural splendor of the Golden Age, thanks to the innovative movement led by the School of Salamanca.
In 1624 the Universidad Mayor Real y Pontificia San Francisco Xavier de Chuquisaca was founded, which, although not exactly in the current Argentine territory since its creation, had a notable influence.
The network of 25 viceregal universities of the Spanish Empire founded throughout the Americas over almost two centuries, disseminated the important advances of the Spanish Golden Age. Also the Camino Real Intercontinental, which affected the mercury and silver route of the Hispanic Monarchy, which was an essential part of trade between Europe and America between the 16th and 18th centuries, as well as cultural contacts and technological innovations.
In 1609 the first of the Guarani Jesuit missions was founded. The thirty missions became, in the 18th century, a veritable commercial emporium, a "state within a state& #3. 4; as its detractors called it, which was established as a system of economic and social organization different from that of the colonies that surrounded them. Its autonomy and the adaptation of the Guarani community social organization to a new context allowed the system to survive and progress. The missions were indigenous towns, administered by the Guarani themselves (under the paternalistic gaze of the missionaries), where the land was divided into two: the tupá mbaé (property of God), communal, and the ava mbaé (man's property), for family exploitation. The surplus was marketed by all the surrounding colonies (La Plata, Tucumán, Brazil and even Upper Peru and Spain) and provided the Jesuits with means to expand the missions and maintain their colleges and universities (such as those they had in Córdoba, regional center of the Society of Jesus).
The main products traded by the missions were yerba mate, tobacco, leather, and textile fibers. However, the missions had to endure a strong siege by the bandeirantes, groups of Portuguese who entered the jungle to "hunt Indians"; in order to sell them as slaves at their base in San Pablo, which ironically was born as a Jesuit reduction). The Missions played a key role in the defense of Paraguay and the Río de la Plata from Portuguese expansion. Just after the battle of Mbororé, in 1641 (which lasted 10 days), in which an army of Guarani under the command of Jesuits (many of whom had previously been soldiers) defeated a bandeira (a Luso-Brazilian army of bandeirantes), which for the first time allowed indigenous people to use firearms (although only the smallest caliber). These missionary armies were very useful during the confrontations between Spain and Portugal in the Río de la Plata.
The Jesuits taught them not only to work, pray and fight, but also music and other arts (of which you can still admire the "baroque" architectures decorated with baroque reliefs highlighted on the stones ashlars or carved in the red bricks of the Roman type.This is how, after the expulsion of the Jesuits, many Guarani moved to colonial cities, such as Corrientes, Asunción or Buenos Aires, where they stood out as composers and music teachers, silversmiths and painters.
The first Jesuits arrived in Buenos Aires during the government of Hernandarias in 1608 and founded the Colegio de San Ignacio and in 1675 they founded the Real Colegio de San Carlos. In 1654 the Cabildo of Buenos Aires entrusted the Jesuits with education city youth.
The priests of the Society of Jesus settled south of the Salado River between 1740 and 1753, in order to establish a permanent population on the border of the colonial state. His intention was to sedentary and instruct the natives in Christian doctrine. The first reduction was the "Reduction of Our Lady in the Mystery of her Conception of the Pampas", founded in 1740 on the south bank of the Salado River, by parents Manuel Quevedo and Matías Strobel. The second was the "Reducción de Nuestra Señora del Pilar de Puelches", founded in 1746 near the margin of the current Laguna de los Padres, by the missionaries Joseph Cardiel and Tomás Falkner. Finally, the "Mission of the Desamparados de Tehuelches or Patagones", was founded in 1749 four leagues to the south of the previous one, by Father Lorenzo Balda. There they managed to evangelize a large number of pampas Indians. Strobel mediated between the authorities of Buenos Aires and the pampas to establish peace between them. Falkner and his Jesuit colleague Florián Paucke collected a great deal of information about the customs and uses of the Pampas and Guarani Indians, which they captured in books and exquisite drawings that gave rise to ethnography in present-day Argentine territory.
In the Guarani Jesuit Missions they published books in Guarani on grammar, catechism, prayer manuals and even a dictionary. The reductions had the first printing press founded by the fathers Juan Bautista Neuman and José Serrano, who set up a press, cast the necessary types and published the first books. The impressions were made in Nuestra Señora de Loreto, San Javier and Santa María la Mayor.
The first published book was the Roman Martyrology in 1700; Later on, the Flos Sactorum by Father Pedro de Ribadeneyra in a Guaraní edition, and On the difference between the temporal and the eternal by Father Juan Eusebio Nieremberg. The bibliographical production was very rich and varied, the majority still being preserved.
The Expulsion of the Jesuits from the Spanish Empire in 1767 meant that 2,630 Jesuits had to leave Latin America, which meant a terrible blow at the educational level, since the vast majority of the educational institutions in the territory were in charge of them as teachers.
Discovery and takeover of Antarctica
The Spanish navigator Gabriel de Castilla set sail from Valparaíso in March 1603 in command of three ships on an expedition commissioned by his first cousin, the Viceroy of Peru Luis de Velasco y Castilla, to suppress the incursions of Dutch corsairs in the seas to the south. Apparently that expedition reached 64° south latitude. No documents have yet been found in Spanish archives that confirm the latitude reached and whether they made sightings of land, however, the account of the Dutch sailor Laurenz Claesz (in an undated testimony, but probably after 1607), documents the latitude and the epoch. Claesz states that he:
has sailed under the Admiral Don Gabriel of Castile with three ships along the coasts of Chile towards Valparaiso, and from there to the strait [of Magellan], in the year 1604; i was in March at 64 degrees i there had a lot of snow. In the following month of April they returned back to the coast of Chile.
On April 30, 1606, Pedro Fernández de Quirós took possession of all the southern lands as far as the Pole for the crown of Spain on the island of Espiritu Santo in Vanuatu, which he called Austrialia del Espiritu Santo thinking it was part of the Terra Australis Incognita.
Another assumption is that in the 18th century the Antarctic Peninsula and the archipelagos of the South Antilles were frequently visited by Spanish and Spanish-American sealers, who would have hidden the territories in question to avoid competition (especially from the British). The presence of these hunters would be attested by the finding of possible remains of their refuges on the eastern coast of the Antarctic peninsula.
Spanish Consolidation (1600-1776)
At the beginning of the XVII century the cities founded by the Spanish were no more than small watchtowers of European civilization scattered over a a very vast territory, and during those hundred years they increased their influence through encomiendas for the formation of estancias and the foundation of cities, which were progressively moving away from the Camino Real. Although border skirmishes were common, there were no great conquests as in the previous century: rather, the domain of the already conquered territories was consolidated.
In 1599 the Jesuits settled in Córdoba, and in 1613 they founded a university in that city. At the same time they were founding settlements among the Guaraní and Guaycurú Indians. The Jesuit Missions were subordinate to the Spanish Crown. Like any other Spanish city, they had a council, a corregidor, mayors with first and second votes, a notary, and all the other institutions of Spanish civilization: the difference was that the corregidor and the rest of the authorities were almost always caciques.
In 1663, by order of the captain general of the provinces of the Río de La Plata and president of the Royal Audience of Buenos Aires José Martínez de Salazar the El Camino Real from Buenos Aires to Lima was established with two main roads: the Camino Real del Perú that followed in general lines the itinerary of the current National Route 9 of Argentina from Buenos Aires, passing through Córdoba, Santiago del Estero, San Miguel de Tucumán, Salta, San Salvador de Jujuy, Potosí, reaching Peru and the Camino Real del Oeste that continued towards San Luis, Mendoza and Santiago in Chile and that followed a route similar to National Route 7.
Compared to other parts of Latin America, slavery played a relatively small role in the development of the Argentine economy, mainly due to the lack of metal mines and sugar cane plantations, which would have demanded an enormous amount of labor. slave labor. Colonial Brazil, for example, imported nearly 2.5 million Africans in the 17th century. In contrast, an estimated 100,000 African slaves arrived in the port of Buenos Aires in the 17th and 18th centuries; the vast majority of them were destined for Paraguay, Chile and Bolivia. The Upper Peru market facilitated the planting of cotton in Santiago del Estero and the establishment of an incipient textile industry, in which cotton was made together with wool from goats, sheep and howler animals in the territories of the current provinces of Santiago del Estero, Catamarca, Salta, La Rioja as well as saddlery in Tucumán. On the other hand, the city of Córdoba benefited from being the crossroads of the routes that linked the west with the east and the north with the southeast of the viceroyalty.
This economic base, with a metallurgical north and an agricultural and port south, meant the development of a road traffic that generally went down from Upper Peru to the port of Buenos Aires following the Camino Real, such traffic supposed for its part the breeding of mules, also of horses and donkeys) which was carried out mainly in the cities of Tucumán and promoted the manufacture of carts manufactured in San Miguel de Tucumán and in the city of Mendoza. The area of the Missions and Paraguay was home to yerba mate crops, crops started by the Guarani and Jesuits. The yerba mate supplied almost the entire viceroyalty and even the General Captaincy of Chile. Other food crops arose thanks to the demand from Alto Peru: wines (in Salta, Tarija, Cuyo, Córdoba), spirits and singanis; and even olive plantations, mainly in La Rioja and Catamarca.
An example of administrative and territorial consolidation was the establishment of the Marquesado de Yavi in 1707: its capital was in the city of Yavi, present-day province of Jujuy; and it extended throughout the Argentine north and the south of Bolivia (Chuquisaca, Tarija, Orán, San Antonio de los Cobres, etc). The marquises had an enormous extension of land and enjoyed perpetual recognition of their encomiendas, which were declared invalid by the Argentine Supreme Court in 1877.
In Cuyo, around the 18th century most of the Huarpes had converted to Christianity, adopting the Spanish language. That was the area where the creolization of the native peoples occurred the fastest. A remnant of the Huarpes south of the Diamante River was conquered by the Mapuches during the Araucanization.
Since its founding, Buenos Aires constituted a highly civilized social structure, a true rule of law where without a doubt of unquestionable freedom, there was an unknown legal order then in almost the rest of the world, including in several European countries. (...) the real estate was measured and transmitted in a timely manner by public writing, the dows, successions and various information were also written, the birth and the state of the people were recorded, the eventual dissents, divorces and nullities were treated with canonically, subject to procedures that were curiously similar to the current ones, (...) there were public hospitals and schools. (...) That society was really autarchical: the Church was the neighbors, the Justice and the general administration were the neighbors, and the Army were also the neighbors. Of course, some officials from Spain came, but in the vast majority of cases they did not go any further, they were overwhelmed, nationalized.Francisco Seeber, Solidez de la Estructura Social Argentina, magazine Universitas No. 72/73, September-December 1984
In 1749, the Post Office service was created on El Camino Real from Buenos Aires to Lima on the initiative of Domingo de Basavilbaso, who for this reason is recognized as the father of Argentine mail. The key to the new service was the chain of posts that marked the way.
Conflicts with Portugal and Brazil (1680-1828)
Between 1680 and 1828, Spain and Portugal (followed by their independent colonies) had a series of conflicts along their border.
In 1680 the Portuguese soldier Manuel de Lobo founded the first city in what is now Uruguayan territory: Colonia del Sacramento. The Spanish governor of the Río de la Plata, José de Garro, requested reinforcements from the cities of Tucumán, Corrientes, Santa Fe, and the Jesuit missions: with this army he occupied the city. The following year the King signed a treaty with Portugal to return it, on the condition that they did not trade with Spanish cities.
Fifty years later, in 1723, the Portuguese Manuel de Freytas Fonseca founded the fort of Montevidéu. The Spanish from Buenos Aires took the fort and in 1726 Felipe V ordered it to be fortified and populated. The situation remained static until 1762: in the context of the Seven Years' War, the Spanish from Buenos Aires reoccupied the city, however the war ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris (1763), in which the return of the disputed colony to Portugal. In 1777, with the Treaty of San Ildefonso, Colonia passed back under Spanish rule.
Following the May Revolution, Portuguese forces launched an invasion of the Banda Oriental in 1811. A second invasion in 1816 was final: the Oriental Province was annexed by the Kingdom of Brazil and was renamed Cisplatina Province. In 1825 the war in Brazil began, the Congress of Florida declared the independence of the Eastern Province and its reincorporation into the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata. In 1828 the war ended and with it the main border conflicts ended.
Creation of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata (1776-1814)
Throughout the 18th century, the political changes carried out by the House of Bourbon that replaced the House of Austria from November 16, 1700 in the Spanish Empire transformed the American dependencies, until then relatively autonomous "kingdoms", into colonies entirely dependent on decisions made in Spain for her benefit. Among these measures was the founding of the Viceroyalty del Río de la Plata in 1777, which brought together territories dependent until then on the Viceroyalty of Peru, and gave singular importance to its capital, the city of Buenos Aires, which had had little importance until then.
In 1776, the Spanish separated the Viceroyalty of Peru, establishing among other new administrative zones the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata. The enormous area covered by the Viceroyalty of Peru made government tasks difficult, which was a powerful reason for its division. Buenos Aires was established as the capital, due to its growing importance as a commercial center and the value of the Río de la Plata estuary as an entrance to the interior of the continent.
This viceroyalty encompassed what is now Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, as well as most of present-day Bolivia. According to the census ordered by Carlos III, in 1778 the viceroyalty had a population of 186,526 inhabitants. Córdoba had 44,506, the city of Buenos Aires 37,679, while Mendoza had a fourth 8,765. The Afro-Argentine population was important, exceeding 50% in Santiago del Estero and Catamarca.
At first, the city of Buenos Aires had suffered serious supply problems of basic goods, since foreign trade was monopolized by Spain and said country prioritized the port of Lima, since large quantities of gold and silver for the metropolis, products absent in the surroundings of Buenos Aires. As a consequence, there was a strong development of smuggling. The main production in Buenos Aires at that time was leather.
Spain imposed Christianity and the Spanish language. Throughout Latin America, Spanish customs and fashions governed, although the different ethnic groups and Creole cultures that made up the colonial population also found mechanisms to preserve some aspects of their cultural, linguistic, and religious heritage, which often merged with each other to generate new manifestations. cultural. Population density in the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata was low, and until the middle of the XIX century, more than half of the Current Argentine territory was inhabited by indigenous tribes.
Spain imposed a caste system on its American colonies with three main groups, whites, Indians and blacks, as well as groups derived from the miscegenation of the others: mulatto, mestizo, zambo. The hybrids were considered "stained" or "impure blood", but there were differences between them since, while the "Indian blood" "stained" for three generations, the "black blood" "stained" for all eternity. At the top of the caste system were the peninsular Spaniards, considered to be of "pure blood" and to whom the greatest number of privileges were recognized, followed by the American Spaniards, known as "criollos", legitimate descendants of a Spanish father and mother. Although there was a conceptual difference between peninsulares and Creoles, they did not have any difference in rights: there were several Creoles who were viceroys, in Plata Vértiz. At the bottom of the social scale were "blacks", with those born in Africa occupying last place.
However, this separation was not so strict, and their conventions were usually postponed if practical needs so required. Thus, during the English Invasions, arms and military ranks were given to various groups that under normal circumstances could not access to such positions, and the scarcity of Spanish women promoted miscegenation. From it, and having as one of their economic bases extensive livestock farming or the hauling and slaughter of large herds, the young men of the land arose already in the century XVII and then the gauchos, who would have a decisive role in the emancipatory feat of the century XIX.
Discovery, settlement and governance in the Falkland Islands
The bulls Inter Caetera and Dudum si Quidem of 1493 awarded to the Kingdom of Spain «all those islands and mainlands, found and to be found, discovered and which discovered around noon”, fixed on a line a hundred leagues from the Azores islands. The Malvinas Islands, included in the areas referred to in the bulls, were sighted for the first time in 1520 by Esteban Gómez with the ship San Antonio of the Spanish expedition of Ferdinand Magellan. The islands begin to appear on maps Pedro Reinel (1522-1523), Diego Rivero (1526-1527 and 1529), Islario de Santa Cruz (1541), Sebastián Gaboto (1544), Diego Gutiérrez (1561), Bartolomé de Olivos (1562), among others. Britain claims the islands were discovered by John Davis in 1592
On January 31, 1764, the Frenchman Louis Antoine de Bougainville landed on the islands, which he named Illes Malouines because the settlers he brought to the islands they came from the French city of Saint-Malo. On March 17, he founded a colony on Soledad Island, which he called Port Saint-Louis and on April 5, 1764, he formally took possession of the territory. in the name of Louis XV. But in 1765 Spain and France reached an agreement for the recognition of the Islands as a Spanish possession that included compensation for expenses incurred by Louis Antoine de Bougainville. For this reason, on October 2, 1766 King Carlos III of Spain issued a royal decree by which he created the Governorate of the Malvinas Islands as a dependency of the Governor and Captain General of Buenos Aires, at that time Francisco de Paula Bucarelli y Uruzúa, naming the captain of the ship Felipe Ruiz Puente as first governor of the territory. Thus the first town passed from French to Spanish hands. When Felipe Ruiz Puente took office as the first Spanish governor of the Malvinas, he settled in Port Saint-Louis and proceeded to build several common buildings such as kitchens and barracks, and a chapel dedicated to Nuestra Señora de la Soledad, a name that replaced the French place name of the port. and finally led to that of the entire island.
In this Puerto de Nuestra Señora de La Soledad was located the seat of government of the Gobernación de las Islas Malvinas (later Command). The successive governors of the islands (there were 18 in all) fulfilled the task of regularly inspecting the coasts; the place was regularly visited by English and American sealers and whalers. The population of the islands was made up of officers, soldiers and convicts, the latter belonging to the prison installed in 1780.
After the first attempts at independence in the viceroyalty, the governor of Montevideo, Gaspar de Vigodet decided to gather all the military forces available to him in order to confront the Mayo revolutionaries, for which reason he ordered the evacuation of the Malvinas. In January 1811, Spain abandoned the islands with the intention of returning, after 37 years of undisputed occupation and also leaving plaques on the bell tower of the chapel and on the main buildings, in which it affirmed its sovereignty over the islands:
This island with its Ports, Buildings, Units and what it contains belongs to the Sovereignty of Mr. D. Fernando VII King of Spain and his Indies, Soledad de Malvinas February 7, 1811 being governor Pablo Guillén.
Argentina part of Puelmapu (1650-1880)
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In the 15th and 16th centuries, the Tehuelches, located in the Pampean-Patagonian plains, began to migrate to the Andean area under Pehuenche rule, belonging to the Mapuche culture. At the same time, the Huarpes located in the current territory of Mendoza moved south, establishing friendly relations with the Pehuenches.
Starting in 1608, slave incursions into the territory of the Cunco people (present-day southern Chile), belonging to the Mapuche nation, began to drive a migration through the Pehuenche pass from the western side to the eastern side of the Andes mountain range, settling in the region and beginning what will be known as the Mapuchization process of the Tehuelche cultures.
After the Arauco War ended in 1656, the Mapuches began to expand their presence in northern Patagonia and the pampas, setting up fütalmapus or confederations, with their corresponding aillarehues (provincial federations) and lovs (clans). The process was consolidated in the XVIII century, culturally assimilating the Tehuelche biases and the adoption of the Mapudungun language (which will also influence the Spanish dialects of the region), as well as the laws or admapu and Mapuche customs.
The expansion of indigenous peoples through the Pampas and Patagonian plains was promoted by the adoption of the horse introduced by the Spanish, transforming them into skilled riders. As the Pampas territory became populated with wild cattle, they reoriented their economy towards hunting cattle, apples in the valley of the current Negro or Curu Leuvu river and also the extraction of salt obtained in the large salt mines of the region. at the same time that they established new commercial routes with the central valley of Chile. One of the most important settlements was that of the ragkülche or ranqueles, who installed their aillarehues along the Chadileuvú, Salado or Desaguadero river and the Salinas Grandes sector, controlling the pampas.
The raid was an offensive military tactic used by the Araucanians, which consisted of a quick and surprise attack by a large party of warriors on horseback against an enemy group, whether they were other towns or indigenous factions, or populations, fortifications and ranches of the Creoles, with the aim of killing opponents and looting to take cattle, provisions and prisoners, especially young women and children.
The raid was used in the extensive area of the southern border of the then General Captaincy of Chile and the Viceroyalty of Peru and the later Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, which were political jurisdictions dependent on the Spanish crown, surviving until the beginning XX century in the territories of the new states that emerged as a result of the independence of Argentina and Chile.
In 1790 the Spanish Empire celebrated the first of three treaties with the Mapuches related to the Puel Mapu (Peace Treaty with Cacique Callfilqui of 1790, Peace Treaty with the Ranquele Indians of 1796 and the Treaty between the Pehuenches and the province de Mendoza 1799), which complemented those that had been celebrating with the Mapuche sector on the other side of the mountain range.
Although in the texts of Bartolomé Miter and Estanislao Zeballos or in the letters and documents of Juan Manuel de Rosas, which are from the time, the word Mapuche does not exist, they only speak of pampas, puelches, ranqueles, etc., it is believed that the Mapuches ended up forming an area of influence called Puelmapu or Puel Mapu in the XVIII century, which stretched from the Andes mountain range, the Limay River and the Curu Leuvu or Negro River to the south, in the Neuquén region, to the Cuarto River to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. The Puel Mapu already appears constituted in the Parliament of Lonquilmo of 1784.
The great Mapuche migration to the pampas and Atlantic Patagonia began in 1833.
Rise of the Nation State (1806-1852)
Traditional Latin American and Argentine historiography has interpreted the independence movements of the Spanish colonies as beginning at the beginning of the XIX century, constituted a moment of break with Western colonialism, which gave way to the creation of nation-states independent of the European empires. Distanced from this vision, various social scientists maintain that the processes of political independence did not break with the deep processes of coloniality, creating "creole republican states" or "colonial states", independent but which maintained the racist logic of exclusion that characterized colonialism, both internally and globally.
In 1806 and 1807, in the framework of the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, the English Invasions of the Río de la Plata took place. Sir Home Riggs Popham and William Carr Beresford led the first, which landed in the Quilmes area and took control of the city of Buenos Aires for 45 days until its expulsion by an army from Montevideo headed by Santiago de Liniers. In 1807 a second, even larger attack (about 8,000 soldiers), led by John Whitelocke, was successfully resisted.
The conflict had political consequences: it created a breach of the institutional law in force in the viceroyalty; Viceroy Rafael de Sobremonte was dismissed for fleeing during the invasion, and the victorious Liniers was elected by popular acclamation, without direct intervention from the King of Spain. During the second conflict, the soldiers were insufficient and the help of the metropolis could not be counted on, so neglected sectors of the population received weapons and command of troops. This allowed them to have greater interference in the affairs of public life. Among them stood out the Regiment of Patricios, made up of Creoles and commanded by Cornelio Saavedra.
The Independence of the United States (1776), the French Revolution (1789) and the new ideas of the Enlightenment, combined with the traditions of struggle of Creoles, indigenous people and Afro-Americans against the Spanish Empire to promote the ideas of freedom, equality and independence in Latin America.
The May Revolution of 1810 dismissed and expelled Viceroy Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros, and proclaimed, after an Open Cabildo, the first government formed mostly by Creoles in the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, called the First Board.
Between 1810 and 1820, there were two government juntas, two triumvirates and the Directory, a one-person and centralist form of government. In this period, the main concern of the governments was to consolidate the internal order and face the resistance of the royalist Armies in America (defenders of the status quo and the maintenance of the ties that united these regions to the Spanish crown). In 1816 the independence of the United Provinces of South America was declared in the Congress of Tucumán.
Liberation campaign
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José de San Martín, Manuel Belgrano and Martín Miguel de Güemes were some of the main patriot commanders in the independence war. Belgrano was entrusted with directing the Army of the North and, although he was defeated by the royalists, he laid the foundations for Paraguay to form its own government in 1811. In 1812 he created the Argentine flag and led the Exodus of Jujeño, after which was imposed on the Spanish in the battles of Tucumán and Salta.
In 1816, San Martín organized the Army of the Andes made up of 4,000 men and, from 1817 to 1822, he led the liberation campaigns that would lead to the independence of Chile and Peru. At the same time, Simón Bolívar made Gran Colombia independent, completed the independence of Peru, and liberated Bolivia (1824), the last bastion of Spanish rule in South America.
The Argentine State considers San Martín the greatest military hero of its independence and honors him with the title of "Father of the Nation". Among the women, Mariquita Sánchez de Thompson, organizer of patriotic cenacles and precursor of feminism, and Juana Azurduy, military heroine of the struggle for independence in Upper Peru and first general of the Argentine Army, promoted post-mortem in 2009.
Campaigns abroad
French-Argentine Hippolyte Bouchard then led his fleet to wage war abroad against Spain and attacked Spanish California, Spanish Chile, Spanish Peru, and Spanish Philippines. He gained the loyalty of fugitive Filipinos in San Blas who deserted from the Spanish to join the Argentine army, due to conflicts between Argentines and Filipinos against Spanish colonization. A brother of the liberator of Argentina, Juan Fermín de San Martín, he was also an immigrant to the Philippines. At a later date, the Argentinian Sun of May was adopted as a symbol by Filipinos in the Philippine Revolution against Spain. Bouchard, also obtained the diplomatic recognition of Argentina by King Kamehameha I of the Kingdom of Hawaii. The historian Pacho O'Donnell affirms that Hawaii was the first State that recognized the independence of Argentina.
Civil War
Since before 1820, unitarios and federales disputed the government and economy of the country through a series of civil wars. With the Battle of Cepeda, a federal triumph, the Period of Provincial Autonomies began; the union between the provinces was only maintained thanks to "interprovincial treaties". Internal struggles —in general, those of the interior against Buenos Aires— continued for more than 60 years. Warlords dominated the political map in the mid-19th century, leading large armies of their own, and in many cases ruling their provinces.
Between 1820 and 1824, Martín Rodríguez ruled Buenos Aires, whose minister Bernardino Rivadavia carried out reforms —such as the first electoral law in 1821, applied only to the province of Buenos Aires— and in order to increase the state coffers he signed a loan with Baring Brothers and seized all the assets that belonged to the religious orders, seized the assets of the Sanctuary of Luján, those of the Brotherhood of Charity, the Hospital of Santa Catalina and others. In defense of the assets of the Catholic Church in Argentina and the anti-Catholicism of Rivadavia, on March 19, 1823 the "Revolution of the Apostolics" headed by Gregorio García de Tagle but failed after hours of fighting.
The arbitrary and unilateral dispossession of the Rivadavian administration together with the role of the Catholic Church in the genesis of nationality are the cause of the reparation that is the basis for the current support of the cult regulated by Law 21,540 on the "Assignment to certain dignitaries belonging to the Roman Catholic Apostolic Cult".
In 1824, Juan Gregorio de Las Heras succeeded Rodríguez as governor of Buenos Aires, who convened the Congress, which sought to unify the country.
In 1825, with the support of the Argentine government, a group of Orientals and from other provinces, called the Thirty-Three Orientales, led by Juan Antonio Lavalleja, entered the Oriental Province to evict the Brazilian occupiers who, with the After the help of Fructuoso Rivera, in a few months they managed to withdraw the Brazilian army and, on August 25, in the Florida Congress, they declared the independence of the eastern territory of Brazil and its unification with the provinces that made up the United Provinces of Rio de la Silver or Argentina. Brazil declared war on Argentina. In 1826, Congress appointed Rivadavia, a centralist tendency, president, who continued with the free trade economic policy that the Buenos Aires governments had been carrying out, and which is based on the profits generated by the port of Buenos Aires.
The Malvinas Islands with the Argentine flag (1810-1833)
Argentina maintains that, with its independence, it inherited the rights of Spain by virtue of the doctrine of uti possidetis iuris and that of "succession of states", for which reason it exercised a "dominion eminent" from 1810. When Spain recognized Argentine independence in 1859, it ceded explicitly and retroactively to May 25, 1810, its rights over Argentine territory, which would include the Malvinas.
On November 6, 1820, the American colonel at the service of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, David Jewett, in command of the frigate Heroína carried out the taking of the of possession of the Malvinas Islands on behalf of the Government of those United Provinces, which was the name of Argentina used at the time.
Jewett had the Argentine flag hoisted for the first time in the territory and distributed communications about it to the sea lion and whale hunters, who of various nationalities were there. British explorer James Weddell witnessed the event.
The news was disseminated in the European press. The islands remained under peaceful possession of the United Provinces until the British occupation of 1833.
On February 2, 1825, the United Kingdom signed a treaty of friendship, commerce and navigation through which it recognized the independence of the United Provinces and the existence of its own territorial scope, including the Malvinas, which they had taken possession of. in 1820, and exercised other acts of sovereignty including the appointment and installation of authorities. In addition, it must be added that in the treaty the United Kingdom did not express any claim to the islands and that the treaty implied the admission of the islands. legal consequences of such recognition.
On June 10, 1829, in order to reinforce the presence of the Argentine State, the delegate governor of Buenos Aires, Martín Rodríguez, and his minister Salvador María del Carril, through a decree law, created the Political and Military of the Falkland Islands and adjacent to Cape Horn in the Atlantic Sea, with headquarters on Soledad Island and with jurisdiction over the islands adjacent to Cape Horn that overlook the South Atlantic Ocean. Luis Vernet was the first holder of the position.
On February 5, 1830, Matilde Vernet y Sáez was born in Puerto Soledad. Vernet's daughter was the first person on record to be born in the Malvinas and the first descendant of Argentines before the British occupation of the territory in 1833.
Presidency of Rivadavia and the war with Brazil (1826-1828)
In 1826, the representatives of the provinces of the old union found it necessary to meet to achieve a unified front against Brazil. Rivadavia, with a diplomatic career in Europe and known for his work as Minister of the Government of Martín Rodríguez, was elected president by thirty votes to five. During his tenure, he led the United Provinces towards their unity, longed for by him, and necessary at the time.
On February 9, 1826, the president sent the Capital Law project to Congress, since in order to govern the country he needed a territorial space from which to do so. It was approved by 25 votes. 14 protested against it. The law established the city of Buenos Aires as the capital of the State, expanding its territorial limits. The capital was not subject to the subordination of the province. With the rest of Buenos Aires, a new province was created, which lost its main city, its port, and therefore its strongest economic income.
Another law was the creation of the National Bank, whose official name was Banco de las Provincias Unidas del Río de la Plata, with a capital of 10,000,000 pesos. This was made up of 3,000,000 from a loan made by the province of Buenos Aires, 1,000,000 from the Banco de Descuentos, and an annual subscription to integrate shares for an amount of $200 each. The administration of the Bank would be in charge of a Board of Directors.
On May 18, 1826, the Emphyteusis Law was enacted by which public lands whose sale had been prohibited because they were affected by the guarantee of the debt with England, were delivered in emphyteusis for no less than 20 years, reckoned from January 1, 1827.
The normative culmination was the Constitution of 1826. In its 191 articles grouped into 10 sections, it organized the country under the representative, republican and unitary system. In the last section, the presentation of the constitutional text was imposed for the approval of the provinces and the capital. The first expressed disagreement. This opposition was the final blow to Congress.
Rivadavia promoted joint stock companies, with British capital, for the exploitation of mineral resources
As for the war, although at the beginning of the hostilities the imperial forces were greater than the republicans, the United Provinces defeated Brazil in many battles in a three-year struggle by land and sea; being the Battle of Ituzaingó, the most important.
However, the economic and political problems generated in both states, especially the blockade of the Brazilian Navy to the port of Buenos Aires and the impasse on land (given that Colonia del Sacramento and Montevideo were under the control of Brazil throughout the conflict) advised to start peace talks.
In 1827, the Argentine Minister Plenipotentiary Manuel José García, exceeding his mission, signed a preliminary peace agreement with the Brazilians that recognized the Empire's sovereignty over the Eastern Province and promised to pay Brazil a war indemnity. President Rivadavia declared it the "disgraceful treaty", rejecting it and presenting his resignation.
The conflict continued until August 27, 1828, when the representatives of the government of the Republic of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, and the Emperor of Brazil, signed the Preliminary Peace Convention, which agreed on the independence of the Eastern Province and the cessation of hostilities.
Government of Juan Manuel de Rosas (1829-1852)
In 1829 Juan Manuel de Rosas, federal and Buenos Aires, assumed the government of the province of Buenos Aires, with "Extraordinary Powers", and retaining the delegation of foreign relations by the other provinces. He ruled until 1832 with an iron fist and strong personal traits. He carried out a campaign in Patagonia, where he fought against some indigenous tribes and negotiated with others, to extend the border towards the south of the country. From 1832 to 1835 there were three weak governors: Juan Ramón Balcarce, Juan José Viamonte and Manuel Vicente Maza. The three resigned due to pressure from Rosasismo, and the last one because of the assassination of the caudillo Facundo Quiroga in Barranca Yaco, devised by the Reynafé brothers from Cordoba. In 1833 Great Britain occupied the Falkland Islands.
In 1835, in the midst of this anarchy, Rosas was elected governor of Buenos Aires, with the addition of having the "Sum of Public Power", that is, the three State powers summarized in his person. A subsequent popular plebiscite broadly legitimized his appointment. He initiated a protectionist economic policy, although without explicitly promoting new industries, and made interprovincial pacts (such as the Federal Pact). He also imposed measures that favored popular sectors such as the total prohibition of the sale and trade of black slaves, who had already acquired the freedom of their wombs after the May revolution. He started a regime that was characterized by the persecution of opponents - under the motto "Death to unitary savages" - who in many cases were executed, murdered or chose to go into exile in neighboring countries. His centralist policy unleashed uprisings against him in the interior of the country and his authoritarianism generated opposition from the romanticists of the "Generation of 37", a group of influential young intellectuals, among them Juan Bautista Alberdi, Esteban Echeverría, and Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, who from the Literary Hall will harshly criticize the regime.
Between 1838 and 1840, Rosas faced the French blockade, established by the refusal to accept benefits for French citizens. The action promoted revolts and unified the opposition but it was lifted, Rosas was strengthened, who later defeated the powerful Coalition of the Northern provinces and besieged Montevideo between 1843 and 1851 to help the overthrown former Uruguayan president Manuel Oribe. Then in 1845, he resisted the Anglo-French naval blockade in the Battle of the Vuelta de Obligado, and managed to crush one last uprising in the province of Corrientes.
In his last years of government, Rosas's resignations were repeated in a symbolic way; the Entre Ríos caudillo Justo José de Urquiza accepted one of them with his so-called "Pronunciamiento" and he decided to assume the Foreign Affairs of his province himself. The porteño reacted with furious invective, but his military reaction was insufficient: they faced each other in the Battle of Caseros on February 3, 1852. In this battle, the largest in South American history, the 30,000-man Ejército Grande commanded by Urquiza, (which included troops from Brazil, Uruguay, Entre Ríos, Corrientes and political exiles), defeated the federal army of 22,000 men.
Rosas began his exile in England. Fifteen days later, the victorious general entered Buenos Aires in a parade, followed by executions of the important figures of rosismo.
Malvinas Islands occupied by British forces (1833)
The presence of the Argentine State in the Malvinas Islands ended on January 3, 1833 through a military operation by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland that took control of the islands after the corvette on December 20, 1832 American USS Lexington destroyed the military defenses of the Argentine settlement of Puerto Soledad, on the island of the same name. Despite being in peace relations with the Argentine Confederation, the United Kingdom, with two warships, evicted the Argentine garrison of 26 soldiers, who left two days later. Since then, the islands have been under British rule, except for the brief period of the Falklands War in 1982.
First expeditions to the Antarctic Peninsula and southern seas
In 1815 the Irish Navy Commodore at the service of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, Guillermo Brown, undertook a campaign to harass the Spanish fleet in the Pacific Ocean and when crossing Cape Horn with the ships Hercules and Trinidad the winds carried them to the 65º S parallel. In the institutional naval memory called Naval Actions of the Argentine Republic, 1813-1828, Brown wrote:
After turning the Cape of Hornos and supporting the winds reigning in these parages, and after having reached up to 65 degrees of latitude, in whose parage the sea was presented very flat with clear horizon and serene, without bad signs, which indicated that they were not far from the earth, the Bergantín Trinidad lost the tajamar...
Argentine sources mention that Brown would have sighted Antarctic lands in that expedition, they affirm that it is the reason why in cartography the northernmost part of the Antarctic peninsula is usually called Tierra de la Trinidad (by the ship Trinidad), but Brown also made no mention of this supposed sighting in his Memories written when the existence of Antarctica was already known, in which he refers to the fact:
After turning to the end of Hornos, supporting the temporary wind accustoms of those seas, the Blessed Trinity, in command of D. Miguel Brown, my brother, lost the tajamar (to which are insured the barbiquejos of the roda), exposing to imminent danger to the Bauprés...
On August 25, 1818, the government of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata granted the first concessions for the hunting of seals and penguins in territories corresponding to the Antarctic continent to Juan Pedro de Aguirre, who operated with the ships Fisherwoman Director and San Juan Nepomuceno. In the petition that Aguirre had presented on February 18, he requested authorization for the installation of a sea lion hunting establishment on one of the islands near the South Pole.
The first confirmed land discovery south of parallel 60° S was by the Englishman William Smith aboard the merchant brig Williams, while sailing from Buenos Aires to Valparaíso, diverted from his route south of the Cape Horn, on February 19, 1819 sighted the northeast end (Williams Point) of Livingston Island. He denounced his discovery in Valparaíso, but he was not believed and on another trip he deviated again, reaching King George Island on October 16, 1819. He baptized the archipelago as New South Britain and took possession of it in the name of the British crown, making his discoveries known upon arrival in Montevideo when this city was part of the United Provinces of the River of the Silver.
The Argentine sealer Spiritu Santo under the command of Captain Carlos Tidblom (or Timdblon), was followed in September 1819 from the Malvinas Islands by the American brig Hercilia (al command of Nathaniel Palmer) reaching it on Deception Island in South Shetland. The fact that these sealers headed for the islands on a fixed course is often taken as proof that they knew them.
On June 10, 1829, the government of the province of Buenos Aires issued the decree creating the Military Political Command of the Malvinas Islands, including the islands adjacent to Cape Horn, which is interpreted in Argentina as including the Antarctic islands.
The National Organization (1853-1880)
After the Battle of Caseros, the Agreement of San Nicolás was signed, which called for a Constituent Congress in order to establish a federal State and appointed the winner of Caseros, Justo José de Urquiza, as provisional director of the Confederation. The province of Buenos Aires, however, was reorganized after the defeat of Rosasmo under the leadership of Bartolomé Miter of the Unitary Party, and decided not to ratify the Agreement, separating from the Confederation under the name of "State of Buenos Aires".
In 1853, thirteen provinces (Catamarca, Córdoba, Corrientes, Entre Ríos, Jujuy, La Rioja, Mendoza, Salta, San Juan, San Luis, Santa Fe, Santiago del Estero and Tucumán), met in the Constituent Congress of Santa Fe and sanctioned the Constitution of 1853 that established the Argentine Republic —known until 1860 as the Argentine Confederation— on the basis of republican, representative, federal and liberal principles.
The original peoples that inhabited the indigenous territories of Patagonia (Selknam, Yaganes, Tehuelches, Mapuches and Ranqueles) and the Gran Chaco (Guaicurúes, Matacos, Vilelas) were not part of any province and their eventual representation was not contemplated. Years later, the Argentine Republic conquered those territories through war, organizing the population into a series of entities called “national territory” that lacked representation and political rights until their respective provincializations more than a century later —Misiones, La Pampa, Chaco, Formosa, Neuquén, Río Negro, Chubut and Santa Cruz would be provincialized in the middle of the XX century and Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica and Islands of the South Atlantic would be in 1991.
In the presidential elections of 1853, Urquiza was elected president of the Confederation.
Without an important port to trade, the economies of the provinces of the Confederation would be greatly affected by the separation of Buenos Aires, which is why the civil war began again. After the Battle of Cepeda (1859), the Pact of San José de Flores, the Constitutional Reform of 1860 and the Battle of Pavón, of 1861, the unification of the country was achieved under the hegemony of Buenos Aires and the leadership of Bartolomé Mitre, who de facto assumed the Presidency of the Confederation without ceasing to be governor of Buenos Aires, while Urquiza withdrew from politics forever.
The three presidencies that occurred after the completion of the original constituent process of the State and that lasted for a period of eighteen years from 1862 to 1880 are usually called the historic presidencies. The third of them, headed by Nicolás Avellaneda, would begin the long hegemony of 42 years without alternation, of the National Autonomist Party.
Mitre
In 1862 Mitre, at the head of the Nationalist Party, confirmed his power and was elected constitutional president. He initiated a codification policy, passed important laws, and promoted immigration and education. He brutally fought the resistance of the provincial caudillos, especially that of Chacho Peñaloza.
The Paraguay of Francisco Solano López had invaded and occupied Corrientes, Argentina allied with Brazil and Uruguay to overthrow it through the War of the Triple Alliance. Another version states that the war was due to the closure of the exit to the sea of the most developed nation at the time, in an entente in which Brazil and Argentina were stimulated by England. What was thought to be a conflict with a quick outcome, ended in 1870 after six years, leaving Paraguay devastated and claimed the lives of 30,000 Argentine soldiers.
Sarmiento
He would be succeeded by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento in 1868, who carried out the first National Population Census, promoted popular education, culture and telegraphs. He fought against the last federal warlords defeating them, and important international treaties were signed, in addition to ending the War of the Triple Alliance. He encouraged European immigration that continued until the middle of the XX century. Between 1871 and 1915, Argentina received almost 5,000,000 immigrants, mainly Europeans, from diverse peoples and cultures.
Avellaneda
After a small economic crisis, Sarmiento was succeeded by Nicolás Avellaneda (1874), from the recently created National Autonomist Party (PAN), which would remain in power without alternation for forty-two years, until 1916, using a regime of sung vote and minimal representation, which allowed widespread electoral fraud. Avellaneda undertook the conquest of indigenous territories. He continued the policy of promoting European immigration, promoted industrialization and sanctioned a Land Law favoring large estates, although during his period he had to face a serious economic recession as a result of the Panic of 1873. In 1878 the Py Expedition was carried out, which ensured the Argentine sovereignty south of the Santa Cruz River, at a time when a conflict with Chile threatened.
In 1879 the Conquest of the Desert was carried out, which achieved, by means of warfare, the objective of exercising the effective control of the national state over millions of hectares of the western Pampean plain and northern Patagonia, which They were under the control of the Mapuche, Ranquel and Tehuelche peoples. This campaign, led by Minister General Julio Argentino Roca, eliminated the threat of raids on the old line of the border with the indigenous peoples of the south, at the cost of thousands of indigenous people —mainly women and children— who were enslaved and for the benefit of a few ranchers A sector of historiography and social, political and human rights organizations considers that it was a genocide. Years later, a similar methodology was applied to the Chaco territories. Through both processes it was possible to almost triple the surface of the country, including territories claimed by other countries, thus consolidating the borders. On the other hand, it caused a drastic reduction in the aboriginal population of these regions.
In 1880, a last civil war broke out in Buenos Aires for control of the state and against the widespread electoral fraud, common in the second half of the century XIX in the country, led by Carlos Tejedor and Bartolomé Mitre; his defeat, which ended the period of the Argentine civil wars, allowed the enactment of Law 1029 —prior cession of the territory by the province of Buenos Aires— which federalized the City of Buenos Aires, transforming it into the capital of the country.
Rock
Shortly after, Roca assumed the Presidency and began a plan to build public works throughout the country. With him began a period of more than three decades of conservative and liberal governments, sustained by fraudulent electoral practices.
The Conservative Republic (1880-1916)
During this period, the National Autonomist Party (PAN) predominated, monopolizing power on the basis of fraudulent elections, fostered by the cast vote system and for 25 years, the excluding figure was General Julio Argentino Roca.
The presidency was succeeded by Julio A. Roca (1880-1886), Miguel Juárez Celman, who resigned in 1890 as a consequence of the park revolution led by Leandro N. Alem — which was put down — and was replaced by Vice President Carlos Pellegrini (1890-1892). He was followed in power by Luis Sáenz Peña (1892-1895), José Evaristo Uriburu (1895-1898), Julio Argentino Roca (1898-1904), Manuel Quintana (1904-1906), José Figueroa Alcorta (1906-1910), Roque Sáenz Peña (1910-1914) and Victorino de la Plaza (1914-1916).
The Conservative Republic was installed at the time the British Empire achieved world hegemony after defeating China in the Second Opium War (1856-1860) and imposed a scheme of international division of the work that reserved for the countries of northern Europe the role of producers of industrial goods. In this scheme, a relatively successful and modern agro-export model was inserted, destined to produce cheap food (meat and cereals) for the English industrial working class, in the fertile lands of the Pampas plain owned by a small group of ranchers, mostly from Buenos Aires., while British capital took majority control of the railways, refrigerators and banks.
To this end, the conservative governments, also known as the Generation of the 80s, introduced some modern techniques of agriculture and livestock, built an extensive railway network with an axis in Buenos Aires and its ports, promoted a great wave of European immigration (1870-1930) (mostly Italian peasants and secondly Spanish) that brought the Argentine population from 3.5% to 11.1% in 1930, as a percentage of the population of Latin America.
British historian Niall Ferguson argues that the investments of the British Empire in Argentina and Brazil were of such magnitude that it is legitimate to classify this situation as "informal imperialism." This condition of "informal colony& #3. 4; It would be claimed by the Argentine government during the Infamous Decade of the 1930s, when the Great Depression put the global model of the British Empire in crisis.
Investments, coming mainly from the Argentine State and the United Kingdom, were allocated to areas such as railway development, ports and refrigerators. Much of the immigration and modern economic activities moved away from the interior of the country, promoting the concentration of development and wealth in the city of Buenos Aires; which becomes a prosperous and cosmopolitan city.
However, these economic models were also generating a strong accumulation of wealth in the hands of the Buenos Aires cattle aristocracy; and the exclusion, overcrowding or segregation of the working class. Simultaneously, the country developed asymmetrically, with a strong postponement of the so-called "interior", a term created to mention the Argentine territory that is not Buenos Aires.
In turn, immigration also brought socialist and anarchist ideals from Europe, which the conservatives were in charge of combating and repressing, even prohibiting entry into the country.
The PAN dominated Argentine politics through electoral fraud until 1916, when the Sáenz Peña Law of secret and universal suffrage (for men) sanctioned four years earlier, allowed the electoral triumph of the Radical Civic Union, led by Hipólito Yrigoyen. The radicals, who had led various revolutionary attempts against what they called the regime, encouraged the expansion of an incipient Argentine middle class.
The '90s Revolution
On July 26, 1890, there was a coup known as the “Revolución del Parque” led by the recently formed Unión Cívica, led by Leandro Alem, Bartolomé Mitre, Aristóbulo del Valle, Bernardo de Irigoyen and Francisco Barroetaveña, among others, who pursued the overthrow of the government headed by President Miguel Juárez Celman.
The coup was preceded by a serious economic crisis that had lasted for two years, as well as allegations of corruption and authoritarianism by his opponents. A Revolutionary Junta and a military lodge known as the Lodge of the 33 Officials were formed. Among its leaders was second lieutenant José Félix Uriburu who 40 years later would lead the coup that overthrew Hipólito Yrigoyen.
The plan was that the rebel forces would concentrate in the Artillery Park and the fleet would bombard the Casa Rosada and the Retiro barracks. At the same time, groups of militiamen were to take President Juárez Celman, Vice President Pellegrini, War Minister General Levalle, and Senate President Julio Argentino Roca prisoner, and cut off the railway and telegraph lines.
That day the uprising began in the early morning of July 26, 1890. An armed civic regiment took over the strategic Artillery Park of the City of Buenos Aires, where the Supreme Court of Justice building stands today), located 900 meters from the government house and simultaneously other rebel contingents marched there from other points. At the same time, most of the naval squad located in the port of Boca del Riachuelo, south of Casa Rosada, rose up after a bloody armed confrontation. The revolutionary troops had the support of armed civilians organized into “civic militias”.
The main site where government forces concentrated was El Retiro, in the northeast area of the city. There existed an important barracks in the place where today is the Plaza San Martín and the Retiro railway terminal, strategic to bring the troops located in the provinces. In Retiro, the key men of the government were installed at 6:00 a.m.: President Miguel Juárez Celman, Vice President Carlos Pellegrini, President of the Senate Julio Argentino Roca, Minister of War, General Nicolás Levalle, who would take direct command of the loyal troops, and the Chief of Police Colonel Alberto Capdevila.
Once the government met in the Retiro barracks, Juárez Celman left Buenos Aires advised by Pellegrini and Roca, who thus were in charge of political command.
Once the revolutionary troops were concentrated in the Artillery Park, General Manuel J. Campos changed the plan established the night before, and instead of attacking the government positions and taking the Casa Rosada, he gave the order to remain in inside the park. The vast majority of historians attribute the decision to a secret agreement between Campos and Roca; the latter would have fomented the revolt to bring about the fall of President Juárez Celman, but avoiding a victory for the rebels that would have installed Leandro Alem as provisional president.
The rebellious fleet was located behind the Casa Rosada and began randomly bombarding the Retiro barracks, the Police Headquarters and the surrounding area to the south of the city, and the Casa Rosada. Fighting continued until July 29, when the rebels surrendered on the condition that they not retaliate with the revolutionaries. The number of victims caused by the 1990 Revolution has never been well established. Different sources speak from 150 to 300 deaths or indiscriminately of 1,500 casualties, adding up dead and wounded. On August 6, 1890, Miguel Juárez Celman resigned from the presidency and was replaced by Vice President Carlos Pellegrini, who appointed Julio Argentino Roca as his Minister of the Interior, who was the one who strengthened the most politically with the frustrated coup.
The Radical Revolution of 1905
In 1897 Hipólito Yrigoyen, in disagreement with Bernardo de Irigoyen, dissolved the UCR Committee of the province of Buenos Aires, due to which the party practically ceased to exist. This determined the formation of a nucleus of radicals who recognized Hipólito Yrigoyen as leader, who in 1903 began the refounding and reorganization of the party. On February 29, 1904, the National Committee of the UCR declared electoral abstention throughout the country in the elections for deputies of the Nation, for senator for the capital, electors for president and vice-president of the Nation and announced the armed struggle. In the government was Manuel Quintana, representative of the National Autonomist Party.
On February 4, 1905, in the Federal Capital, Campo de Mayo, Bahía Blanca, Mendoza, Córdoba and Santa Fe, an armed uprising took place with the purpose of overthrowing the authorities who, for their part, were at the both of the conspiracy and decreed a state of siege throughout the country for ninety days.
In the Federal Capital, the coup leaders failed by not being able to secure control of the Buenos Aires war arsenal when General Carlos Smith, chief of the Army General Staff displaced the Yrigoyenista soldiers. Loyalist troops and police soon recaptured the police stations taken by surprise and the revolutionary cantons. In Córdoba, the rebels seized Vice President José Figueroa Alcorta and threatened to kill him if President Manuel Quintana did not resign; he did not give in and the threat was not carried out. They also arrested congressman Julio Argentino Pascual Roca, and Francisco Julián Beazley, former police chief of Buenos Aires, but not former president Julio Argentino Roca, who managed to escape to Santiago del Estero.
In Mendoza, the rebels took 300,000 pesos from the Banco de la Nación and attacked the barracks defended by Lieutenant Basilio Pertiné. The rebellious troops in Bahía Blanca and other places had no perspective, nor did they find an echo in the town. The fighting only continued in Córdoba and Mendoza until February 8, but finally the rebels were defeated and tried, receiving sentences of up to 8 years in prison and sent to the Ushuaia prison.
1910: the country of the Centenary
1910 was a year in which the achievements and failures of the Generation of 80 were in evidence.
May 25, 1910 marked the 100th anniversary of the May Revolution, the initial step of independence. The Argentine government, chaired by José Figueroa Alcorta, then decided to organize the Centenary festivities as an international event attended by personalities from all over the world.
The Infanta Isabel of Spain, the President of Chile Pedro Montt and representatives of numerous countries arrived in Buenos Aires. The presidents of Bolivia and Brazil were absent due to the bad diplomatic relations they maintained with Argentina.
Buenos Aires was the center of the festivities, carrying out various ceremonies organized by the government and individuals with the participation of the world of culture, the military, schools and foreign communities.
Military parades, civic demonstrations, and a gala performance were held at the Teatro Colón. Monuments were created and the construction of the Congress and the Supreme Court resumed.
International conferences and a fine art exhibition were organized. Many newspapers published special articles, among them, the most important was the one edited by La Nación.
On May 25, at dawn, a student march headed to the Río de la Plata to see the sunrise. In the morning in the Plaza de Mayo the fundamental stone of the monument to the May Revolution was laid and in the Plaza del Congreso there was a meeting of schoolchildren. At three in the afternoon a military parade was held.
However, in parallel to the festivities, the unions expressed their dissatisfaction with the situation of social and economic inequality. CORA and FORA, led by the socialist, revolutionary syndicalist and anarchist currents, held protests and threatened to hold a general strike. They called for the repeal of the Residence Law, which empowered the government to expel foreigners without due process. The government imposed a state of siege and the police repressed the protesters. The workers' parties fragmented and the strike did not materialize.
For the upper class, the Centenary ceremony was a demonstration of European-style power and grandeur, which would last through the years. For the lower classes, the centenary event was an aristocratic and exclusive event.
Argentine participation in Antarctic exploration and permanent occupation of Antarctica
In 1848 the future Argentine commander Luis Piedra Buena traveled to Antarctica as a cabin boy on William Smiley's ship.
The Argentine Expedition to the Southern Lands and Seas of 1881 led by Italian Navy Lieutenant Giacomo Bove explored Tierra del Fuego until his ship sank. The expedition of the Romanian Julio Popper was frustrated during his enlistment by his death in 1893.
On December 29, 1894, the Argentine president Luis Sáenz Peña authorized Luis Neumayer to explore the territory located to the south of Patagonia and called Tierra de Grand (Antarctic peninsula), although prohibiting any type of exploitation, but the expedition did not was done.
Between 1897 and 1899 a Belgian expedition commanded by Adrien de Gerlache, in which Roald Amundsen participated, had to winter in Antarctica when they were locked in by the ice.
On October 10, 1900, the Argentine government decided to join the International Antarctic Expedition, made up of several expeditions, but the Argentine trip did not take place and collaboration was offered to the Swedish expedition under the command of Dr. Otto Nordenskjöld. He would receive Argentine support in exchange for incorporating an Argentine sailor into his expedition and giving him the scientific data and zoological collections that were collected. On his way through Buenos Aires, the lieutenant José María Sobral embarked on the ship Antarctic on December 21, 1901. As there was no news of the expedition, the Argentine government fulfilled its support commitment by fitting out the corvette ARA Uruguay, which He set out in search of them on October 8, 1903 under the command of Lieutenant Julián Irízar, rescuing the members of the expedition who had been left overwintering as a result of the sinking of the Antarctic.
On January 2, 1904, Argentina acquired the meteorological station installed by the Scotsman William Speirs Bruce, on Laurie Island in South Orkney, where a crew of six men had remained making scientific observations. A meteorological observatory was installed in it, where a post office also operated. The Argentine civilian — employed by the official Argentine postal and telegraph company — Hugo Alberto Acuña was responsible for hoisting the Argentine flag for the first time officially in the Argentine Antarctic sector, on February 22, 1904. Such an observatory became the Base Orcadas, the oldest permanent human settlement existing today in the entire Antarctic territory.
The Argentine corvette ARA Uruguay returned to Antarctica in 1905 —it set sail from the port of Buenos Aires on December 10, 1904— to relieve the South Orcadas crew and head for Deception Island and then to the island Wiencke in search of Jean-Baptiste Charcot, whose French expedition (1903-1905) was believed to be lost. In gratitude for the Argentine collaboration with his expedition, Charcot baptized an insular group as the Argentine Islands. One of those islands was named Isla Galíndez in homage to the corvette captain, Ismael Galíndez, and another was named Isla Uruguay, in homage to the Argentine corvette of that name.
The Argentine government decided to add two meteorological observatories, on South Georgia Island and on Wandel Island, to those it already had on Laurie and Observatorio islands. The expedition that was to install one in the port where Charcot wintered in 1904 on Wandel Island (now Booth Island) left Buenos Aires on December 30, 1905 under the command of Lieutenant Lorenzo Saborido on the ship Austral, which was the Le Français purchased from Charcot when he traveled to Buenos Aires in February of that year. After relieving the South Orcadas crew, he returned to Buenos Aires without being able to reach Wandel Island. In a new attempt, under the command of Lieutenant Arturo Celery, on December 22, 1906 the ship ran aground and sank on the Ortiz bank of the Río de la Plata, so the observatory was never built. In June 1905 The National Guard transport under the command of Navy Lieutenant Alfredo P. Lamas carried out the task of building the South Georgia Observatory in Cumberland Bay, renamed “National Guard Bay”.
A decree issued by Chile on February 27, 1906 ceded industrial agricultural and fishing exploitation for 25 years, in the Diego Ramírez, South Shetland, South Georgia and Graham Land (Tierra de O' Higgins/San Martín) to Enrique Fabry and Domingo de Toro Herrera, also entrusting them with the protection and custody of the sovereign interests of Chile in the area. Argentina formally protested on June 10, 1906 against those actions by Chile and the following year Chile invited the Argentine government to negotiate a treaty to divide the islands and the American continental Antarctica, but it was not accepted.
On July 21, 1908, the United Kingdom officially announced its claims to all lands within meridians 20º W to 80º Ó south of 50º S, which in 1917 moved south of 58º S because with that claim included part of Patagonia.
Radicalism in power (1916-1930)
When radicalism came to power, it presented, more than a government program, a declaration of principles: the cause against the regime, historical reparation, the recovery of ethics, respect for federalism.
Among the points of the radical doctrine was the concept of "the cause against the regime". "The cause" it was the radical cause, and its ideals were the honor of the country, the purity of the suffrage, the reorganization of the country, democracy and respect for the constitution and laws. "The Regime" it was the PAN government; against this regime (a corrupt, unfair regime, etc.) comes "the cause" (the UCR) that comes to heal the damage done by the PAN government. Another point of the radical doctrine was "Historical reparation". This preached that the radical government did not come to avenge the damages done by the PAN government but to heal them, to repair them.
The first government of Hipólito Yrigoyen (1916-1922)
In 1916 Hipólito Yrigoyen assumed the presidency of the nation, thanks to the Sáenz Peña Law, which established secret and universal suffrage for men. With the first presidency of Yrigoyen, a period of Argentine history known as "The Radical Stage" begins, which covers from 1916 to 1930 (the year of the first coup d'état in Argentina).
Yrigoyen had to govern with a national Senate with a conservative majority, which tended to vote negatively on the radicalismo's proposed bills. For this reason he made the decision to govern by issuing numerous decrees. Something similar happened with the federal structure of the country: most of the provinces had opposition governments, a situation that led him to intervene in almost all the provinces.
During Yrigoyen's first presidency, the largest worker massacres in Argentine history were committed and the only pogrom (killing of Jews) committed on the American continent. During the strikes of January 1919, military and police troops of the Nation, with the support of fascist shock groups, murdered some 700 people, detained tens of thousands of citizens in what was known as the Tragic Week; in the course of it, the repressive forces razed the Jewish neighborhood of El Once, murdering, torturing and raping its inhabitants and burning their homes and books. Between 1920 and 1922, the private troops of the English company La Forestal and the Patriotic League Argentina - led by personalities from the radical party, conservatives, military, business and ecclesiastical - murdered around 600 people during a labor conflict in the province of Santa Fe. In 1921 and 1922 national troops repressed striking workers in Patagonia, killing some 1,500 people, many of them shot by the military, in what has become known as Rebel Patagonia.
In 1918, the student rebellion known as the University Reform began in Córdoba —later spreading throughout the country and Latin America— with the aim of democratizing the university. The First World War affected Argentina economically, due to the restrictions of the world market. However, the textile and oil industry stands out with the creation of YPF (Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales). During this period, some marginalized sectors of the population, ignored during the Conservative governments, were privileged.
The government of Marcelo T. de Alvear (1922-1928)
The presidential elections were held on April 2, 1922. The Radical Civic Union obtained 450,000 votes; the National Rally (conservatives) obtained 200,000 votes; the Socialist Party got 75,000 votes; and the Democratic Progressive Party got 75,000 votes.
Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear, a man from the upper economic class, developed a different style of presidency from that of Hipólito Yrigoyen, also a radical.
The policies of economic, political and social transformation that the Yrigoyen government had outlined were attenuated, if not directly reversed, as in the case of the University Reform or when President Alvear vetoed the bill that extended retirement broad sectors of workers who confronted him with the union movement. This did not, however, prevent the Alvear government from sending the oil nationalization bill to Congress, although it would never be approved.
These differences led to a confrontation between Alvear and Yrigoyen, within the framework of a deep division within the UCR between personalists yrigoyenistas and antipersonalistas depending on whether they supported or opposed Hipólito Yrigoyen. Each of the two radical sectors would present different candidates for president. The antipersonalist radicals, organized in the Unión Cívica Radical Antipersonalista, presented Leopoldo Melo (accompanied by Vicente Gallo) as their candidate for president, and the yrigoyenista radicals presented Hipólito Yrigoyen (accompanied by Francisco Beiró).
On April 1, 1928, the elections were held. The result was:
- Radical Civic Union (Yrigoyen): 838 583 votes
- Antipersonalist Radical Civic Union (Melo): 410 026 votes
- Socialist Party (Right): 64 985 votes
- Progressive Democratic Party: 14 173 votes
- Argentine Communist Party: 7658 votes
- Communist Party of the Argentine Republic: 5475 votes
The victory was so broad that the Yrigoyenista radicals called it "the plebiscite".
The second government of Hipólito Yrigoyen (1928-1930)
The assumption of the new government took place on October 12, 1928. In 1929 the Great World Depression took place. Radicalism with Yrigoyen did not know how to respond to the crisis. The radical historian Félix Luna says of that moment:
- "The bankruptcy of the liberating momentum of the radical government was mainly due to the collapse of radicalism itself."
The division and confrontation between internal sectors of radicalism would generate a very high level of political violence.
Yrigoyen ordered the intervention of the provinces of Mendoza and San Juan, governed by dissident radical movements such as lencinismo in the first and bloquismo in the second. In this context, a Yrigoyenista "thug" murdered Mendoza senator Carlos Washington Lencinas. The crime caused stupor in the country. A month later, there was an anarchist attack against Yrigoyen as he left his house to go to Government House. The year 1930 began with another assassination of an opponent in a province intervened by the government, that of the bloquista lawyer Manuel Ignacio Castellano. It began to be common among the opposition, students, politicians, military, civilians, and broad sectors of journalism, to criticize the President for his alleged ineffectiveness and authoritarianism.
On March 2, parliamentary elections were held, radicalism losing resoundingly in the City of Buenos Aires, where the Independent Socialist Party obtained 100,000 votes, followed by the Socialist Party with 84,000, surpassing the radicals by a thousand votes. Nationwide, the opposition reached 695,000 votes, surpassing the government which obtained 655,000 votes.
The World Crisis of 1929 strongly affected the country's economy, because its agro-export model depended on the sale of raw materials to markets that were closed. Radicalism was completely divided and had no dialogue with the opposition, which was highly critical of the government.
The most important and lasting event of the second Yrigoyen government was the decision taken on August 1 by YPF, led by General Enrique Mosconi, to intervene in the oil market, to fix the price and break trusts. The coup will take place just 37 days later, which has led several historians to link, at least partially, the military coup with the YPF decision.
On September 6, 1930, General José Félix Uriburu overthrew the constitutional government, initiating a series of coups d'état in Argentina and military governments that would last until 1983, interrupting all government experiences arising from the popular vote.
Bibliography
- of the Mazo, Gabriel (1984). The second president of Yrigoyen. Buenos Aires: CEAL. ISBN 950-25-0051-2.
- Luna, Felix (1964). Yrigoyen. Buenos Aires: Development.
Actions in pursuit of the defense of Argentine sovereignty in the Antarctic sector
In the 1920s, the investigative and awareness-raising actions in Argentina of the rights in the Antarctic sector of the civil engineer José Manuel Moneta, who took part in the expeditions to the South Orcadas islands in 1923, 1925, 1927 and 1929, stood out., leaving testimony of this in the book Four years in the South Orcadas and, as a diplomat, he carried out various functions related to Antarctica on behalf of the Argentine government.
It was in the first half of the XX century who, through printed publications and films, perhaps earlier spread awareness among the population of Argentine sovereignty in Antarctica.
On March 30, 1927, the first radiotelegraph station in Antarctica was inaugurated in South Orkney.
On December 15, 1927, the General Directorate of Posts and Telegraphs of the Argentine Republic informed the International Office of the Universal Postal Union that:
(...) Argentine territorial jurisdiction extends, in law and in fact, to the continental area, to the territorial sea, to the islands on the sea coast, to a part of Tierra del Fuego and to the Archipelagos of the States, New Year, South Georgia, South and undelimited polar lands. In law, it was not able to exercise it in fact because of the occupation maintained by Great Britain, and it was also incumbent on the Falkland Islands.
The "Infamous Decade" (1930-1943)
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The so-called Infamous Decade began with the military coup on September 6, 1930 led by the Catholic nationalist corporatist general José Félix Uriburu who overthrew President Hipólito Yrigoyen de the Radical Civic Union, who had been democratically elected to serve his second term in 1928. The government outlawed the Radical Civic Union and organized a fraudulent "electoral exit" controlled by the Armed Forces that gave rise to to a series of fraudulent and corrupt conservative governments, led by the Concordance, a name taken by the political alliance formed between the National Democratic Party (also known simply as the Conservative Party), the Antipersonalist Radical Civic Union and the Independent Socialist Party that ruled the country until 1943. This period was marked by the beginning of the new economic model known as import substitution industrialization.
Context in which the coup of September 6, 1930 took place
Shortly before the end of World War I, the Russian Revolution that established the Soviet Union, organized under communist principles, took place in Europe. The socialist movement split as leaders of social democratic parties supported the war, while supporters of the 1917 Russian Revolution formed communist parties in most industrialized (and many non-industrialized) countries.
After the First World War, the Treaty of Versailles was signed, creating the International Labor Organization made up of governments, unions and employers' organizations, and imposing severe economic burdens on Germany that triggered a major economic and humanitarian crisis in that country. Among the political consequences was the Spartacist Uprising in January 1919, and in Bavaria, the communists overthrew the government and established the Bavarian Soviet Republic, which lasted a few weeks in 1919. A similarly short life was lived by the Soviet Republics that arose in other German states and the Soviet government established in Hungary by Béla Kun in 1919.
During the radical government, unionism and collective bargaining between companies and unions expanded greatly. The Argentine Regional Workers' Federation of the IX Congress increased its affiliated unions from 51 in 1915 to 350 in 1918. The anarchist FORA for its part adopted a critical stance towards the radical government, promoting insurrectionary scenarios. Radicalism initially established a solid link with the revolutionary syndicalist current, especially with the Maritime Workers' Federation (FOM) and the Railway Workers' Federation (FOF), which dissolved after the great worker massacres of 1919-1922.
In 1919 several right-wing paramilitary organizations were created in Argentina, with broad business support and the British embassy, among which stood out the Patriotic League chaired by the radical leader Manuel Carlés and Admiral Manuel Domecq García, minister of the Navy of the government of Marcelo T. de Alvear. The paramilitary organizations would strengthen throughout the decade, marching alongside the Armed Forces and participating in the worker massacres and the pogrom in the Tragic Week (1919), the rebellious Patagonia (1921/22). and the forestry strikes in Santa Fe (1921). In 1925 the radical Manuel Carlés will be one of the first fascist leaders in Argentina. They will have a very active role in the 1930 coup and in the subsequent clandestine repression.
In the mid-1920s, the fascist and Nazi movements, respectively, appeared in Italy and Germany, which had an important adhesion in Argentina, especially in the armed forces and in the right-wing sectors and in the broad Italian-Argentine community that for then it was the majority in the country. In 1922 Benito Mussolini took power in Italy. The head of fascism in Argentina, Vittorio Valdani, came to be appointed by President Marcelo T. de Alvear as Administrative Director of the state company YPF.
Since World War I, the monopoly structures of the Argentine economy were strengthened, in favor of large international trusts and to the detriment of competitiveness, innovation and Argentine consumers, causing structural deformations that will last for decades. In some cases, the power of large private companies imposed a scheme of systematic political corruption, as was paradigmatically exposed with the scandal involving the electric company CHADE, of Belgian origin and chaired by the Spanish politician Francisco Cambó, who even bribed the presidents radical Marcelo T. de Alvear and conservative Agustín P. Justo.
The global economic crisis of 1929 called the Great Depression had a profound impact on Argentina. It first affected economically since 80% of tax revenues in Argentina came from foreign trade. The crisis created a situation of social tension, with low wages, increased unemployment; that is, a contraction of the economy. And this also generated, on a political level, a context in which the coup of 1930 took place. The crisis of 1929 was a factor that created a situation of tension, of discomfort regarding the economy, in social terms and of concern and uncertainty. in the dominant economic sectors and this contributed to creating this climate. In Latin America in general there was a crisis of democratic systems practically in the entire region.
On the other hand, the social teachings of the Catholic Church of the time were based on the encyclical Rerum Novarum of 1891 that dealt with the conditions of the working classes, making clear its support for labor law of "forming unions or unions", he reaffirmed his support for the right to private property and discussed the relations between the government, companies, workers and the Church, proposing a socio-economic organization that would later be called corporatism. It was not until 1931 that Pope Pius XI condemned fascism and proposed putting into practice the principles of right reason and social-Christian philosophy.
The nationalist positions that arose from imitation of what happened in Italy with Benito Mussolini who supported the establishment of corporatism caused the division of the Popular Party and its dissolution. It was then that the Catholic nationalists supported the weekly "La Nueva República", an opponent of the radical government of Hipólito Yrigoyen which, in the midst of the Great World Depression of 1929, was highly criticized for a series of interventions in the provinces by decree and assassinations of opponents, among them that of Senator Lencinas, which caused the weakening of democracy and unleashed the military coup led by General José Félix Uriburu.
Once Hipólito Yrigoyen was elected president in 1916, a broad sector began to form within the Radical Civic Union that opposed Yrigoyen, considering him authoritarian. This sector called itself "anti-personalist" and he came to form another radical party called the Unión Cívica Radical Antipersonalista with which he ran for the presidential elections of 1928 with the Leopoldo Melo-Vicente Gallo formula, coming second behind Hipólito Yrigoyen himself. Defeated at the polls, the anti-personalist radicals began to conspire against the constitutional government and would later join the Concordance, which governed fraudulently between 1932 and 1943.
Conservative groups and the print media have also conspired against the constitutional government since the first president was elected by secret and compulsory vote in 1916. The rock daily La Prensa had warned Yrigoyen in an editorial before assuming that if he insisted on carrying out a non-conservative policy "he will be beaten and evicted from power". Another determining factor in the coup against Yrigoyen was the newspaper Crítica of the Uruguayan Natalio Félix Botana, who "not only contributed to the overthrow of the government with bitter criticism of his newspaper, but also with his personal participation in the plot that, with the leadership in the shadow of the army chief Agustín Fair, culminated on September 6, 1930".
The military dictatorship of Uriburu (1930-1932)
On September 6, 1930, Uriburu led a coup that overthrew the constitutional government of Hipólito Yrigoyen and established a military dictatorship, the first in a series that would last until 1983.
On September 10, José Félix Uriburu was recognized as de facto president of the Nation by the Supreme Court through the resolution that gave rise to the doctrine of de facto governments and that would be used to legitimize all other military coups.
Uriburu basically represented at that time above all a corporatist Catholic nationalism. Even the neocorporative constitution project that Uriburu and his sectors had was a mixed neocorporative system. They wanted there to be a corporate chamber, for example, with representation from unions, businessmen, and another chamber with political representation. They were neocorporate projects. Ideologically very dependent on Catholic nationalism, which had been growing in Argentina since the 1920s.
Uriburu commissioned the poet Leopoldo Lugones to write the revolutionary proclamation, but the first version was accused of being fascist by Colonel José María Sarobe and General Agustín P. Justo, who represented the traditional conservative liberalism of Argentina.
The speeches continually mentioned the need to restore order, property and hierarchies. However, unlike European fascisms, the Argentine right considered that the key to the proposed political system was the Army, and not paramilitary organizations.
Uriburu proposed the founding of a National Party, to which the other parties should adhere, although Yrigoyenista radicalism and possibly the Socialist Party were excluded. The invitation was rejected by all but a few conservative groups. Uriburu had gone ahead to call elections for governor of Buenos Aires, hoping to present a single candidacy of the National Party against the radicals; when his project failed, he couldn't back down.
In April 1931, the Buenos Aires elections were held, with an unforeseen result: despite the fact that the government considered radicalism completely "out of history", and that it did not organize a campaign electoral and did not have support from the press, the radical candidate Honorio Pueyrredón obtained the victory. Despite the fact that in the Electoral College, radicalism was several votes behind and had to negotiate with the Socialists to win the governorship, the government panicked and most of the ministers resigned. Uriburu reshuffled the cabinet, naming ministers from the "liberal" sector. On May 8, he suspended the call to the provincial electoral college, and appointed Manuel Ramón Alvarado de facto governor of the province of Buenos Aires.
A few weeks later a revolution broke out in the province of Corrientes, led by Lieutenant Colonel Gregorio Pomar; Although it was quickly repressed, it gave Uriburu the excuse he was looking for: he closed all the UCR premises, arrested dozens of leaders, and prohibited polling stations from electing politicians directly or indirectly linked to Yrigoyen; Pueyrredón had been Yrigoyen's minister, which meant that he could not be elected, but he was also expelled from the country along with Alvear. He also suspended the gubernatorial elections planned for the provinces of Córdoba and Santa Fe. In September he called for elections for November, and soon after annulled the elections in Buenos Aires.
The corporatist experiment had failed, but even so, on February 20, 1932, hours before handing over the government to his successor, Uriburu would declare that "the secret vote is precisely what the government has allowed. demagogic debauchery that we have suffered."
Presidency of Agustín P. Justo (1932-1938)
After the failure of José Félix Uriburu's Catholic nationalist corporatist trial, Argentina was governed by a conservative political alliance called the "Concordance" which was a political alliance formed between the National Democratic Party (also known simply as the Conservative Party), the Radical Antipersonalist Civic Union and the Independent Socialist Party that governed the country during the so-called infamous decade between 1932 and 1943, through presidents Agustín P. Justo (1932-1938), Roberto M. Ortiz (1938-1940) and Ramón Castillo who should have completed the term due to the death of President Ortiz (1940-1943).
This period was marked by the beginning of the new economic model known as import substitution industrialization.
On the economic level, with the stock market crisis, international markets tend to close their economies adopting models of protectionism. England announces at "Ottawa convention" that will give tariff advantages to their colonies. Due to its great dependence, the country signs the Roca-Runciman pact with England in 1933, thus ceding the railway sector and other strategic areas in exchange for privileged treatment for Argentine meats. The pact was questioned by opponents and historians, considering that it seriously affected national sovereignty and citing the public statement of the Vice President of the Nation while he was negotiating the treaty, in which he stated that "from the economic point of view, (Argentina is) an integral part of the British Empire".
Faced with this crisis of the Argentine agro-export model, a process of import substitution industrialization began in the middle of the decade, with its main axis in Buenos Aires, accompanied by an internal migratory wave, from the countryside to the cities and from the interior to the capital.
During this period the Radical Civic Union, led by Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear, will be systematically excluded from access to government through the open use of electoral fraud and repression. Within radicalism, strong nationalist and rigoyenist currents appeared, which were expressed in the founding of the influential FORJA group, and in the first nuclei of radical intransigence, which would lead the UCR in the following decade and which at that time began to gather around Amadeo. Sabattini, Governor of Córdoba (1936-1940).
For its part, the Socialist Party and especially its ally the Progressive Democratic Party, led by Lisandro de la Torre, will denounce in Congress the successive acts of corruption for the benefit of an elite carried out by the regime, which will even cause the assassination of Senator Enzo Bordabehere in the Senate compound.
Finally, in that period, the Argentine labor movement was organized in the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), on the activity union and new nationalist ideas and relations with the popular political parties.
Presidency of Roberto Ortiz (1938-1942)
Around 1939, when World War II began, Argentina was ruled by radical anti-personalist president Roberto Ortiz, who had been a minister to radical (UCR) president Marcelo T. de Alvear. During his government, Argentina had a decisive influence on the peace reached between Paraguay and Bolivia, which had fought in the Chaco War. The traditional neutralist and non-belligerent policy would be maintained until 1944.
Presidency of Ramón Castillo (1942-1943)
In 1942, due to the illness of President Ortiz, Vice President Ramón Castillo took office, until 1943, when he would be overthrown. His presidency was marked by pressure from the United States for Argentina to abandon its traditional neutralist position and declare war on the Axis powers, which was indeed going to happen during the presidency of Edelmiro Farrell. (March 27, 1945).
Antarctic claims and formal takeover of the Antarctic mainland
In 1939, Argentina temporarily created the National Antarctic Commission to attend a Norwegian invitation by decree No. 35821, but by decree No. 61852 of April 30, 1940, it became a permanent body with in order to intensify research in the area. Explorations, scientific tasks, survey of terrain and beaconing were carried out.
On November 6, 1940, Chile established by decree the limits of its Antarctic claims.
They form the Chilean Antarctic or Antarctic Chilean Territory, all the lands, islands, islets, reefs, glaciers and other known and to know, and the respective territorial sea, existing within the limits of the casket made up of the 53rd meridians, west length of Greenwich, and 90th, west longitude of Greenwich.
Argentina formally protested the Chilean decree through a note dated November 12, 1940, rejecting its validity and expressing a potential claim to the same area. In turn, the United Kingdom protested on February 25, 1941.
In October 1941 the Argentine Military Geographic Institute published maps showing the extent of the future Argentine claim between 25° W and 75° W.
In January 1942 Argentina, in accordance with the theory of polar sectors, declared its Antarctic rights between the 25º and 68º 24' West (the Dungeness Point). Which gave rise to a response memorandum from the Chilean Government on March 3, 1942, reserving its rights.
Argentina formally took possession of the Antarctic continental territory on Deception Island on November 8, 1942, by placing a cylinder containing an act and a flag left there by an expedition under the command of the frigate captain Alberto J. Oddera. In January 1943, personnel from the British ship HMS Carnarvon Castle destroyed the evidence of the Argentine takeover, planted the British flag and sent the act to Buenos Aires. On March 5 of that year, the Argentine ship ARA 1° de Mayo removed the British flag.
Peronism (1943-1955)
Background: the Revolution of June 4, 1943 (1943-1946)
On June 4, 1943, there was a new military coup led by Generals Arturo Rawson and Pedro Pablo Ramírez and supported by various military sectors, including a group of Army soldiers called GOU (Group of United Officers)., made up of about twenty mostly young officers of diverse ideologies who shared a nationalist approach. The coup overthrew President Ramón Castillo who was replaced by General Arturo Rawson, who three days later was replaced by General Pedro Pablo Ramírez.
The Revolution of 1943 contained within it various sectors that fought among themselves to control the direction of the process. One of those sectors was led by then Colonel Juan Domingo Perón, who initially held a less significant position as Secretary of the Ministry of War, headed by General Edelmiro Farrell. Starting in the second half of 1943, he began a policy of alliance with the trade union movement that would allow him to occupy increasingly influential positions in the military government. In this way, the appointment of him in charge of the irrelevant Department of Labor, later elevated to the level of Secretary of State, was essential.
At the beginning of 1944, the military government broke diplomatic relations with the Axis countries, a decision that led to a confrontation between their internal sectors and to demand the resignation of President Ramírez, who was replaced by General Edelmiro Farrell, leaving Perón to occupy the Ministry of War that that one left. Farrell relied on Perón and his successful labor-union policy and suffered the onslaught of the right-wing nationalist sector led by the Minister of the Interior, General Luis César Perlinger. In the second half of the year, the Farrell-Perón duo consolidated their position, displacing the sector of the Catholic-Hispanic nationalist right, and deepened labor reforms, generalizing collective bargaining, sanctioning the Peón de Campo Statute that laboralized the situation of workers rural areas, creating labor courts and establishing retirement for business employees. Important industrialist measures were also taken, such as the creation of the Banco Industrial de Crédito.
Starting in the second semester of 1943, a group made up mainly of socialist unions and revolutionary unionists, led by Colonel Juan Domingo Perón, was established in the government. It managed to occupy the small Department of Labor first, to gradually strengthen itself, through a action aimed at defending the rights of workers and promoting trade union leadership. The main labor measures were:
- The Pawn Statute, which established a minimum wage and sought to improve the conditions of food, housing and work of rural workers.
- The establishment of social insurance and retirement benefited 2 million people.
- The creation of Labour Courts, whose rulings were generally favourable to the workers' demands.
- The establishment of wage improvements and the establishment of aguinaldo for all workers.
- The recognition of professional associations, thereby achieving a substantial improvement in their legal position.
In 1945, United States Ambassador Spruille Braden organized a strong movement that identified itself as anti-Peronist [by whom?], which in turn produced widespread union sectors, until then socialists and revolutionary syndicalists -and to a lesser extent anarchists and communists-, identified themselves as Peronists. The confrontation between the two groups led to an anti-Peronist coup [citation needed] on October 9, 1945, displacing the government unionists and arresting Perón. In response, on October 17, 1945, there was a large mobilization of workers and trade unionists in the Plaza de Mayo, who demanded and obtained the release of Perón and the commitment of the dictatorship to call elections.
From then on, both sides prepared to face each other in elections on February 24, 1946, with Juan Perón triumphing and the radical Hortensio Quijano as vice president -candidates from the Labor parties, Unión Cívica Radical Junta Renovadora and Independiente-, against the formula of the Democratic Union integrated by the radicals José P. Tamborini-Enrique Mosca.
The first government of Juan D. Perón (1946-1952)
In the 1946 elections, Perón ran as a candidate for three allied parties: the Labor Party, organized by the unions, the Radical Civic Union Junta Renovadora, and the conservative-leaning Independent Party. His vice president was Hortensio Quijano, a radical from the dissident Unión Cívica Radical Junta Renovadora. The elections polarized the country: on the one hand, Peronism, the trade unionists of the CGT and Yrigoyenista groups of radicalism, the UCR Junta Renovadora or FORJA (where recognized personalities such as Arturo Jauretche, Raúl Scalabrini Ortiz, etc. met), and the conservatives. of the provinces of the interior and on the other the Democratic Union that had the participation of the UCR and the Socialist and Progressive Democratic parties and the support of the Communist Party, the conservatives of the province of Buenos Aires and the ambassador of the United States, Spruille Braden. In the elections Perón triumphed, with 52% of the votes.
After assuming the presidency, the parties that carried Perón's candidacy merged, forming the Peronist Party —briefly called the Single Party of the Revolution, and today known as the Justicialista Party— and after obtaining women's suffrage, in 1949 Eva Perón organized the Feminine Peronist Party. A quota criterion was established whereby political posts were distributed equally among the unions, the political sector of the Peronist Party, and women.
In 1947, the Chamber of Deputies initiated a political trial against the members of the Supreme Court who had legitimized the coups of 1930 and 1943, resulting in their removal from office.
In 1949, elections were called for the Constituent Assembly that dictated a new Constitution in accordance with the principles of social constitutionalism and Peronism, establishing, among other things, the legal equality of men and women, the rights of workers, the rights of old age, university autonomy, the social function of property and the powers of State intervention in the economy, as well as immediate presidential re-election, which Perón took advantage of in 1951. According to opponents, this successive re-election, previously prohibited by article 77, was the main intention of the constitutional reform.
The first Peronist government expanded the labor and social rights of women, of people living in the national territories, of the elderly, of children, of vulnerable sectors, and promoted the industrialization of the country. In labor matters, the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare was created and for the first time in Argentine history the remuneration of work exceeded the remuneration of capital. Regarding women's rights, the law on women's suffrage was enacted in 1947 Regarding the territories whose inhabitants had their political rights restricted, in 1951 the National Congress approved Law 14307 provincializing the national territories of Chaco and La Pampa, which by decision of the constituent conventions elected by the peoples of those provinces adopted the names of Presidente Perón Province and Eva Perón Province, respectively. In terms of social security ("social security") coverage became more widespread, going from 397,000 affiliates in 1939 to 2,327,946 in 1949, at the same time that Eva Perón carried out extensive social assistance work for most vulnerable sectors, from the Eva Perón Foundation whose funds came from contributions of different kinds: there were the mandatory ones imposed by national laws on the wages of Argentine workers twice a year and donations from private companies, apparently voluntary but constituting in practice almost a requirement to function smoothly with the Peronist government. It also received funds from the State and used property, personnel, and means of transportation from the State. A decree of the Executive Branch provided that the surpluses from the items of each ministry be transferred to the Foundation and despite the fact that it was objected to by the Court of Accounts, it was still applied. In terms of health, the Ministry of Public Health was created under Ramón Carrillo, from which campaigns were carried out to eliminate malaria, yellow fever and venereal diseases, mass vaccination programs (smallpox and diphtheria), national production of medicines and reduction of its cost and construction of hospitals. In economic matters, basic sectors such as railways, telephone service, airlines, foreign trade, the merchant fleet, the heavy steel sector were nationalized and industrialization was promoted. In international politics, the minister Juan Atilio Bramuglia, of union extraction, implemented a policy of neutrality in the Cold War that he called "the third position"; and a policy of regional alliances with Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Chile. In education, technical education was promoted, the National Worker's University was created (later renamed the National Technological University) and free university education was established.
After 15 years of restricted democracies and military interventions on civilian governments, in 1946 Congress passed a new Higher Education Law that placed universities under the rules of a democracy without proscription. For this, and marking a milestone in the history of higher education legislation, Peronism issued Law No. 13,031 in 1947, called the Guardo Law, in honor of the Justicialist deputy who created its articles. This legislation put an end to the long validity of the four articles of the reduced Law No. 1597 of 1885, "Avellaneda Law", which served as the legal framework until then.
In 1949, with the intention of addressing some proposals from university students, incorporating advances in the law enacted in 1947, and laying the foundations for a new law, an article was incorporated into the National Constitution of 1949. In 1954 it was enacted a new law, 14,297. It incorporated some other postulates of the University Reform, such as the definition of extension and the direct participation of students. This law deepened student participation in the government of the faculties, granting them the right to vote.
Polarization between Peronists and anti-Peronists
The first two Peronist governments were marked by the extreme polarization of society between anti-Peronists and Peronists, as well as by the action of sectors that were neither Peronist nor anti-Peronist, supporting one side or the other or neither. Andrés Avellaneda and Alejandra Giuliani talk about the anti-Peronist historiography that became dominant after the anti-Peronist dictatorship of 1955, pointing out its myths, and its restricted interpretation of the facts by ignoring the autonomy of the various groups that made up the Peronist alliance. In the same sense, the research of the Israeli historian Raanan Rein is oriented, placing the accent on the study of the special characteristics of the second-line leaders of Peronism and regional particularities. In 2003 the Peronist leader Antonio Cafiero criticized the interpretation of the facts made by one of the main anti-Peronist historians, Hugo Gambini, for not taking into account the historical context in which those events occurred.
The Peronist government and the judiciary arrested opposition leaders accusing them of committing crimes, participating in terrorist acts and attempted coups. of the Nation and arrested by court order, accused of having committed the crime of contempt. General Alejandro Agustín Lanusse was arrested for his participation in the attempted coup of 1951. The leaders of the Unión Cívica Radical Roque Carranza and Arturo Mathov were arrested for murdering seven people and injuring more than one hundred in the attack in the Plaza de Mayo on April 15, 1953, being in turn tortured by the Federal Police.
Hugo Gambini and Silvia Mercado point out that the government denied access to radio and television to non-Peronist leaders until two months before their overthrow.
In those years, “la radio” was a large number of private stations installed in most of the large cities of the country, while “la televisión” was a state channel, which began broadcasting in 1951. Mirta Varela points out that "Perón came to the government all the press against" and that during the electoral campaign, the big national newspapers and the radio, gave practically no space to the activities of the Peronist front, disseminating a symbology that presented the Peronists as "invaders" and expressions such as "paws in the fountain& #3. 4; to refer to the people who refreshed themselves, avoiding the names of Perón and Evita, anticipating a policy of exclusion of Peronism from the media that the anti-Peronist dictatorship would establish by law after 1955.
Celso Ramón Lorenzo recounts that local opposition supporters were attacked, the police repressed their public acts and the militants were persecuted. The government used the figure of "contempt against the presidential investiture" to prosecute even opposition deputies.
The government closed a large number of opposition newspapers, especially in the cities of the interior, in some cases through the Visca Commission, a bicameral commission of the National Congress chaired by deputy José Emilio Visca, a former conservative turned Peronist. Visca was seconded by the deputy, also a Peronist, Rodolfo Decker. The commission was created in 1949 to investigate complaints of torture applied to opponents, but instead it dedicated itself to investigating and closing down media outlets that did not respond to the government, with the most insignificant excuses or using "reasons of safety, hygiene and morality" and so a bathroom in poor condition was enough cause.... In her study on the relationship of Peronism with the media, Mirta Varela contextualizes the conflict, highlighting the confrontation of "all the press"; against Peronism, frequently with decidedly partial information and class discrimination, since the electoral campaign of 1946, contextualizing the conflict. The historian Félix Luna strongly questioned the conduct of the media at that time:
From the point of view of journalistic ethics, the position of the press independent was damnable. The punishment of this sectarianism came by itself: the deformation of reality was so complete that all, those who wrote and those who read, came to convince themselves that the image presented was true; that the Democratic Union represented the overwhelming majority of the country in the face of despicable turbulents.Felix Luna
He persecuted opposition unionists, removed dissident professors from universities, used State resources for the activity of the Peronist Party, promoted a personality cult of Perón and Eva Perón from the books of reading in primary school until the designation with names alluding to Peronism such as Eva Perón, Juan Domingo Perón, Minister Juan Pistarini, July 26, October 8 (Perón's birthday), May 7 (Eva Perón's birthday) and October 17 (date of the workers' demonstration that demanded Perón's release from the military dictatorship), streets, train and subway stations, cities and squares[citation required] , warships and military installations and units, etc., forced public employees to be affiliated with the Peronist Party. He promoted the General University Confederation (CGU) as a representative of Peronist students in opposition to the Argentine University Federation (FUA), with an anti-Peronist tendency.
The Israeli Raanan Rein questions the tendency of a part of Argentine historiography for having "bitten the bait" of populist rhetoric, accepting as a fact the direct relationship between Perón and his followers, without taking into account the autonomy of the different powers, groups, second lines and regional manifestations of the movement.
In 1951 the Peronist government decided to send the National Congress a project to provincialize the national territories of La Pampa and Chaco, whose inhabitants lacked the right to elect and be elected. To constitute themselves as such, the populations of the new provinces elected constituent conventions, the Peronist Party winning the majority. The provincial constitutions followed the lines of social constitutionalism and the Argentine constitutional reform of 1949, establishing among other norms the rights of workers, old age and legal equality between men and women. In these constitutions, the conventions arranged to name the ex-territory of La Pampa as the Eva Perón Province and the ex-territory of Chaco as the President Perón Province.
Anti-Peronist opposition groups, including military sectors, mainly from the Navy, the Radical Civic Union, the Conservative Party, the Catholic Church, extreme right-wing organizations and the Socialist Party, promoted institutional destabilization actions, they organized armed civilian commandos, they organized the coup d'état in 1951, they carried out the terrorist attack in the Plaza de Mayo on April 15, 1953, killing seven people and injuring another hundred, they organized the bombing of Plaza de Mayo -one One of the participants was the senior radical leader Miguel Ángel Zavala Ortiz- murdering 308 people and an undetermined number of victims who could not be recognized and carried out the coup d'état of 1955 to impose a military dictatorship, which repealed the Constitution of Venezuela by military proclamation. 1949 and imposed a repressive regime with the stated goal of "de-peronising" the country, shooting, imprisoning, and persecuting Peronist political and union leaders, firing Peronist teachers, suspending athletes who had Peronist ideas, and establishing blacklists for Peronist artists.
The attempted coup of September 28, 1951
On September 28, 1951, members of the Army, Navy and Air Force under the command of retired General Benjamín Menéndez tried to overthrow the government of President Juan Domingo Perón. In their brief proclamation, the rebels accused the government of having led the Nation to "a total bankruptcy of its internal and external credit, both morally and spiritually as well as materially." The restrictions on civil liberties and the actions of the opponents, the constitutional reform that allowed the re-election of the president, as well as the measures to politicize the armed forces seem to have influenced the military adherents to the movement.
Some disgruntled sectors of the military entered a deliberative state to remove the government and sought a leader to lead the rebellion. Those who could assume this role were General Eduardo Lonardi, the only non-government military with troop command, who was commander of the First Army Corps, and General Benjamín Menéndez, retired since 1942, but they could not agree on joint action. separated -in the words of Potash with which Luna agrees- by "personal dignity, pride and ambition".
Seeing a favorable political moment, Menéndez gave the order to unleash the coup on September 28 and Lonardi –who had asked for his retirement, which was accepted immediately- decided not to join the coup but released his followers, part of of which supported the same. In the early morning of that day, Menéndez and his staff entered Campo de Mayo, a large military installation, where there were already rebellious units. A shooting took place in the tank regiment that caused the only death, Corporal Miguel Farina who had tried to oppose. Of the thirty tanks present, they were only able to mobilize two -probably due to sabotage by non-commissioned officers- and the rest were abandoned, so that ultimately the coup column left under the command of General Menéndez with two Sherman tanks, three armored units and 200 troops. by horse.
He did not obtain the expected support from the Military College of the Nation and the mechanized detachment of La Tablada that had also rebelled surrendered without fighting against troops loyal to the government, for which reason Menéndez, along with some of his officers, surrendered himself in custody.
On the other hand, the air-naval squadron and the military base of Punta Indio, which had risen up, upon learning that they lacked land forces, gave up their action and some of the interveners were detained and others escaped.
The military members of the coup were arrested and tried. Perón and Lucero promoted instead they chose to apply moderate sanctions. Menéndez was sentenced to 15 years in prison; Rodolfo Larcher, Armando Repetto and Julio Rodolfo Alsogaray, were sentenced to six years in prison; to four years Captain Alejandro Agustín Lanusse, Gustavo Martínez Zuviría, Víctor Salas and Costa Paz; Manuel Raymúndez and Rómulo Menéndez were sentenced to three years and Luis Prémoli, Ricardo Echeverry Boneo and Manuel Rojas Silveyra to one year. None of them lost their military rank. The toughest sectors of Peronism, led by Eva Perón, argued that the crimes committed -which included homicide- should have been severely punished, with loss of military rank and application of the death penalty in the most serious cases. The radical historian Félix Luna opined that Perón took advantage of the attempted coup to purge the armed forces, getting rid of officers who had not been part of the rebellion by withdrawing them.
The head of the naval aviation, captain Vicente Baroja escaped to Uruguay and from there declared:
We had trusted to overthrow the tyrant with small actions, without bloodshed. The lesson was that it was necessary to reach the bloodshed to turn it over.Ship captain Vicente Baroja
The second government of Juan D. Perón (1952-1955)
In 1949, Perón reformed the Constitution of 1853, so that he could be re-elected in the 1951 elections. For the first time in the country's history, women exercised their right to vote. In November, Perón again triumphed in the elections by a wide margin (62.49%).
In that year, Eva Perón tried to access the vice-presidential nomination for what would be Perón's second presidential term. Although she had the support of the CGT, [ citation needed ] the military opposition and her state of health led her to her famous resignation in a mass event on 9 de Julio avenue. Evita died of uterine cancer at the age of 33 in 1952. Her body was embalmed and kept on display until a military coup ousted her husband from power in 1955. The corpse was secretly sent to Italy and buried in Milan under a false name. In 1972 she was returned to her husband. Her remains rest in the La Recoleta cemetery in Buenos Aires.
Peronism enjoyed broad support from the popular sectors from then on, but in turn produced a deep polarization between Peronists and anti-Peronists. Evita finally died on July 26, 1952, at only 33 years of age, after Perón began his second term. Her funeral marked a milestone in Argentine history: she received the honors of a sitting president, her funeral procession was witnessed on the streets of Buenos Aires by almost three million people, and her funeral lasted sixteen days.. Congress declared her Spiritual Head of the Argentine Nation.
The welfare state and the Peronist economy
Peronism came to power in democracy in the post-World War II period, which meant the economic weakness of a Europe in ruins and the strong leadership of the United States in the Western Hemisphere. In this scenario, Argentina was for the first time in its history in the position of creditor of the central countries, thanks to the exports of meat and grains to the belligerent powers. The main debtor was the United Kingdom, which in the face of the emergency declared its illiquidity, blocking the free availability of these amounts. The Peronist government chose to use these credits to acquire British capital public service companies. In 1946 the first five-year plan was launched, and in 1951 the second; Its purpose was to regulate and encourage industrial production and everything related to it.
Argentina's economic boom continued, driven by the growing internal market that had been formed by the drop in imports from countries at war. This helped the Perón government to apply a vast welfare policy that included the implementation of new social rights, such as vacation and rest periods, and above all, more dignified wages. Important housing plans are started, and huge investments in health, education and energy. All these benefits were widely publicized and capitalized by the figures of Perón and Eva Perón, who created the "Fundación Eva Perón" social assistance financed basically with state funds and business contributions (many of a compulsory nature); also the nationalizations and nationalization of public services, such as the British railways, were proclaimed as conquests of sovereignty and economic independence. The workers came to share more than 50 percent of the national income by 1946. The increase in the income of the previously marginalized population, now caused a great growth in consumption and the modernization of a large part of Argentine society. Public spaces that were previously frequented by an exclusive segment of society were now frequented by people from all social classes.
In 1951 Perón was seeking re-election, and the CGT proposed Evita herself as his running mate in an act on August 22, 1951. The act is known as the "Cabildo Abierto del Justicialismo" where two million workers gathered to support the Perón-Eva Perón formula. Nine days later, Evita renounces her candidacy on the national channel since by then her illness was terminal. An electoral reform that prohibits coalitions or party alliances is sanctioned and in the elections Perón was elected for a new presidential term with 62.5% of the votes in the first elections in which the female vote was exercised in Argentina.
During the government of Perón, the Merchant Fleet was created, which became the fourth in the world, Aerolíneas Argentinas was formed, giving the country its own air transport, a strong industrialization process was generated, facilitating the installation of heavy industries, and It began to manufacture a large number of machinery and automobiles, achieving significant economic independence. His policy ostensibly harmed British interests that would ultimately unite with opponents of the regime.
The economic model was characterized by a deepening of the import substitution process, promoting the development of the national industry and taking it to levels of self-sufficiency not seen until then; above all, the aeronautical industry has a singular impulse (the IAME is created). At the beginning of the 1950s, the world context ceased to be favorable since the United States, through the Marshall Plan, placed its agricultural surpluses in Europe, limiting access to the Argentine food market, and added to a commercial boycott of industrial products from the United States. Argentines. With an external vision, he elaborates a Latin American integration plan which he calls ABC precisely to avoid the hegemony of the United States.
The economic situation begins to deteriorate and a new Minister of Economic Affairs, Alfredo Gómez Morales, applied orthodox measures, such as the adjustment of certain public expenses; Perón raised the signing of oil exploitation contracts with North American companies, due to the shortage of oil that limited economic growth.
Polarization and coup d'état
Due to the strong smear campaign of the government, promoted by the most powerful economic sectors through a large part of the media, the Second Peronist Government increased control over journalism, for example, with the expropriation of the La Prensa newspaper, the total exclusion of non-Peronist politicians from the radio and censorship.
Some opposition politicians are detained without trial, and a gigantic propaganda policy is carried out to strengthen the government that even reaches children's school books. Acts of police torture such as that of the student Mario Ernesto Bravo were verified.
Conspiracies against the government are denounced. In 1951 the uprising of General Benjamín Menéndez was defeated. In 1953, after an anti-Peronist attack in Plaza de Mayo that left five dead during an act of the C.G.T. Peronist supporters attack and burn down the headquarters of the Jockey Club, the Casa del Pueblo (headquarters of the Socialist Party), and the headquarters of the Radical Party while the police refrain from intervening and the firefighters only control that the fires do not spread to neighboring houses.
This internal political division worsened with the confrontation with the Catholic Church in 1954, produced by a set of circumstances, including the founding in 1954 of the Christian Democratic Party of Argentina. From that moment on, the president began what some historians consider an attack against the Catholic Church, establishing divorce by law, suppressing compulsory religious education in public schools and authorizing the opening of brothels. Opposition demonstrations increased. The traditional celebration of Corpus Christi in Plaza de Mayo on June 11, 1955, is transformed into a massive opposition act. Strong accusations are crossed.
On June 16, 1955 at noon, some thirty insurgent planes from the Navy and the Air Force, with the support of senior officials, attempted a coup, but they only managed to bomb and machine-gun the population of Buenos Aires in the Plaza de Mayo and other places, coordinated with a ground assault that was unsuccessful. Estimates of the victims of this attack vary between 355 dead and 600 injured according to the official report, up to 4,500 deaths according to Radio Puerto Belgrano. The pretext it was to assassinate General Perón, who was not in the place; At night, and without the police or fire department intervening, groups of government sympathizers from official offices and the headquarters of the Peronist Party looted and burned churches.
The degree of polarization and confrontation between Peronists and anti-Peronists made the situation almost untenable. Anti-Peronist terrorist attacks were multiplying throughout the country, which the government insisted on pointing out as promoted from the United States and Great Britain.
In September 1955, military groups rose up in Córdoba and threatened to shell the refinery in the city of Mar del Plata from ships. Perón, determined to avoid further bloodshed, ordered the rebel forces not to fight. The CGT recommended that the workers remain calm.The President was overthrown, and he began his exile: he lived in several Latin American countries before going into exile for a long time in Spain, finally returning in 1973.
The soldiers who overthrew Perón called their coup d'état the Liberating Revolution and occupied the government. Its first measures would be the proscription of Peronism, its party and symbology, which, however, will maintain its great popularity in hiding; as well as the persecution, torture and exile of Peronist leaders and sympathizers, and even the execution of the military who, contrary to Perón's advice, rose up on June 9, 1956, which earned the coup the nickname " rifle revolution".
Agreement with Chile regarding Antarctica
After the National Antarctic Commission was reorganized by decree No. 8507 of March 23, 1946, a series of meetings was arranged between various ministries to carry out a large-scale Antarctic policy. As a result of these meetings, the On September 2, 1946, decree No. 8944 was issued, which set new limits for Argentine Antarctica between the meridians 25° and 74° (the eastern end of the South Sandwich Islands) of longitude West. Finally, decree-law No. 2129, of February 28, 1957, established the definitive limits between the meridians 25º and 74º West and the parallel 60º of South latitude.
Chile and Argentina signed a mutual agreement on the protection and legal defense of their Antarctic territorial rights on March 4, 1948, mutually recognizing:
(...) until it is agreed, through friendly agreements, the common neighborhood line in the Antarctic territories of Chile and the Argentine Republic, declare:
- That both Governments will act in common agreement on the protection and legal defence of their rights in the South American Antarctic, including the 25th and 90th meridians, in the west length of Greenwich, in whose territories Chile and the Argentine Republic are recognized indisputable rights of sovereignty.
- They agree to continue their administrative action, exploration, monitoring and promotion in the undefined border region of their respective Antarctic areas, within a spirit of mutual cooperation.
- That, as soon as possible, and in any event, in the course of this year, the negotiations will continue until the conclusion of a Chilean-Argentine treaty demarcating limits in the South American Antarctic.
On January 25, 1948, the Deception Naval Detachment was installed.
Between February 12 and 29, 1948 (dates of departure and arrival at Puerto Belgrano) an Argentine war fleet with 3,000 men on board visited the South Orcadas, the northern part of the Antarctic peninsula and the Shetlands of the South. It was made up of the cruisers ARA Veinticinco de Mayo and ARA Almirante Brown, the torpedo boats ARA Misiones, ARA Entre Ríos, ARA Santa Cruz, ARA San Luis, ARA Mendoza and ARA Cervantes. As a reminder of that voyage, the Bransfield Strait was renamed Mar de la Fleet in Argentine toponymy.
On April 7, 1948, by decree No. 9905, the political-administrative dependency of the Argentine Antarctic Sector of the maritime governor of the National Territory of Tierra del Fuego was established. Decree No. 17040 of June 9 created the Antartica and Malvinas Division under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Its function was to understand everything related to the defense of Argentine legal rights over Argentine Antarctica, the Malvinas, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.
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In 1951, the first Argentine continental base was inaugurated in Antarctica, the Almirante Brown Naval Detachment. The following year the Esperanza Naval Detachment was inaugurated. While this last base was being built in Esperanza Bay, the first military shooting took place in Antarctica on February 1, 1952, when an Argentine coastal team, after giving a warning, fired a burst from a machine gun over their heads and forced to re-embark a civilian team from the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey who were unloading materials from the ship John Biscoe with the intention of re-establishing the British base "D" burned there in 1948.
In 1952 and 1953 the governments of the states of Argentina and Chile (at the time Juan Domingo Perón and Carlos Ibáñez del Campo being the respective presidents of the two states) agreed to an understanding whereby they coordinated actions against the United Kingdom's claims of so that the overlapping claim zones (a curved triangle south of parallel 60°S and between meridians 53°W and 74°W and the South Pole) between the two states became subject to cooperation between the two states and in the perspective of a condominial sovereignty, a cooperative action of mutual benefits between both states was endorsed.
On January 17, 1953, the Teniente Lasala Refuge (a cabin and a tent) was inaugurated in the Whaling Cove by personnel from the Argentine ship ARA Chiriguano, leaving a sergeant and a corporal from the Argentine Navy. On February 15, in the Deception Island incident, 32 Royal Marines from the British frigate HMS Snipe disembarked armed with Sten submachine guns, rifles and tear gas, seizing the two Argentine sailors. The Argentine refuge and a nearby uninhabited Chilean refuge were destroyed and the Argentine sailors were handed over to a ship from that country on February 18 in the South Georgia Islands. A British detachment remained on the island for three months while the frigate patrolled its waters until April.
On May 4, 1955, the United Kingdom filed two lawsuits, against Argentina and Chile respectively, before the International Court of Justice for it to declare the sovereignty claims of the two countries over Antarctic and sub-Antarctic areas invalid. On July 15, 1955, the Chilean government rejected the jurisdiction of the Court in that case, and on August 1, the Argentine government also did so, so on March 16, 1956, the claims were filed.
Argentina during the Cold War (1945-1991)
Although at the beginning of 1945, Argentina openly declared itself in support of the Allies in World War II, it did not participate in the conflict, and during the following almost fifty years, it showed a greater position towards the Western powers during the so-called Cold War. During the Cold War, an escalation of violence known as the "Dirty War" or "The Lead Years" broke out in Argentina and other countries in the region. In this context, the well-known Condor Plan was also produced, which included several countries in the region.
During the 60s and 70s, all elected governments were overthrown by military blows. Social conflict and political violence were growing in intensity. Perón and the Judiciary Party, even since the proscription, will remain an important factor in the political landscape of this entire period. Many of the social conquests achieved during the Peronist governments disappear. Paradoxically the economy recorded the highest growth rates in the world, but external debt also increases strongly. From the second half of the 1960s, social problems are also exacerbated, and the guerrilla insurgency of ERP and Montoneros and other armed organizations appears. In 1972, Perón returned to the country. The clear triumph of Peronism in the 1973 elections is affected by the death of Perón the following year. The country was heading for a tragedy.
The “Liberating Revolution” (1955-1958)
On September 23, 1955, the Armed Forces under the command of General Eduardo Lonardi overthrew Perón and established a dictatorship called the Liberating Revolution. After a conflict in the leadership, the Lonardi sector was expelled from the government. From then on, the ban on the Justicialista Party (Peronist) and the persecution of its sympathizers was imposed, which would continue for 18 years, and the intervention of the unions, whose leaders are imprisoned and tortured. Also, in an unprecedented case in modern Argentine history, in 1956 the military government shot, in some cases publicly and in others clandestinely, 31 Peronist soldiers and civilians.
The Revolución Libertadora had an Advisory Board made up of most of the political parties: the Radical Civic Union, the Socialist Party, the National Democratic Party, the Christian Democratic Party and the Progressive Democratic Party.
The coup group was divided into two sectors: a nationalist-Catholic sector led by General Eduardo Lonardi, who took over the government at the beginning, and a liberal-conservative group led by General Pedro Eugenio Aramburu and Admiral Isaac Rojas who Finally, through an internal coup, he displaced the former and replaced Lonardi with Aramburu as "president".
The military government assigned the Ministry of Economy to a civilian, followed by Eugenio Folcini, Eugenio Blanco, Roberto Verrier and Adalberto Krieger Vasena, who carried out a policy inspired by the criteria of the most socially affluent and economically powerful sectors.
One of the most important institutional measures of the military dictatorship was to issue a proclamation ipso facto repealing the current National Constitution, known as the 1949 Constitution, to replace it with the text of the 1853 Constitution. This measure would later be endorsed by a Constituent Convention elected with proscriptions, which met under the military regime and added article 14 bis on labor protection.
In 1958 the Revolución Libertadora called for limited elections controlled by the Armed Forces, with a total ban on the Justicialista Party, which were won by the UCRI, the sector of the Radical Civic Union led by Arturo Frondizi. For this reason Marcelo Cavarozzi defined the regimes of Frondizi and Arturo Illia as "semi-democracies".
| 1958 Presidential elections | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Presidential formula | Party | Votes | % |
| Arturo Frondizi - Alejandro Gómez | Intransigent Radical Civic Union | 4 090 840 | 44,79 |
| Ricardo Balbín - Santiago H. del Castillo | Radical Civic Union of the People | 2 640 454 | 28,91 |
| White votes | 836 658 | 9,16 | |
| Lucas Ayarragaray - Horacio Sueldo | Christian Democratic Party | 289 245 | 3.17 |
| Alfredo Palacios - Carlos Sánchez Viamonte | Socialist Party | 262 369 | 2.87 |
| Vicente Solano Lima - Alfredo Massi | Popular Conservative Party | 172 721 | 1.89 |
| Luciano F. Molinas - Horacio R. Thedy | Progressive Democratic Party | 127 465 | 1.40 |
| Alejandro Leloir - Juan A. Bramuglia | Popular Union | 101 000 | 1,11 |
| Independent Civic Party | 38 228 | 0.42 | |
| Conservatives | 30 239 | 0.33 | |
| Source: History Argentina | |||
Presidency of Frondizi (1958-1962)
In 1958 Arturo Frondizi, for the Intransigent Radical Civic Union with a developmentalist project, won the 1958 presidential elections with the support of the Peronism outlawed at that time.
His government period was characterized by adopting developmentalism as a basic government policy, based on the recommendations of ECLAC and the definitions of the so-called dependency theory developed from the 1950s. relative growth of the automotive, steel and petrochemical industries.
During his government, thousands of people were arrested and at least 111 were convicted in summary trials conducted by military councils of war. Within the same framework, tens of thousands of transport and public service workers were forcibly incorporated into military service and placed under the command of the armed forces. Unions were also intervened and local supporters were closed.
At the end of 1958, he signed a Stabilization or Austerity Plan with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in which he promised to implement economic and educational policies that generated great resistance among the unions and the student movement. The popular protests were harshly repressed, with thousands of dismissed and imprisoned, even using the CONINTES Plan (Internal Commotion of the State), prepared by Frondizi taking as a precedent a plan outlined during Peronism, although never put into practice, which put the demonstrators under the jurisdiction of the military courts.
In this context, the strikes followed one after the other and transcended the union sphere, at the beginning of 1959, with the takeover of the Lisandro de la Torre refrigerator and the eviction with Army tanks stationed at the door of the refrigerator. The application of the Conintes Plan caused a wave of raids and arrests in neighborhoods and workplaces, in the main urban centers. At the same time, the control of the press by the Frondist government became increasingly rigorous. The detainees were transferred to the different prisons in the country (Las Heras, Magdalena, Caseros, Ushuaia) where they were tortured.
Frondizi's government was highly constrained by military might. He suffered 26 military coups and 6 coup attempts. In each case, the military imposed new conditions, which among other things were manifested in the conservative officials that he had to include in his cabinet, such as Álvaro Alsogaray and Roberto Alemann, in the Ministry of Economy, and other personalities such as Miguel Ángel Cárcano, Federico Pinedo (1895-1971), and Carlos Muñiz, all from outside the UCRI.
His foreign policy was characterized by maintaining an independent position, establishing good relations with the administration of John F. Kennedy, and at the same time he opposed the expulsion of Cuba from the OAS, meeting with the Argentine and representative of the Cuban government Che Guevara at the Olivos presidential residence.
In 1961 Frondizi annulled the outlawing of Peronism. In the 1962 elections, Peronism won the governorships of 10 of the 14 provinces, including the powerful province of Buenos Aires, where the combative textile union leader Andrés Framini triumphed. Faced with this situation, on March 20 Frondizi intervened in all the provinces adverse to his government: Buenos Aires, Chaco, Río Negro, Santiago del Estero and Tucumán The Armed Forces demanded that Frondizi annul the elections; the president's refusal triggered the coup that overthrew him on March 29, 1962.
Secular or free education
During the Liberation Revolution, when Manuel Vicente Ordóñez was a member of the National Advisory Board, the Christian Democrat politician Atilio Dell'Oro Maini who participated as Minister of Education for the de facto presidents Eduardo Lonardi and Pedro Eugenio Aramburu. On December 22, 1955, Atilio Dell'Oro Maini promoted decree-law 6,403, which allowed the creation of private universities with the capacity to award academic titles and diplomas, consecrating university autonomy. Thanks to these efforts, on June 8, 1956, the Catholic University of Córdoba was created among other private higher educational institutions.
But during the government of constitutional President Arturo Frondizi, in 1958, there was a movement created from the sanction of two laws sanctioned during that government: the approval of the Teachers' Statute and the one that enabled private universities to issue titles professionals, which led to a large student protest known as "Secular or free".
The abolition of the state monopoly on university education was a historical aspiration mainly of the Catholic Church, an institution that had founded the National University of Córdoba, the first in the country, later nationalized. A clear precedent in this regard is José Manuel Estrada.
The student movement organized in the Argentine University Federation (FUA) immediately opposed the authorization of private universities and organized a mobilization plan with the support of unions, high school students and opposition political parties, under the motto of "secular or free", one of the largest mobilizations in the history of the Argentine student movement. These students defended the banner of "secular education" (opposed to the Frondista bill), while the government, the Frondista radicals, Christian Democrats, Catholic nationalists, allied Peronists and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, defended the banner of "free education".
On August 28, 1958, the seven rectors of the seven national universities (among them José Peco, Josué Gollán, Oberdán Caletti and the brother of the President of the Nation, Risieri Frondizi) asked the National Executive Power not to conclude the decree for private universities, arguing that it was "so that the institutional and academic life of the country would not be altered". Almost simultaneously secularist demonstrations and acts of protest began, which first took place within the faculties, and later moved to the streets. For the so-called "laymen", Frondizi was an instrument of the Church: they even set fire to an effigy of President Frondizi whose figure was represented dressed (according to the historian Félix Luna) in a grotesque clerical cassock.
Nevertheless, President Frondizi promulgated the private education law, which led to the granting of legal status to new universities, such as the Universidad Católica Argentina in 1959.
Military coup: Guido's government (1962-1963)
The military coup of March 29, 1962 had tragicomic elements that determined that it was not a soldier, but a civilian, who acceded to the Presidency after overthrowing President Arturo Frondizi (intransigent radical).
On March 28, 1962, there was a military uprising led by the commanders-in-chief of the three arms, Lieutenant General Raúl Alejandro Poggi, Brigadier General Cayo Antonio Alsina and Admiral Agustín Ricardo Penas, demanding the resignation of President Frondizi.
Despite the fact that Frondizi lacked troops to support him, he refused to resign to gain time in order to carry out a clever maneuver that would frustrate the enthronement of a military man in the Presidency ("I will not commit suicide, I will not I will resign and I will not leave the country»). This led to endless movements, threats and negotiations, until Frondizi was arrested by the military and taken to Martín García Island at dawn on March 29. Exhausted by the comings and goings, the coup leaders went to sleep before formally assuming power, a time that was used by Frondizi's men so that the Frondizista senator José María Guido, first in line of succession, was ahead of the coup leaders. swearing in as president of the Nation before the Supreme Court, invoking the law of acephaly.
When the coup leaders headed by General Raúl Poggi, went to the Casa Rosada to take over the government, they were surprised by journalists who informed them that a civilian, José María Guido, had been sworn in minutes before, as president of the Nation, in the palace of the Supreme Court.
Upon confirming the news, the coup leaders went into "shock. as much and as long as he committed in writing to execute the political measures indicated by the Armed Forces, the first of which was to annul the elections in which Peronism had won. Guido accepted the military impositions, signed an act stating this and was then authorized by them to install himself with the title of "president".
Guido's presidency had an almost exclusive objective: to hold elections as quickly as possible to hand over command to a constitutional president. His short government moved amid military demands and violent struggles between two sectors of the Armed Forces Armadas that were known as Azules and Colorados. Within the framework of these pressures, Guido closed Congress, annulled the legislative and gubernatorial elections held in 1962, intervened in all the provinces that were not yet in that condition, thus assuming all the executive and legislative powers, national and provincial.
Blues and Reds
After the 1955 coup that overthrew the constitutional government of Juan D. Perón, two opposing sectors of the Armed Forces were outlined. One, called "hard" or "golpista", which would take the name of Colorados in 1962; the other "legalist" or "integrationist", would take the name of Azules. The Colorados had their center of power in the Navy and the Blues in the Cavalry arm of the Army. Both were anti-Peronists and anti-communists, favoring a close alignment with the United States in the Cold War, but while the Blues argued that Peronism was a check on communism and had to be somehow integrated into political life, the Colorados argued that the Peronism was an ally of communism and was the gateway to Argentina.
The fight between both sectors of the Armed Forces reached a point of "war" opened during the Government of Guido, through two armed confrontations, in September 1962 and April 1963, which ended with the victory of the Blue side commanded by the hitherto unknown General Juan Carlos Onganía, and the complete defeat and surrender of the Colorado side. The Navy was the great defeat, losing the priority place it had won within the Armed Forces from 1955.
Neither the total number, nor the names of the majority of the dead and wounded, caused by the "war" between Blues and Colorados. Officially it was established that there were 24 dead and 87 wounded, all military. The data was provided by Potash in 1994, specifying that the information was taken directly from the File of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (CONSUFA), legacy 30, pages 6069-6076 for Army casualties, and file 21, pages 4090-4098, for Navy casualties, while the file corresponding to the Air Force (file 9, page 1800) does not record casualties for this force. Potash also notes that all the casualties were military, and that 19 deaths belonged to the Army, while that the deaths in the Navy were 5, all "marine infants". However, abundant information and testimonies account for a large number of civilian deaths and injuries, some of them combatants and others not.
Electoral exit
President Guido relied on the blue military to reach the electoral solution that he had proposed. The blue soldiers who took the main posts in Guido's government became Violetas and adopted many of the red principles, such as an exacerbated anti-Peronism and contempt for constitutional legality.
Finally, on Sunday, July 7, 1963, the elections were held, with Perón in exile and Frondizi in prison, and without his followers being able to present candidates, which is why they called for a blank vote.
The election result surprised everyone. As the Armed Forces wished, the vote was highly fragmented. Illia was the candidate with the most votes, but only obtained 25.15% of the total votes cast, while the blank vote came in second place, with 19.41% of the preferences, followed by the general's UCRI and UDELPA Aramburu. But it was not Aramburu who was elected in the Electoral College, as the military expected, but the town's radical, Arturo Illia, who managed to tie agreements with minor parties to reach the necessary voters.
Illia's presidency (1963-1966)
On July 7, 1963, new presidential elections were held, with Peronism outlawed and former president Frondizi arrested, winning Arturo Umberto Illia, candidate of the Radical Civic Union of the People:
The results were as follows:
| 1963 presidential elections | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Presidential formula | Party | Votes | % |
| Arturo Illia-Carlos Perette | Radical Civic Union of the People | 2 441 064 | 25,14 |
| White votes | 1 827 464 | 18,82 | |
| Oscar Alende-Celestino Gelsi | Intransigent Radical Civic Union | 1 593 992 | 16,41 |
| Pedro Eugenio Aramburu-Horacio Thedy | Union of the Argentine People (UDELPA) | 728.662 | 7.50 |
| Progressive Democratic Party | 633 934 | 6.52 | |
| Emilio Olmos-Emilio Jofre | Federation of Parties of the Centre | 499 822 | 5,14 |
| Horacio Sueldo-Francisco Cano | Christian Democratic Party | 324 723 | 3,34 |
| Alfredo Palacios-Ramón I. Soria | Argentine Socialist Party | 288 339 | 2.96 |
| Arturo Orgaz-Rodolfo Fitte | Democratic Socialist Party | 258 787 | 2.66 |
| Source: Global Country | |||
In the electoral college, the formula headed by Arturo Illia obtained 270 votes out of 476 voters on July 31, 1963.
Governance Management
Arturo Illia took office on October 12, 1963, in tightly controlled elections. His government management was characterized by promoting economic and social measures of popular orientation and at the same time by considerable political weakness derived mainly from the fact that he took office while Peronism continued to be proscribed, and therefore, many of his sympathizers resorted to the blank vote as form of repudiation to such a measure. This caused the small first minority with which he assumed power (25%) and the high number of blank votes (18%), the second electoral minority.
Among the main government measures we can mention:
- Eliminated electoral and political restrictions they weighed on Peronism, but not on Juan Perón, whose return to the country managed to avoid in 1964 using the newly installed Brazilian military dictatorship. He also legalized the Communist Party.
- It was sanctioned Minimum, vital and mobile wage law, No. 16 459, which established the Board of the Wages, tripartite integration with representatives of the Government, businessmen and trade unions. The actual hourly wage grew between December 1963 and December 1964 by 9.6 per cent.
- It was sanctioned Law on Supplyaimed at controlling the prices of the family basket and setting minimum amounts of pensions and pensions.
- Oil policy: Oil exploitation concession contracts, signed under the government of Arturo Frondizi with foreign private companies, were cancelled, as they were considered contrary to national interests and because special benefits had been assigned to such companies, transferring the business risk to the state company Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF).
- La education it had a significant weight in the national budget, bringing it from 12 % in 1963 to 23 % in 1965. In addition, a National Literacy Planwith the aim of reducing the illiteracy rate.
- La Drug Law (Law Oñativia) of 1964 established a policy of prices and control of medicines and prescription according to generic medication, set limits for advertising expenses, and payments abroad for royalties and the purchase of inputs. This law, called a communist by the military sectors and large foreign companies, had a decisive weight in the process that would culminate in the overthrow of the "democratic" government.
- La Economic policy It was characterized by the developmental-cephalian orientation of the economic team and aimed at the management of the public sector, to reduce public debt and to give impetus to industrialization. The State Business Syndicature was created for more effective control of public enterprises. The evolution of the Internal Gross Product during that period was 10.3% for the year 1964 and 9.1% for the year 1965. Industrial indicators were also very positive, and unemployment rose from 8.8 per cent in 1963 to 5.2 per cent in 1966.
The Overthrow
In 1965, the government called legislative elections, eliminating some of the restrictions that weighed on Peronism, which triumphed with 3,278,434 votes against 2,734,970 for the Radical Civic Union of the People. This resurgence of Peronism stirred up the internal situation of the Argentine Armed Forces, pitting strongly anti-Peronist soldiers against others who had ties to that movement.
To this situation was added a strong campaign to smear the government, promoted by economic sectors through a large part of the media. Notable among them were Primera Plana, in which Mariano Grondona published his editorial columns, and Revista Todo, in which Bernardo Neustadt published. These journalists dub the president "the turtle" , characterizing his tenure as timid and lacking in energy, and encouraging the military to remove the radical party administration.
With the consent of the Commander in Chief of the Army, Pascual Pistarini, General Julio Rodolfo Alsogaray organized a coup to overthrow Illia. It had the support of the Intransigent Radical Civic Union (UCRI) led by Oscar Alende, the Integration and Development Movement (MID) led by former president Arturo Frondizi, also overthrown in 1962, the Argentine Rural Society and other business organizations, a sector of the Peronist trade unionism, the press, and even a part of the unionist sector of the Radical Civic Union of the People headed by the governor of Entre Ríos.
On June 28, 1966, a military coup took place amid the indifference of the citizenry. General Alsogaray appeared at dawn in the presidential office and invited the president to retire. He had to give in to the lack of military, political, and popular support, and he left the Casa Rosada at 7:20 in the morning. The next day he assumed General Juan Carlos Onganía as president.
The “Argentine Revolution” (1966-1973)
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On June 28, 1966, a military uprising led by the commanders-in-chief of the three arms, Lieutenant General Pascual Ángel Pistarini, Brigadier General Adolfo Teodoro Álvarez, and Admiral Benigno Ignacio Marcelino Varela overthrew President Arturo Illia (radical of the town) and named Lieutenant General Juan Carlos Onganía as president. The coup gave rise to a dictatorship called the Argentine Revolution, which no longer presented itself as the "provisional government", as in all previous coups, but established itself as a permanent type system. This type of permanent military dictatorships was installed at that time in several Latin American countries in those years (Brazil, Uruguay, Bolivia, Paraguay, etc.) and was analyzed in detail by the prominent political scientist Guillermo O'Donnell who called it with the expression of authoritarian bureaucratic state (EBA).
The “Argentine Revolution” issued a Statute in 1966 that had a legal level higher than the Constitution and in 1972 introduced constitutional reforms, something that also distinguished it from previous dictatorships. In general, the dictatorship adopted a national-Catholic-anti-communist ideology, openly supported by both the United States and European countries.
The high degree of political and social conflict generated during the “Argentine Revolution” and the struggles between the various military sectors produced two internal coups, with three military dictators succeeding each other in power: Juan Carlos Onganía (1966- 1970), Marcelo Levingston (1970-1971) and Alejandro Agustín Lanusse (1971-1973).
Economically, the dictatorship handed over the Ministry of Economy to the most conservative-liberal civil sectors, whose greatest exponent was Adalberto Krieger Vasena, who had already been minister of the “Revolución Libertadora”. He moved away, however, from liberal orthodoxy facing public works, with which he maintained the pace of industrial activity. The share of wages in national income was close to 43% during the period 1967-1969. Exports remained high, but the agricultural sector was harmed by the devaluation and by the increase in the withholding percentages for exports, as well as by the suppression of protection measures. In labor matters, a mandatory arbitration law was passed, which conditioned the possibility of going on strike. It should also be noted that during the Levingston dictatorship, a nationalist-developmentalist sector of the Armed Forces predominated, which appointed the Minister of Economy radical Aldo Ferrer.
The dictatorship was harassed by a growing and widespread popular insurrection that included more than twenty towns (among which the Cordobazo stood out), the action of guerrilla organizations such as Montoneros (which would achieve broad youth support), and the demand of the main political parties united in a group called La Hora del Pueblo, to call free elections. Lanusse was then forced to organize an electoral exit with the participation of Peronism, but preventing Perón's candidacy.
Presidencies of Cámpora, Perón and Isabel Martínez (1973-1976)
On March 11, 1973, the elections were held in which the Peronist candidate Héctor J. Cámpora, supported by a front that included most of the political parties that had been anti-Peronist and supported the coup of '55 and the subsequent outlawing of Peronism.
The political irregularity that had prevented Juan Domingo Perón, the political leader with the greatest popular support at that time, from not being part of power, led Cámpora and his vice president, the conservative Vicente Solano Lima, to resign their charges to allow new free elections, in which there were no longer proscriptions. After 18 years of his overthrow and exile, Perón won the elections with 62% of the vote and assumed his third presidency.
But by then internal and international tensions had seriously escalated. The Ezeiza Massacre was followed by the assassination of José Ignacio Rucci, general secretary of the CGT. That same year there were coups d'état in Uruguay and Chile, and Argentina was surrounded by military dictatorships, within the framework of the crisis of oil and its inflationary sequel, as well as the generalization of State terrorism in Latin America that characterized the National Security Doctrine of the United States at that stage of the Cold War.
Perón would die less than a year after being elected. Both he and Ricardo Balbín, leader of the Radical Civic Union, had tried to form the "Perón-Balbín" presidential formula of national unity, but their own parties rejected it. Under these conditions, Vice President María Estela Martínez de Perón had to assume power, without the support that the moment required. Political violence increased geometrically, driven by the actions of the extreme right-wing parapolice group Triple A led by Minister José López Rega, the guerrilla organizations Montoneros and the ERP, the coup groups and the actions of State terrorism applied by the Armed Forces, mainly in Operation Independence in the province of Tucumán. Social conflict was exacerbated as a result of the economic measures known as "Rodrigazo", which inaugurated a period of almost two decades of inflation rates above 100%.
Among the policies of the three presidencies, the sanction of the Labor Contract Law -considered one of the greatest achievements of the Argentine labor movement-, a large number of advanced collective labor agreements, an experience of social dialogue, stood out among others of the highest level known as the Social Pact, the Educational Reactivation Campaign (Crear), entry into the Non-Aligned Movement, the Treaty of the Río de la Plata ending the border disputes with Uruguay that had been going on since the beginning of the century XIX, the signing also with Uruguay of the definitive project for the Salto Grande dam and the signing with Paraguay of the treaty to build the Yaciretá dam.
On March 24, 1976, the constitutional government was overthrown by a civil-military coup.
National Reorganization Process (1976-1983)
On March 24, 1976, a new military uprising overthrew President María Estela Martínez de Perón, installing a permanent dictatorship (authoritarian bureaucratic State) calling itself "National Reorganization Process", governed by a Military Junta made up of three soldiers, one from each force. In turn, the Military Junta elected an official with the title of "president", with executive and legislative functions.
Like the previous dictatorship, in 1976 the Military Junta sanctioned a Statute with a legal hierarchy higher than the Constitution.
The Process was governed by four successive military juntas:
- 1976-1981: Jorge Rafael Videla, Emilio Eduardo Massera and Orlando Ramón Agosti
- 1981: Roberto Eduardo Viola, Armando Lambruschini, Omar Domingo Rubens Graffigna
- 1981-1982: Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri, Basilio Lami Dozo and Jorge Isaac Anaya
- 1982-1983: Reynaldo Benito Bignone, Rubén Franco, Augusto Jorge Hughes
In each of these stages, the boards appointed Jorge Rafael Videla, Roberto Eduardo Viola, Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri and Reynaldo Benito Bignone as de facto presidents, respectively, all of them members of the Army.
The “National Reorganization Process” carried out State Terrorism that, according to the Federal Chamber, systematically violated human rights and caused the disappearance of tens of thousands of people (according to the human rights organizations the figure rises to 30,000). Its justification was the combat of those ideologies, organizations or movements that could favor or support "subversion" (communism), in the context of the Cold War. Internationally, the Argentine dictatorship and the violation of human rights had the active support of the United States government (except during the James Carter administration) and France, and the tolerance of other Western European countries, the Soviet Union and the Catholic Church, without whose inaction it would hardly have been able to sustain itself. Likewise, at that time, with US support, military dictatorships were installed in all the countries of the Southern Cone of South America (Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay) that coordinated the repression among themselves and with the United States, through of an international terrorist organization called Plan Condor.
In economic matters, through its Minister of Economy José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz, the dictatorship formally handed over the economic ministries to the most conservative business associations that promoted an openly deindustrializing and neoliberal economic policy, with maximum expansion of an external debt contracted from fraudulently and through corruption mechanisms popularly known as the "financial bicycle", for the benefit of the private sector (This debt will condition the following governments for a long time):
- The Ministry of Economy to José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz, president of the Argentine Business Council (CEA).
- The Ministry of Livestock to the Argentine Rural Society, represented by Jorge Zorreguieta (the father of Máxima Zorreguieta, currently the Queen of the Netherlands).
- The Central Bank to the Association of Private Banks of Argentine Capital (ADEBA).
In 1978 the country hosted the Soccer World Cup. Various organizations took advantage of the event to denounce the systematic violation of Human Rights. In return, the Military Junta argued that the actions of these groups were part of an "anti-Argentine campaign" carried out by terrorism. The position of the audiovisual media was to join the complaint against the campaign. The Argentine team wins the World Cup.
Relations with Chile worsened due to a conflict over the Beagle Channel, and in 1978 both countries came to the brink of a war, which was finally aborted. However, hostile relationships will be maintained that will have weight later. In 1982, under the command of Leopoldo Galtieri, the military government launched the Malvinas war against the United Kingdom, in an event about which the triggering causes remain very obscure. The inflicted defeat caused the fall of the third Military Junta and months later the fourth junta called elections for October 30, 1983, in which the candidate of the Radical Civic Union, Raúl Alfonsín, won.
The military chiefs were subsequently tried and convicted, and many of them taken to prison, in complex processes that are still ongoing.
The military dictatorship called “National Reorganization Process” was the last. Although between 1987 and 1990 there were several military insurrections, called carapintadas, but none of them with the aim of overthrowing democratic governments.
Falklands War (1982)
In 1982, Argentina fought a war over the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands against the United Kingdom. Against all odds, the performance of the Argentine Armed Forces was surprising, sinking a large number of ships of the British fleet and waging very hard land combat despite the disadvantage against a professional army. Even so, and given the plausible differences, the defeat of the Argentine troops was inevitable. 628 Argentines died, the majority in the sinking of the cruise ship ARA General Belgrano, and 255 British and three islanders perished. The defeat dealt the final blow to the military regime.
The recovery of democracy
The defeat in the Malvinas war forced the military regime to call democratic elections in 1983 without being able to impose conditions. The first two decades were marked by the recovery of democracy the year the period began, the prosecution of those guilty of human rights violations during the previous dictatorship —a feature that distinguishes Argentine democracy from other democracies recovered in South America. —, the external debt crisis, the beginning of globalization, the neoliberal reforms and the severe economic recession that began in 1998, which ended with the generalized crisis of 2001/2002. The period covers the first time in Argentine history of two continuous decades under a democratic regime and the first time that democratic presidents hand over power to democratically elected successors from another political party.
In this period, Argentina will also lead an important political and economic change, founding Mercosur together with Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.
Alfonsinism (1983-1989)
On October 30, 1983, elections were held to elect the democratic authorities. Raúl Alfonsín, candidate for the Radical Civic Union, was elected with 51% of the vote, beating the Justicialista Party (Peronism) which obtained 40%.
Policies against crimes against humanity
Alfonsín ordered the prosecution of the military juntas that usurped power during the dictatorship, with the exception of the military that made up the last one, as well as the leaders of the guerrilla organizations that acted in the 1970s. To do this, he created the Conadep, which produced Nunca más, a documented report that details and proves thousands of disappearances and human rights violations, identifying those responsible. On December 9, 1985, the sentence was handed down condemning Jorge R. Videla and Eduardo Massera to life imprisonment, Roberto Viola to seventeen years in prison, Armando Lambruschini to eight years in prison, and Orlando Ramón Agosti to four years in prison. Due to its characteristics, the condemnation of part of the members of the military juntas carried out by a democratic government constitutes an unprecedented event in the world, which contrasted sharply with the negotiated transitions that took place in those years in Uruguay, Chile, Brazil, Spain, Portugal and South Africa.
Pressed by military and media sectors and by the carapintadas uprisings, Alfonsín presented to Congress for its sanction the Full Stop and Due Obedience laws, consecrating the impunity of more than 3,600 perpetrators of crimes against humanity. Among those released were they found repressors who symbolized the violation of human rights throughout the world, such as Alfredo Astiz. The laws were repudiated by human rights organizations and would be annulled in 2003.
Economic measures
In the economic area, Alfonsín received a foreign debt from the military government that had grown from 7.7 billion dollars in 1976 to 45 billion dollars in 1983, subordinating government policies aimed at the welfare of the population and development to the payment of interest, under the conditions of the International Monetary Fund. Driven by extremely high inflation driven by bids between foreign investors and banks and the so-called "contractor homeland" that brought together the country's large business groups, the government carried out the Austral Plan in 1985, which managed for a time to contain the inflation, but could not solve the structural problems.
The wage freeze, Alfonsín's initial decision to attack the unions, the persistence of the dictatorship's fascist union law, and the unions' identification with the Peronist opposition led to a long tussle between the radical government and the CGT, which expressed itself in thirteen general strikes. Finally, the radical government ends up negotiating with the unions and unanimously sanctioning a new Union Law.
During the government of Alfonsín, the university autonomy that had been broken in 1966 was reestablished, the National Literacy Plan and the National Food Plan (PAN) were launched, and the laws of shared parental authority (1985) and of linked divorce were sanctioned (1987) —which had been annulled by the dictatorship established in 1955.
Alfonsín's international policy, led by Foreign Minister Dante Caputo, gave great importance to eliminating conflicts with bordering countries, in order to demilitarize international relations and reduce the power of the armed forces in the region. To that end he closed the Beagle conflict with Chile, which had brought both countries to the brink of war in 1978, accepting the pope's proposal made in the course of Vatican mediation. Argentina and Chile then signed the Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Argentina and Chile in 1984, resolving all pending issues south of the Strait of Magellan. The decision was legitimized with a non-binding referendum in which 82% of the population supported the agreement with Chile.
In 1985 Brazil was the second country in the region after Argentina to recover democracy. Immediately the presidents of both countries, Alfonsín and José Sarney, met to sign the Declaration of Foz de Iguazú that launched the integration process that six years later would take the name of Mercosur, adding Uruguay and Paraguay as those countries They were also recovering democracy. Until then, both countries maintained a highly confrontational, potentially warlike relationship, dating back to colonial times, when Spain and Portugal faced each other to expand their domains in the world.
Hyperinflation
The economic situation worsened in 1988, which ended with an inflation rate of 343%, a prelude to the outbreak of a hyperinflationary process from February 1989 of more than 3,000% per year, which increased poverty to a record historical until then: 47.3%.
Under these conditions, the presidential elections of May 14, 1989 were held, with the opposition candidate, the Peronist Carlos Menem, victorious with 47.4% of the vote, against 36.7% for the UCR. The magnitude of the economic-social chaos led Alfonsín to "resign" the position of president and anticipate the transfer of command by five months to July 8.
Alfonsín's resignation
Alfonsín's resignation has been attributed to a "market coup" or "soft coup" that prompted the currency run that triggered hyperinflation. The newspaper Ámbito Financiero used the title "market coup" to announce Alfonsín's resignation from the position of president. Alfonsín's use of the term "resignation" gave rise to various interpretations made explicit by the president-elect who made the decision to consider it a synonym for "resignation". Alfonsín would credit Domingo Cavallo and Guido Di Tella with having led the economic operations that led to the bank run and hyperinflation.
Elections take place, and things worsened because then deputy Cavallo had spoken to the international banks to demand the payment of the debt, conspiring against the country; and then Guido Di Tella had said that the dollar should not be high, but rather high; then they began to ask for the immediate surrender of power.Raúl Alfonsín
One of the men close to Alfonsín, the socialist leader Simón Lázara, recounted that after the elections Alfonsín met with a group of businessmen to ask them to allow him to fulfill his term that ended on December 10. On that occasion, the CEO of the Clarín newspaper, Héctor Magnetto, spoke on behalf of the business group and said:
You are already an obstacle.Héctor Magnetto
Menemism (1989-1999)
Carlos Saúl Menem ruled Argentina between July 1989 and December 1999, in two terms. His presidency coincided with the victory of the United States in the Cold War and the beginning of globalization. He applied a neoliberal economic policy following the guidelines of the Washington Consensus of 1989, carrying out the broadest experience of privatization and market deregulation among Latin American countries.
First government of Carlos Menem (1989-1995)
The outbreak of a second hyperinflationary outbreak in 1990 and the United States' denunciation of acts of corruption, caused a crisis in the government that led to the then Foreign Minister Domingo Felipe Cavallo to assume the Ministry of Economy.
Economic policies
Cavallo took three major measures, the convertibility of the national currency with the dollar (law 23,928), the suspension (“consolidation”) for ten years of the payment of the internal debt (law 23,982) and the so-called “flexibility labor" (Law 24,445). These measures, added to the already enacted laws for State reform (Law 23,696) and economic emergency (Law 23,697), would profoundly change Argentine society. Taking advantage of the overvaluation of the Argentine currency during convertibility, a policy of high external debt was applied, going from 65,000 million dollars to 145,000 in 1999.
In 1991 Argentina signed the Treaty of Asunción creating Mercosur with Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay, with the aim of forming a strong South American economic bloc. Mercosur consolidated democracy in the region and radically changed the structure of the foreign trade of the member countries, increasing in the case of Argentina more than 1000% its trade with Brazil.
Privatizations
Between 1990 and 1994 practically all state companies were privatized: ENTEL, Argentine Railways, Argentine Post Office, YPF, Gas del Estado, SEGBA, Channel 13, Channel 11, Channel 9, Obras Sanitarias de la Nación, the shipyards, the steel companies, the petrochemical companies, the merchant fleets, the ports, the mortgage bank, YCF, etc. During the Menem government, the pension funds (retirement funds) were also privatized, which began to be managed by for-profit companies called Retirement and Pension Fund Administrators (AFJP).
Pardons
President Menem continued with the policy of impunity for crimes against humanity committed during the dictatorship that Alfonsín had started after the carapintadas military uprisings. To this end, between October 7, 1989, and December 30, 1990, he issued ten decrees pardoning civilians and soldiers who committed crimes during the dictatorship calling itself the National Reorganization Process, including the members of the juntas convicted in the Trial of the Juntas of 1985, the accused Minister of Economy José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz and the leaders of the guerrilla organizations. Through these decrees, more than 1,200 people were pardoned. Human rights organizations strongly criticized the pardons, demanding their repeal. The so-called impunity laws, dictated by Menem and Alfonsín, would be annulled in 2003.
Terrorist attacks
In 1992 and 1994, the attacks on the Israeli Embassy and the AMIA took place, in which more than 100 people died. Several officials, including President Menem, would be brought to trial in 2015 accused of having covered up the second attack. In 1995, there was also the intentional explosion of the Río Tercero Military Factory, which caused seven deaths, to cover up a clandestine operation to sell arms to Ecuador and Croatia, an act for which Menem was convicted.
Pact of Olivos and reelection
In 1994 Menem and Alfonsín signed the Pact of Olivos agreeing on a series of «basic coincidences» to carry out a constitutional reform carried out that same year, replacing the constitution imposed during the dictatorship established in 1955.
In 1995, the presidential elections were held in which Menem was re-elected with 49.9% of the votes, defeating FREPASO, which obtained 29%. The Radical Civic Union was relegated to third place for the first time in its hundred years of history.
Second government of Carlos Menem (1995-1999)
Crumble of the social situation
It was characterized by the deterioration of the social situation, which already in 1997 affected broad sections of the population. Massive unemployment persisted at a double-digit rate (in 2006 it would once again be in single digits) and unregistered work continued to increase. One of the most sensitive changes was the installation of an endemic crime, hitherto unknown in the country, with a murder rate that increased by 400% between 1989 and 1996. The fall in domestic consumption and the economic opening deepened the crisis of national industries with the closure of factories and railway branches.
The deterioration of the population's living conditions aggravated the social conflict. The labor movement, divided into three sectors (CGT, MTA and CTA) carried out nine general strikes between 1992 and 1999. In 1990 retiree organizations began to block strategic streets weekly as a form of protest against the freezing of their assets. Since the second half of the 1990s, there were towns with roadblocks in various parts of the country promoted by the organization of unemployed workers, which gave birth to the piquetero movement. The murders by the security forces of the worker Víctor Choque in 1995 and Teresa Rodríguez in 1997, the first since the fall of the dictatorship during protest demonstrations, signaled the increase in repression and criminalization of social protest.
In the field of information control, the Clarín newspaper became one of the most important business groups in the country, concentrating newspapers, magazines, television channels, radio stations, cable channels, news agencies and Internet companies, as well as acquiring competing means to close them, in most of the provinces and cities. Various personalities such as Jorge Lanata, director of the newspaper Página/12 and Julio Ramos, director of the newspaper Ámbito Financiero and author of the book Los cerrojos a la prensa i>, denounced the monopoly created by Grupo Clarín and the damage it did to freedom of the press and information in Argentina:
The big problem, the great acechanza of the Argentine press in these 1990s is the monopoly Clarin.Locks to the press, Julio Ramos
In 1998 Argentina was considered an exemplary model by the International Monetary Fund, which invited President Menem to address the joint annual meeting of the organization and the World Bank. Simultaneously, a recession began that would last four years, destroying a quarter of the national wealth and plunging the country into the greatest crisis in its modern history. That same year, the United States granted Argentina the status of an important non-NATO ally, being then the only Latin American country to occupy that position. (In 2019 Brazil also became an important non-NATO ally and in 2022 the process began to turn Colombia into an important non-NATO ally.)
In 1999, the presidential elections were held, with a coalition between the Radical Civic Union and FREPASO, known as La Alianza, which led as a candidate for the then head of Government of the City of Buenos Aires, Fernando de la Rúa.
Presidency of Fernando De la Rúa (1999-2001)
Fernando de la Rúa assumed the presidency on December 10, 1999 at the head of a heterogeneous coalition known as La Alianza, made up of the Radical Civic Union (UCR) -where the Alfonsinista sector differed from the more conservative sector led by De la Rúa- and Frepaso, a confederation made up of the Frente Grande, PAIS, Socialista Popular, Socialista Democrático, Intransigente and Demócrata Cristiano parties. The heterogeneity of La Alianza would lead to internal conflicts that reduced its political support and ended up isolating and weakening the President.
Continuation of convertibility
Unlike the Justicialista Party candidate (Duhalde), who in the electoral campaign had proposed an orderly exit from convertibility, La Alianza had promised to maintain it. Strongly conditioned by the high external debt and under the demands of the International Monetary Fund, the Government ordered a succession of "adjustments", increasing taxes, reducing salaries and pensions and making working conditions more precarious. The scandal caused by the denunciations of bribes to senators by the Government to sanction a new labor flexibility law demanded by the IMF (known as the Banelco Law) led to the resignation of Vice President Chacho Álvarez - leader of the FREPASO- and caused a schism in The Alliance.
The crisis of 2001
On December 19, 2000, harassed by the difficulty to comply with the payment of interest on the foreign debt, Argentina agreed with the International Monetary Fund on an operation called Blindaje, through of which the IMF and several banks agreed to make 39.7 billion dollars available to the country in exchange for Argentina approving a new labor flexibility law, raising the retirement age, and a rigorous fiscal adjustment that extended to the provinces. As of February 2001, large flows of funds began to leave the country and the economic situation worsened, causing the Minister of Economy, José Luis Machinea, to resign on March 5.
He was replaced by Ricardo López Murphy, who also had to resign after a few days due to protests caused by budget cuts, especially to education, that he proposed.
On March 20, 2001, President De la Rúa appointed Domingo Cavallo as Economy Minister, who in 1982 had nationalized Argentina's foreign debt and in the 1990s —also as minister—, was the author of the Convertibility and the economic and social reforms known as neoliberals during the government of President Menem. One of Cavallo's first measures was to carry out a disputed operation with the International Monetary Fund called Megacanje, which demanded strong restrictions on State action, under the slogan “zero deficit”. The Megacanje was considered a crime by the courts, which in 2014 ordered Cavallo to be prosecuted, after acquitting nine other alleged perpetrators for having prescribed the criminal action.
On October 14, 2001, legislative elections were held in which the ruling Alliance was widely defeated by the Justicialista Party, with the aggravating circumstance that President De la Rúa had no political space to support any candidate. One of the central data of the election was the so-called "vote anger", blank or intentionally annulled votes that reached 25% of the total, winning even in the City of Buenos Aires and in the province of Santa Fe, removing the light a serious crisis of representation.
On December 3, 2001, due to the interruption of the contribution of funds by the International Monetary Fund, President De la Rúa issued a decree requested by Cavallo imposing what was known as "el corralito", a package of economic measures that provided for the bankarization of the economy, through the prohibition of withdrawing cash from banks in sums greater than 250 pesos or dollars per week. This measure mainly affected people with informal income, including workers not registered by companies, which at that time reached 44.8%, a figure that almost doubled that of 1994, when it reached 28.4%.
On December 13, riots began to break out among the popular classes in some cities in the provinces, carried out by the so-called piqueteros. Several businesses in impoverished areas in the interior of the country and in Greater Buenos Aires suffered looting by unemployed and destitute sectors of the population. The government attributed these riots to a destabilizing plan orchestrated by some leaders of the Justicialista Party.
After six days of looting, seven people were killed by the security forces and the merchants themselves. On the night of December 19, President De la Rúa addressed the population on television to announce that he had declared a state of siege. Immediately after De la Rúa's announcement ended, millions of people throughout the country began to bang pots and pans from their homes and many took to the streets, starting what became known as "el cacerolazo." A large group gathered in front of the Casa Rosada demanding the resignation of President De la Rúa and beginning to chant a slogan that would characterize the movement: "Let them all go!" At 3 in the morning on December 20, Minister Cavallo resigned.
During December 20, the town continued with new clashes between the police and the demonstrators gathered in the Plaza de Mayo, in front of the Government House, and in other parts of the country. This time the security forces murdered 32 demonstrators, causing more than 400 injuries, including the so-called Plaza de Mayo Massacre. At four in the afternoon, visibly weakened, the president gave a speech on television calling for "national unity" and offering the Justicialista Party to co-govern the country. At 7:45 p.m. President De la Rúa signed his resignation and minutes later he left the Casa Rosada by helicopter while a pitched battle was taking place in the surroundings.
Political instability (2001-2003)
Five presidents in eleven days
After De la Rúa resigned, the provisional president of the Senate, the Peronist Ramón Puerta, assumed the presidency of the Nation on an interim basis. On December 23, the Legislative Assembly meets, which appoints Adolfo Rodríguez Saá as president of the Nation for ninety days, also a Peronist and until then governor of the province of San Luis, with the mandate to call elections and hold them on March 3, 2002. In his speech before the National Congress, the new president announced the "default" or cessation of payment of the foreign debt.
On December 28, there were new demonstrations under the banner of "que se vayan todos", including the entrance to the National Congress and the burning of some furniture, which led to the resignation of the presidential cabinet. The lack of calling for elections that Congress had ordered reduced political support for Rodríguez Saá, who, after a frustrated meeting of Peronist governors in Chapadmalal on December 29, decided to resign, which he did verbally on television on December 30 the night from the province of San Luis, clarifying that he was leaving office from that very moment. Minutes later Ramón Puerta also resigned by fax addressed to the president of the Chamber of Deputies, to leave the country immediately afterwards.
Institutionally, this series of resignations left the country without authority, which is why a group of officials came to maintain that the president of the Supreme Court, Julio Nazareno, should take office, while Rodríguez Saá was criminally denounced for abandoning the Finally, the General Notary Public of the Government intervened, convincing Rodríguez Saá to request leave until the interim president took office and agreeing with the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Eduardo Camaño, to assume as interim president, which he finally did. on December 31 at six in the afternoon until the Legislative Assembly meets.
Provisional presidency of Eduardo Duhalde
The Legislative Assembly met the following day, January 1, 2002, first accepting the resignation of Rodríguez Saá and then appointing Justicialist senator Eduardo Duhalde as President of the Nation to fulfill De la Rúa's mandate. Duhalde was sworn in before Congress that same night, at 11:30 p.m.
A few days after coming to power, the new president ordered his first measures to deal with the economic crisis: abandonment of the fixed exchange rate, devaluation of the peso, pesification of the economy (including bank deposits) and the distribution of social plans to mitigate the effects of an economy in recession that had increased poverty and indigence to rates never seen before in Argentina.
In April 2002, the Minister of Economy, Jorge Remes Lenicov, resigned in the face of protests caused by the so-called "Bonex Plan", which he was preparing together with Duhalde to exchange for public debt bonds immobilized term bank deposits. The other members of the cabinet also made their positions available to the president, who accepted, among other things, the resignation of the head of government, Jorge Capitanich, and appointed Roberto Lavagna as head of the Economy; who announced that there would be no return to a fixed exchange rate (following the IMF's recommendations) and that banking restrictions would persist.
Most of the population fell below the poverty line: if in October 2001 almost 40% were poor, a year later that number had climbed to 54%, equivalent to 20 million people, of whom the half were destitute (they did not receive enough to eat). The situation was much more serious for boys and girls, since among them poverty reached 70%. Territorially, there were several regions and cities with poverty levels above 70%, such as the province of Formosa, the cities of Concordia and Posadas and the fourth cordon of Greater Buenos Aires (Florencio Varela, Moreno, Merlo, Tigre and La Matanza). The City of Buenos Aires was the best with 80% above the poverty line. The destruction of the social fabric, general impoverishment, the general rejection of the population towards all types of leadership and the virtual disappearance of the State It reached such a point that civil war and national disintegration were possibilities that were contemplated both inside and outside Argentina.
On May 25, Father Jorge Bergoglio, then head of the Catholic Church in Argentina, made a dramatic appeal to the population warning that in Argentina "the danger of national dissolution is at our doors".
The Government achieved some of its main objectives in June: the Senate repealed the so-called Economic Subversion Law, a fiscal pact was agreed with the provincial governments to reduce their deficit by 60%, and a new Bonus Plan. But the axis of the government program, meeting the demands of the IMF to recover its economic aid, generated all kinds of opposition attitudes and exacerbated social conflict. Despite the fact that the crisis continued, the Government tried to gradually normalize the financial system; In November 2002, almost a year after its implementation, the restrictions on withdrawing cash from checking accounts ended (thus ending the so-called "corralito"), and in March 2003 they lifted the limitations to withdraw funds from time deposits (the so-called "corralón").
On June 26, 2002, the Avellaneda massacre took place in which the national government ordered the repression of a demonstration by piquetero groups. Given this fact, Duhalde anticipated the call for presidential elections by six months and announced that he was not going to run again.
Kirchnerism (2003-2015)
Presidency of Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007)
On April 27, 2003, the first round of elections was held to elect the president. Five candidates gathered the majority of the votes: Carlos Menem (24%), Néstor Kirchner (22%), Ricardo López Murphy (16%), Adolfo Rodríguez Saá (14%) and Elisa Carrió (14%).
Carlos Menem, the candidate who triumphed by relative majority in the first round, did not appear in the second round when he found out the results of the polls that indicated a percentage of votes against him of the order of 70% and therefore President Néstor Kirchner was elected, who took office on May 25, 2003 until December 10, 2007.
Kirchner took office confirming Duhalde's Economy Minister, Roberto Lavagna, and his economic policy followed the same guidelines as his predecessor's, maintaining the devaluation of the currency through a strong participation of the Central Bank in the purchase of foreign currency, promoting through exports, economic growth with GDP rates close to 10%. On the other hand, he managed to get the country out of default, exchanging debt for new bonds indexed by inflation and the rate of economic growth. Poverty and unemployment rates decreased notoriously.
During the Kirchner government, Argentina and the International Monetary Fund maintained a distant relationship. One of the main measures of his management was to cancel in advance the entire debt with this international organization for an amount of 9.81 billion dollars, with the declared objective of ending the subjection of economic policy to the indications of the IMF.. During 2005, the debt swap was carried out, which began the renegotiations for the bonds that had been in default since 2001.
Kirchner carried out an active policy to promote human rights, incorporating recognized members of human rights organizations into his government. In addition, he promoted the prosecution of those responsible for crimes against humanity that occurred during the 1970s, carried out by Triple A and by the Government of the National Reorganization Process. To achieve this, the Laws of Due Obedience and Full Stop were annulled, which kept such trials on hold since the government of Raúl Alfonsín.
Since June 19, 2003, by presidential decree, the Supreme Court was renewed, all candidates to integrate it must pass a stage of public exposure that the Executive Power has to present in the main media throughout the country. The CV of the nominee (or nominees) must be published and promoted on the website of the Ministry of Justice and can be discussed by NGOs, law associations, universities, human rights organizations, and any citizen who so desires. After a period of three months, the president, weighing the support and rejection of the candidacy, is empowered to present the nomination to the Senate, which must decide whether or not to approve the person proposed by the president as part of the Court, requiring a two-thirds majority for such approval.
The renovation of the Supreme Court of Justice during the first years of the Kirchner government, with the appointment of Eugenio Raúl Zaffaroni in 2003, and of Elena Highton de Nolasco and Carmen María Argibay in 2004, was seen and is usually recognized by opposition as a positive step, providing more independence to the judiciary and balancing the Court both ideologically and by gender.
Sectors on the right or liberals have criticized these policies as contrary to national reconciliation. On the other hand, from the left, gestures contrary to human rights are criticized, such as the repression of some demonstrations in Patagonia and the sending of Argentine troops to Haiti within the framework of the United Nations MINUSTAH.
At the international level, Kirchner was part of a group of leaders from various Latin American countries, along with Lula da Silva (Brazil), Tabaré Vázquez (Uruguay), Evo Morales (Bolivia), Michelle Bachelet (Chile), Rafael Correa (Ecuador) and Hugo Chávez (Venezuela), with anti-liberal tendencies. One of the most outstanding moments in international politics was the IV Summit of the Americas in 2005, held in Mar del Plata, in which the Kirchner government, together with other Latin American governments, carried out a "no to the FTAA" policy., paralyzing the implementation of the Free Trade Area of the Americas that the United States had designed and had approved by all the American countries in 1994, establishing a new continental policy focused on the creation of decent employment. In a coincidental sense, Argentina supported the decision to form the Union of South American Nations (Unasur), whose constitution was finalized in 2008.
Elections 2005
In the 2005 elections —governors and national legislators— there was a rupture between Kirchnerism and Duhaldismo, which led to the exclusion of the latter from the Front for Victory and the electoral confrontation between both sectors. The confrontation was especially prominent regarding the position of national senator for the province of Buenos Aires. On that occasion, the FPV took Cristina Fernández de Kirchner as its candidate, while Duhaldismo with the Justicialista Party presented Chiche Duhalde, the first being the winner.
After the legislative elections of October 2005, Kirchner has obtained a majority at the national level and has succeeded in displacing Duhalde from control of the political apparatus of the Buenos Aires suburbs. This has been reflected in important changes in the cabinet — fundamentally the replacement of Roberto Lavagna by Felisa Miceli in the Ministry of Economy.
Despite the control of Congress, Kirchner continued preferring, on several occasions, to make use of decrees of necessity and urgency instead of following the ordinary procedures provided for the enactment of laws. Since he took office and until May 2006, 201 decrees of necessity and urgency were sanctioned; about 67 decrees per year on average, often compared to Carlos Menem's 55 per year.
In 2004, the inhabitants of the city of Gualeguaychú began a broad movement in opposition to the installation of two pulp mills on the Uruguayan bank of the Uruguay River, which led to a diplomatic conflict between the two countries. The conflict led to an unsuccessful mediation by Juan Carlos I of Spain, an Argentine lawsuit before the International Tribunal in The Hague, and the relocation of one of the two plants.
During the last two years of his term, increasing restrictions on meat exports and price controls were applied in order to control inflation and rising food prices. Since 2005, the media highlighted the existence of what they claimed was "repressed inflation" due to withholdings on exports and tariff subsidies. Official inflation was 6% in 2004, 12.3% in 2005 and 10% in 2006. The official data began to be questioned by consultants who argued that real inflation in the last year of Néstor Kirchner's term had reached 22 to 26%, staying at that figure in the following decade.
In April 2007 there was a series of criminal maneuvers carried out by the multinational company Skanska, of Swedish origin; some opposition politicians maintained that some government officials had committed wrongdoing related to the case, something the interior minister denied. In the middle of that same year, the Minister of Economy, Felisa Miceli, was involved in a scandal, due to the casual discovery of a bag with a large amount of money in the bathroom of her office, which led to her resignation and an investigation was opened. in the course of which she was prosecuted for concealment and destruction of a public instrument.
Argentine Antarctica
In July 2003, Argentina and Chile agreed to reopen the Abrazo de Maipú Refuge, initiating a cooperation policy with the intention of strengthening the presence of both countries in Antarctica and limiting the expansionist actions of the United Kingdom in the area. By then Argentina had six permanent bases, seven summer bases and several Antarctic refuges.
Presidency of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007-2015)
The Front for Victory won again in the 2007 presidential elections, reaching 45% and doubling the votes obtained in 2003. The winning formula was made up of the Peronist Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and the radical Julio Cobos, who defeated to the Civic Coalition that carried the formula integrated by Elisa Carrió and the socialist Rubén Giustiniani, which obtained 23%.
On December 10, 2007, Cristina Fernández assumed the presidency, who in the first days of her term continued the general guidelines of her husband's government. In this way, a woman was elected president of the Nation for the first time in Argentine history.
At the beginning of Cristina Fernández's administration, a 20% increase in the minimum fares for buses, trains, and subways was established, which came into force in January 2008. Said fares had been frozen since the beginning of the year 2001, and since then the State compensated with subsidies the operating costs and salaries that the companies could not pay. Initially, it was anticipated that the rate increase would lower the subsidies—which at the end of 2007 were equivalent to $2.7 billion.
On March 12, 2008, the main agricultural employers' associations declared a national strike with road blockades in different parts of the country, demanding the repeal of a new regime of mobile taxes on exports established by Resolution 125/08 sanctioned by Economy Minister Martín Lousteau. The strike lasted until July 18, after the radical vice president Julio Cobos defined the vote against the position of the rest of the Government. At that time, a conflict began between the Government and the Clarín multimedia group due to accusations on both sides regarding freedom of expression, the role of press monopolies in reporting government acts and ideas, and the alleged misrepresentation of images accused of discriminatory by the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires. In 2016, one of the main leaders of the Clarín group, journalist Julio Blank, declared that during the presidency of Cristina Kirchner, the group carried out "war journalism".
At the end of the agricultural strike, the Government had to face the collapse of the world economy caused by the 2008 economic crisis, adopting an anti-cyclical economic policy to promote the internal market, boosting the automotive industry (which broke the production record in 2011 totaling 828,771 manufactured units) and giving loans to workers and companies.
On October 21, 2008, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner submitted to Congress a project prepared by Amado Boudou, then head of ANSES, Sergio Massa, the chief of staff, and Carlos Zanini, Legal and Technical Secretary, to put an end to the AFJP system (private pension funds), one of the main financial reforms of the Menem era, and to organize a new state distribution system for retirement and pensions.
Observers agree that it is one of the most important measures of the twelve years of Kirchner governments.
In 2009, it enacted a new media law that replaced the Broadcasting Law in force since 1980. This law was approved with the support of different political forces, both from the ruling party and from part of the opposition, and generated so much support as rejections, at the same time that it derived in several judicial rulings, related to the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of the same, which prevent its full application.
On October 29, 2009, President Cristina Fernández signed decree 1602/09 that provided for the Universal Child Allowance, a fixed income for all children under eighteen who did not receive family income from salary sources. Initially it was 180 pesos, a sum that has been increased periodically, reaching 270 pesos by October 2011. A formula for updating pensions and social security benefits was approved, which prompted a sharp increase in them, improving 24.6% in real terms between 2008 and 2017. In a process initiated by Néstor Kirchner from 2003 to 2009, the middle class in Argentina doubled, from 9.3 million to 18.6 million in that last year. This made Argentina the country with the highest growth of this segment of the population in all of Latin America.
The Bicentennial
During 2010, the Bicentennial of the May Revolution was celebrated with events in various parts of the country. In the city of Buenos Aires, the national government organized the main commemorative event of the year, which took place mainly in a section of the most important artery of the city, Avenida 9 de Julio, in which the provinces and countries were represented. guests.
On October 27 of that year, former President Néstor Kirchner died of a cardiorespiratory arrest, during the term of his wife.
On July 15, 2010, the Argentine Republic approved the so-called "equal marriage law," becoming the first country in Latin America and the tenth in the world to recognize the right to marry regardless of the sex of your partner.
Reelection 2011
In the presidential elections of October 23, 2011, Cristina Fernández was re-elected to the position of President of the Nation, in the first round, with 54.11% of the vote, almost ten points more than in 2007 and plus thirty percentage points more than those obtained by Néstor Kirchner in 2003. Second was the candidate of the Broad Progressive Front, the socialist Hermes Binner, who obtained 16.81%. Amado Boudou, until then Minister of Economy, was elected vice president and was the architect of the renationalization of the retirement system.
Under his second term, the majority shareholding of the previously privatized Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF), the largest company in the country, was recovered, the bill obtaining the highest approval in Congress since 2003.
At the end of 2011, the union leader Hugo Moyano, an important ally and general secretary of the CGT, distanced himself from the Government, joining the opposition sectors.
During this period, large opposition street demonstrations called by electronic social networks also took place, such as the so-called 8N. According to data from the World Bank, Latin America and within it Argentina have transformed their social structure in the first decade of the 21st century, producing a reduction in poverty and an increase in the middle classes. For Argentina, the World Bank established that between 2003 and 2009, the middle class doubled from 9.3 million to 18.6 million (9.3 million being equivalent to 25% of the population).
On April 16, 2012, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner presented the bill "Of the Hydrocarbon Sovereignty of the Argentine Republic" to expropriate 51% of YPF's share capital, which ended up becoming law on May 3 of 2012.
On May 9, 2012, the Gender Identity Law was sanctioned, guaranteeing the change of the gender attributed by the State to people without any other condition than their will and the right to free medical treatment that was necessary for it.
Sovereignty of the Malvinas Islands
To fulfill the constitutional mandate to fully recover and exercise Argentine sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands (first transitory clause of the National Constitution), Kirchnerism resorted to a policy of de-escalation of military tension (between 2001 and 2016 no no military operations in which torpedoes or missiles were fired), to give priority to strengthening regional and symbolic political pressures.
Given the escalation of tension due to oil exploration by Great Britain, the president responded with a ban on using Argentine ports to supply goods to the Malvinas Islands, a position supported by Unasur as a whole. This claim was heard by Hillary Clinton, who was personally willing to mediate, a situation that caused confusion in the British. Argentina obtained the support of the Latin American and Caribbean community around the position of recovering the islands through peaceful means, while the United Kingdom, through the statements of its British Prime Minister David Cameron, indicated that the sovereignty of the Malvinas is decided the islanders themselves for their right to self-determination. The Argentine government denounced the militarization of the South Atlantic, a fact that Great Britain denied, maintaining that it carried out routine exercises. In 2013, the president created a new secretariat dedicated to issues related to the Malvinas Islands.
Election of Pope Francis
Following the resignation of Benedict XVI on February 28, 2013, the conclave appointed as his successor the Archbishop of the City of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, hereinafter Pope Francis. He became the first non-European pope since the 8th century century, the first Jesuit pope and the first from America. After that, a series of meetings took place between the pontiff and the Argentine president.
Term Term
When Fernández left government in December 2015, the incoming government of Mauricio Macri published a brochure in English entitled Argentina: land of opportunities, describing the state of the country, highlighting the “great development of human capital", with 98% literacy and 110 thousand university education graduates per year, its position as one of the first in terms of human development indices, education in Latin America and that it has the "highest Gini coefficient low of the region»; describes the "robust economy" that the country has, the third largest in the region after Brazil and Mexico, the highest GDP per capita in the region after Chile, highlights in turn that it has less than 6% unemployment and with less than 75% of employment in the service sector; they note that the country has "a solid institutional scheme"; emphasizes that the country has "a well-developed infrastructure", which includes "43 ports, 54 airports and more than 35 thousand kilometers of roads and train tracks"; Finally, its low external debt-GDP ratio stands out, of only 13%.
During his two governments, the GDP per person increased 54%, going from 8,239 dollars in 2007 to 12,751 dollars in 2014; the reduction in social inequality due to the impact of State fiscal policies was 14.8%, being the second Latin American country behind Brazil; it reached the highest social public spending in Latin America with 1,893 dollars per person in 2011-2012; it was placed, after Uruguay, among the two countries with a tax system with the greatest redistributive effect of Latin America with 3% and 4% respectively; the minimum wage was established at 511.49 dollars in January 2015, over an average of 150 dollars in the region;[citation required] Unemployment fell from 8.48% in 2007 to 7.04% in 2015; and registered employment increased by 11.5% between 2010 and 2015.
Regarding macroeconomic indicators, the Central Bank's reserves went from 45,000 million in 2007, to the historical record of 52,000 million in 2010, reducing to 24,000 million in 2015, impacted by the lawsuits initiated in 2011 for the vulture funds before the American judge Thomas Griesa and the economic crisis that began in 2012. Public debt went from 173 to 233 billion dollars, equivalent to 45% of GDP. In a comparison of 47 economies around the world, between Between 2007 and 2015, the country's external debt dropped 11 percentage points with respect to GDP and went to 33% of the same, becoming the country with the lowest external debt in relation to its GDP among those compared, -after having reached 162% in 2002-;. According to the official body in charge of measuring inflation, INDEC, it was 240.9% accumulated in the eight years, while for Congressional and private estimates it was 470-500%. The price of US dollar measured in pesos it went from 3.15 to 9.47 in the official market and to 16 in the illegal market.
Presidency of Mauricio Macri (2015-2019)
In the 2015 presidential elections, Mauricio Macri, from the Cambiemos front, an alliance between radicalism and Pro, was elected president of the Nation, after coming second in the first round (34%) and winning the second round (51 %), defeating the candidate of the Front for Victory Daniel Scioli.
At noon on December 10, after Federico Pinedo's 12-hour internship as a result of a precautionary measure, Macri was sworn in before the Legislative Assembly and assumed the Executive Power of the Nation. Macri owns one of the main economic groups in Argentina, the Macri Group. He is the first president elected since 1983 who does not belong to the radical and justicialist parties and also the first president to take office while criminally prosecuted, in a case for espionage of citizens, in which several former officials of his Government have already been brought to trial., among them Jorge Alberto "Fino" Palacios, also prosecuted as an accessory after the terrorist attack against the AMIA. His main campaign promises were "Zero poverty", elimination of regulations for the purchase of dollars, reduction of inflation of 25 % to one digit, elimination of income tax for workers, elimination of most taxes on rural and mining exports (withholdings), and a "rain of dollars" for investments.
First steps
In his first two months as head of the National Executive Branch, Mauricio Macri decided not to convene the National Congress and unilaterally adopt measures that required the approval of the Senate. Among them, he appointed two members of the Supreme Court in commission, and dissolved the bodies established by law to regulate the audiovisual media (AFSCA) and telecommunications (AFTIC).
Other important measures taken in the first days of the government were the repeal of the rules on the purchase of foreign currency, which produced a 40% devaluation of the peso, the elimination of export taxes (withholdings),[citation required] the declaration of a state of statistical emergency suspending the production of statistics for an indefinite period of time, the declaration of a state of public security emergency for one year (decree 228/ 2016), the taking of an external debt of 5,000 million dollars in order to increase reserves, the increase in the percentage of federal tax co-participation of almost 100% in favor of the City of Buenos Aires, and a increase in electricity rates of 500%.
In the first two months there were also various protests and claims. Various organizations and jurists questioned as unconstitutional the appointment by decree of two Supreme Court judges, the dissolution of AFSCA and AFTIC, and mobilized in defense of the media law. The State Workers Association (ATE) questioned the great number of layoffs in the State, calling for the first strike against the Macri government. Several unionists criticized the increase in inflation, which only in December reached 6.5% according to the official measurement of the province of San Luis recommended by the national government. Governors and mayors of the interior questioned the presidential decision to improve the income of the City of Buenos Aires, arguing the violation of federalism in favor of the district with the best standard of living. Human rights organizations questioned the Secretary's statement of Culture of Buenos Aires considering that the traditional number of 30,000 disappeared during the dictatorship was a lie. There were also mobilizations against censorship to the detriment of opposition journalists, and to demand the freedom of the cooperative leader Milagro Sala and against the criminalization of social protest.
Bicentennial of Independence
July 9, 2016 marked the 200th anniversary of Argentina's independence from the Crown of Spain in San Miguel de Tucumán. The festivities were presided over by the President of the Nation, Mauricio Macri, accompanied by the Governor of Tucumán, Juan Luis Manzur, and the Mayor Germán Alfaro, as well as representatives of the other provinces and the King Emeritus of Spain Juan Carlos I.
Medium-term balance sheet
In October 2017, the midterm legislative elections were held, in which the Government obtained the support of approximately 42% of voters, increasing its parliamentary benches and its presence in the provinces.
Shortly after the elections, the government pushed through Congress a triple pension (social security), tax and labor reform that generated strong demonstrations and "cacerolazos" against the Government, which notably reduced the positive image of President Macri.
At the end of the first two years of the government, the situation of the main campaign promises was as follows:
- Poverty: 29 per cent in December 2015, rose to 34.5 per cent in the first quarter of 2016 and fell to 31.4 per cent in December 2017.
- Inflation: it was 25% in 2015, it rose to 40% in 2016, and returned to 24.8% in 2017.
- Taxes (retentions) to exports: all but soy were eliminated, which were reduced to half.
- Tax on the profits of the workers: it was not eliminated; there were modifications that increased the amount of workers to pay for it. While in December 2015 they paid the tax 1.18 million workers, in February 2017 they paid almost double, 2.15 million.
- Eliminating regulations for the purchase of dollars: it allowed a large increase in the outflow of dollars by remission of profits, tourism, foreign exchange, interest of debt, etc., which produced a strong deficit of current account, which amounted to $8,683 million in 2017, duplicating the one-year record.
- "Investment rain": it didn't happen. In 2017 foreign direct investment (FDI) reached US$ 2497 million, while the purchase of short-term bonds, defined as "financial bike", such as LEBAC, reached US$ 15 783 million in 2017, with a profitability of 11.5 percent in dollars.
- The Government compensated for inadequacy of investments, the elimination of taxes, the increase of rates and the demand for dollars for shipment abroad with an increase in external debt, which rose by 35% in the first two years of the Macri government.
First economic and social crisis
Starting in April 2018, a currency run began that produced a devaluation of the peso, reducing its value in dollars to less than half (the price of the dollar went from $17 in August 2017 to $40 in August of 2018). The crisis generated a feeling of mistrust and discontent among various sectors of society towards the Government. Several Argentine companies listed on Wall Street do so in negative states.
The exchange crisis produced a generalized economic crisis with recession, a severe drop in real wages and consumption, and an increase in poverty; according to the UCA, in August 2018 it was greater than 34% of the total population. In addition, it also produced inflation and the risk of foreign debt default, which led the government to resort to the International Monetary Fund, something that the Minister of Economy, Nicolás Dujovne, had promised not to do.
Second economic and social crisis and selective default
In the second half of 2019, another abrupt 25% devaluation of the peso triggered a new economic and social crisis. The abrupt rise in the value of the dollar triggered a new inflationary jump, with double-digit price increases in a single day, mainly in food, threatening to cause a generalized food crisis. The crisis caused the resignation of Finance Minister Nicolás Dujovne, who was replaced by Hernán Lacunza. Simultaneously, it was announced that almost all of the external debt in dollars taken on by President Macri had been used to flee capital and pay interest: between December 2015 and March 2019, the country borrowed 107,525 million dollars, of of which 106,779 million left again in the same period. By August 2019, public debt as a percentage of GDP exceeded 100%, doubling the size it had in December 2015, with the aggravating circumstance that 80% of the It was contracted in dollars, making Argentina the country that increased its external debt the most in 2019.
The economic crisis further deteriorated social indicators (unemployment, poverty, informality). Between April 2016 and July 2019, the purchasing power of the minimum wage fell by 36%: by August 2019, a typical family (two parents with two children) needed two and a half minimum wages (2.5) to escape poverty, while three years earlier he needed a little less than two minimum wages (1.8).
On August 28, 2019, the Government unilaterally decided to postpone the payment of four short-term bills from the National Treasury (Lecap, Lecer, Letes and Lelinks), as well as to propose a voluntary postponement of the payment term to title creditors of debt, both under Argentine and foreign legislation. selective default".
Presidency of Alberto Fernández (since 2019)
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In the 2019 presidential elections, Alberto Fernández of the Frente de Todos, an alliance between Kirchnerists and non-Kirchnerist Peronists, was elected president of the Nation, winning in the first round (48.24%), beating Mauricio Macri by eight percentage points, who was seeking re-election as a candidate for Together for Change, a coalition that preserved the PRO-radical alliance, expanded with sectors of Peronism.
His main campaign promises were to implement a Comprehensive Plan against Hunger, renegotiate the foreign debt, carry out a judicial reform that would end the political use of justice and the Federal Intelligence Agency ("lawfare& #34;), promote women's rights, particularly the voluntary interruption of pregnancy (IVE), call on businessmen, unions and other social sectors to reach a set of Basic Agreements to get out of the Emergency, capable of to "put the country back on its feet". One of his first measures was to recreate the ministries of Health, Labor and Science and Technology, which had been eliminated by Macri.
Pandemic
Almost simultaneously with the inauguration of Alberto Fernández, the COVID-19 pandemic was declared, which arrived in Argentine territory on March 3, 2020.
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