Jose Figueroa Alcorta
José Figueroa Alcorta (Córdoba, November 20, 1860 - Buenos Aires, December 27, 1931) was an Argentine lawyer and politician, the only person to exercise ownership of the three powers of the State in Argentina: he was Vice President of the Nation from October 12, 1904 to March 12, 1906, President of the Nation from that date (on the death of the then President-elect Manuel Quintana) until October 12, 1910 and President of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Argentine Nation from October 19, 1929 until his death, on December 27, 1931.
Childhood and youth
José María Cornelio del Corazón de Jesús Figueroa Alcorta was born on November 20, 1860 in the City of Córdoba, the son of José Cornelio de Figueroa Valverde and Teodosia Alcorta Isnardi. He studied at the Colegio de Monserrat, and law at the University of Cordoba.
He participated as a builder for the Municipality of Córdoba, and for the Ferrocarril Central Norte Argentino. He was also a journalist and wrote for the newspapers & # 34; El Interior & # 34; and & # 34; La Época & # 34; .
He married Josefa Julia Bouquet Roldán (1863-1941), a native of Bell Ville, on April 16, 1888.
Like many of the political leaders of the time, he was part of secret societies. When the Piedad y Unión Lodge No. He was later a member of the Bernardino Rivadavia Lodge No. 174 of Buenos Aires.
From Juarista to the Senate of the Nation
A year after graduating from the Faculty of Law, he was a senator in the Córdoba Legislature. They were times of "juarismo" and the young lawyer frequented "El Panal", the main political club in the Mediterranean city led by Marcos N. Juárez, brother of President Miguel Juárez Celman, Chief of Police and promoter of the presidential candidacy of Ramón J. Cárcano and his own for the governorship of Córdoba. Figueroa Alcorta made pro-government merits in "El Interior", a Juarismo organ, and in March 1888 he contributed as a legislator and journalist to promoting a political trial for embezzlement of public funds against the governor Ambrosio Olmos, who was not enthusiastic about the candidacy of Cárcano, the young Director of Posts and Telegraphs of the Nation.
Local autonomy supported his arrival in the governorship of Juárez which, on May 18, 1889, appointed him Minister Secretary of Government, Justice and Worship. The fall of President Miguel Juárez Celman in August 1890 swept away the Córdoba executive and left Figueroa Alcorta out of the cabinet. Ubiquitous and endowed with good political connections, the new governor Eleazar Garzón made him first provincial deputy, and Minister Secretary of Finance later with the consent of Julio Argentino Roca.
On February 7, 1892, by the hand of former President Roca, he was elected national deputy for Córdoba. The work of the Chamber was not remarkable, but only the gallery where recently graduated lawyers tested their oratorical skills; but it was Figueroa Alcorta's springboard towards his next political objective: the governorship of his Province.
Beyond the internal disputes in the National Autonomist Party and the fierce opposition of the civic members, the ruling party retained the provincial Executive at the hands of the pair made up of Figueroa Alcorta and José A. Ortiz y Herrera, then director of the recently created Children's Hospital.
He endowed his government with great dynamism, favored by the end of the economic crisis of 1890. He founded several agricultural colonies that are currently towns of some importance, such as Santa Eufemia and General Deheza. He sanctioned the Common Education Law, which established its compulsory nature and began manual labor in schools. He installed the first five branches in his province of the Banco de la Nación Argentina. In 1898 he supported Roca's presidential candidacy.
After his term as executive of the province ended, the Legislative Assembly appointed him national senator —a natural refuge for ex-governors— for nine years.
Vice President of the Republic: radical revolution and Quintana's disease
As the end of the second constitutional term of Julio A. Roca approached, the Convention of Notables of 1903 nominated Deputy Manuel Quintana for the presidency of the Nation, without ruling on the Vice-presidency, because Roca wanted Marco Aurelio Avellaneda to occupy that place if he failed to impose it in the first term of the formula. The National Autonomist Party had to face the primary election without knowing who would be the vice president. Avellaneda's spiteful refusal led to the emergence of Figueroa Alcorta, chosen by Roca in a private meeting in which Quintana, Marcelino Ugarte and Benito Villanueva participated. Therefore, the former governor of Córdoba took office as vice president, accompanying President Manuel Quintana, on October 12, 1904.
When the radical revolution of 1905 occurred, the vice president was on vacation in Córdoba, and was taken hostage by the revolutionaries and forced by them to open a telegraphic communication with president Quintana; he was later removed from the telegraph and released, while the rebels asked the president for immunity for the military commanders involved, to which the president refused.
Believing that the message had been written by Figueroa Alcorta, the president resented his deputy, and since then both members of the presidential ticket have distanced themselves. Figueroa Alcorta remained silent in the face of the accusations made by those close to Quintana, which allowed them to attribute weakness of character to him and start a campaign to remove him from office through impeachment.
The governor of the province of Buenos Aires, Marcelino Ugarte, fearing that, given the poor health of the then president, the executive would be left in charge of a "roquista," supported the attacks against the vice president and, from the newspaper La Nación, the engineer Emilio Miter began a series of attacks on Figueroa Alcorta, which was only silenced by the state of siege. From Europe, Carlos Pellegrini assumed his defense. Finally, health problems forced Manuel Quintana to take leave from office in January 1906 until his death in March of that year.
Presidency
Given the progressive deterioration of President Quintana's health, Figueroa Alcorta assumed the presidency permanently on January 25, 1906; the president's death—on March 12 of the same year—forced him to be sworn in as incumbent president.
The new president initially leaned on the PAN rock group, definitively moving away from the Mitristas. When he took office, Roca was practically withdrawn from political action, so the president believed he could act more freely. The exact opposite happened: the Roquista leaders sought to reorganize the party, and the only thing they agreed on was to force the president to submit to that reorganization; Since he wanted to maintain his independence, they systematically obstructed all his actions in Congress.
Economy
In October 1907, a team drilling for water discovered oil in Comodoro Rivadavia, an isolated port in the Chubut National Territory, where ranchers and Boer settlers from South Africa had settled. It was not the first time that oil had been exploited in Argentina, since between 1887 and 1897 some wells had been exploited in the province of Mendoza by private individuals, but the discovery of Comodoro Rivadavia was much more relevant: not only because it was of a deposit of the first magnitude, but for having been discovered by a public division in fiscal lands. President Figueroa Alcorta asked Congress for the fiscal reserve of a large territory around the deposit, so that the State could exploit it exclusively. However, Congress ended up approving –in 1909– the reservation of just over 10% of the requested area. Senator Joaquín V. González went so far as to affirm that the state reservation was unconstitutional, making clear an underhanded confrontation between liberal and statist sectors in the PAN.
The economy continued to revolve around the export of meat and grains. There were some technological advances, such as the beginning of the replacement of frozen sheep meat with chilled beef, which would lead to the gradual replacement of sheep with beef. The refrigerated refrigerators would also be the gateway for US capital in Argentina, initiating a replacement of British capital that would take half a century. For its part, the export of grains continued to grow, coming to occupy the first place among exports at the end of the period.
The President of the Superior Court of Accounts of the Nation was, during his government, the ex-religious Julián Cobas Figueroa, a prominent economist born in Santiago de Compostela, who supported him throughout his presidential term.
Transport and communications
Between 1904 and 1910 the railways increased their extension by almost 50%, reaching 27,000 kilometers and extending their branches throughout the Pampas region. Since 1907 they were regulated by Law 5,315, which standardized the legal regimes of the railway companies; among other provisions, it extended the tax benefits of the companies and forced the companies to contribute to a fund for the construction of roads to the stations; in return, it prohibited the establishment of routes parallel to the railways.
In 1907 President José Figueroa Alcorta passed by train through the city of Cura Malal and Coronel Suárez, this information can be found in the history books of the city of Coronel Suárez in the Sarmiento Popular Library.
On April 5, 1910, the Trasandino Railroad was inaugurated, connecting Mendoza with Los Andes.
During his presidency, one of the main milestones in the development of Argentine telegraphy took place: on June 3, 1910, the Cable Argentino a Europa Vía Ascension was inaugurated with a greeting from Argentine President José Figueroa Alcorta to King George V of Great Britain:
"José Figueroa Alcorta, President of the Argentine Republic, greets with joy on this day S. M. King George V of the Great Britain and Ireland and his dominions, for the double reason of being the birthplace of S. M. vowing for his personal happiness, for that of his family, and for a long and prosperous trade reigned; and at the same time in celebration of the direct cable Argentina remains service".
Foreign Relations
The international situation remained in a situation of permanent conflict with Brazil for naval and diplomatic supremacy in the region. The foreign ministers of Argentina – Estanislao Zeballos – and Brazil – the Baron de Río Branco (who considered Alcorta a "insane", "tresloucado Alcorta", in Portuguese) – developed an escalation known as "battleship diplomacy" and accused each other of expansionist intentions.
As a consequence of the growth of nationalist positions, a conflict arose with Uruguay over the delimitation of the limits of the Río de la Plata, which was resolved with a protocol in 1909.
In July 1909, President Figueroa Alcorta ruled in an arbitral award between Peru and Bolivia, in the rubber region of the Acre River; the resolution that was rejected by Bolivia, which came to break diplomatic relations with Argentina. The following year, in the midst of the celebrations for the Centennial of the May Revolution, they were resumed.
Liquidation of rock climbing
Figueroa Alcorta's confrontation with Congress, dominated by the PAN, grew steadily over time. In January 1908, Congress refused to deal with the National Budget for the year that had already begun, despite having called extraordinary sessions for that sole purpose. Figueroa Alcorta then decided to make a coup d'état: on January 25, he withdrew the project, closed the extraordinary sessions, declared the 1907 budget valid and closed Congress, occupying it with police forces. It was an unprecedented decision, which caused enormous printing at home; the pro-government supporters reacted by accusing the president, through the mouth of Estanislao Zeballos, of having carried out a "coup d'état".
Immediately, the president broke with the remnants of the factions of Roca's followers and, to reinforce his position, the government of La Rioja intervened and had a governor of his confidence elected there; A good part of the deputies chose to join Figueroa Alcorta's project. The president quickly put together the lists of his candidates for deputies and won the March elections, definitively leaving the rockists in the minority. The caudillo system set up by Roca and his friends was closed, but clearly many of Figueroa Alcorta's followers wanted to set up a new one, in which they would be the beneficiaries.
He sought a rapprochement with the radicals, pardoned those detained by the 1905 revolution, and secretly met with Hipólito Yrigoyen. His idea was to avoid new revolutions and incite radicalism to lift electoral abstention, but Yrigoyen conditioned this second measure on the legal sanction of a political reform. Figueroa Alcorta sent successive electoral reform projects to Congress, but these were ignored; radicalism continued in abstention.
In the following months, all the opposition groups—Republicans, autonomists, Catholics, and even some radicals—approached the government, trying to force it to carry out a profound political reform. The most sincerely enthusiastic in this regard, and the most prestigious of them, was Roque Sáenz Peña; it soon became clear that he would be the official candidate for the presidency. Throughout 1909 and early 1910, Sáenz Peña put together a new conglomerate of parties, the Unión Nacional , with which he would obtain victory in the 1910 elections.
The "Social Question"
In the early 20th century, union activity—which had been sporadic in the last decade of the previous century—experienced a significant increase. The emergence of two rival labor unions—the Federación Obrera Regional Argentina in 1901, and the Unión General de Trabajadores in 1903—gave the impetus to repeated strikes and demonstrations. Protests were not limited to one company at a time, but strikes occurred. by sector and even protests for general problems, such as demonstrations against the cost of rent. Along with socialist ideas, anarchist ideology had a brief boom, which came to have a great expansion during the first decades of the century.
Trade unionism was considered more as a police issue than a rights issue, and union activities were harshly repressed: in 1902 the Residence Law had been passed, authorizing the Executive Branch to expel any immigrant from the country without judicial sentence, for the simple accusation of compromising national security or disturbing public order.
A measure adopted by Figueroa during his years as President had something to do with a historical claim, but at the same time with a matter of personal security, by assigning by decree to the recreated Regiment of Grenadiers on Horseback the task of converting in escort of the Presidency of the Nation. This Regiment, whose foundation was the work of General de la Patria José de San Martín, had been refounded as a Squadron on February 3, 1903, at the initiative of then President Julio A. Roca, as part of the tributes for the 90th anniversary of the Battle of San Lorenzo. Figueroa Alcorta put this regiment in its new role as escorts on July 15, 1907.
Police chiefs repressed demonstrations as if they were crimes; Commissioner Ramón L. Falcón, chief of the Capital Police, ordered the repression of a demonstration on May 1, 1909, causing 11 deaths and 105 injuries, and the next day he repressed the workers who accompanied the coffins of the victims, in what was called the red week. In response, the anarchist Simón Radowitzky assassinated him on November 14 in a crime that shocked society. Leftist organizations, on the other hand, fully justified the crime. A year and a half earlier, the anarchist Francisco Solano Regis had committed a failed attempt to assassinate President Figueroa Alcorta.
Except in the most conservative and authoritarian sectors, the idea had spread that it was necessary to resolve the so-called "social question"; not so much for reasons of social justice, but to prevent the workers from falling into increasingly radical tendencies. Thus, at the beginning of the century the first laws regulating the relations between employers and employees had been sanctioned, and a bill of law was even proposed. Labor Code, initiative of Joaquín V. González.
The Catholic Church had its own solution: organizations of Catholic workers, which sought to alleviate the effects of poverty through cooperation between workers and the charity of the wealthiest.
In 1910, shortly before the celebrations for the Centennial, the two workers' unions launched a general strike. The government reacted extremely harshly: the state of siege was sanctioned, hundreds of leaders were arrested, union newspapers were closed, and the Social Defense Law was sanctioned, which extended the restrictions of the Residence Law, empowering the Executive Branch to indefinitely arrest anyone suspected of adhering to anarchism.
It is that the conservative regime intended to celebrate, together with the Centenary of the creation of the Nation, its own success, the success of the country model that it had forged.
The Centenary
Figueroa Alcorta had decided to celebrate the Centennial of the May Revolution with a lavish party that could show the world the wealth and influence of the Republic. The Capital dressed up for a party, monuments were inaugurated in parks and squares, as tributes from European countries to Argentina. Several heads of state visited Buenos Aires, but the aunt of the King of Spain, the Infanta Isabel de Borbón, was the most honored figure.
In the midst of the festivities, some anarchist groups attacked the security forces, forcing the government to declare a state of siege; the festivities were held under restrictions on individual liberties, with imprisoned union leaders. In response, groups of right-wing activists burned down the union headquarters and editorial offices of left-wing newspapers.
End of term
In 1910, after the national elections where the presidential formula Roque Sáenz Peña - Victorino de La Plaza prevailed, Figueroa Alcorta handed over the presidential command on October 12 of that year.
Cabinet
 José Figueroa Alcorta | ||
|---|---|---|
| Portfolio | Owner | Period |
| Ministry of the Interior | Norberto Quirno Costa Manuel Montes de Oca Joaquín V. González Manuel Montes de Oca Marco Avellaneda José Gálvez Carlos Rodríguez Larreta | 14 March 1906 – 10 July 1906 11 July 1906 - 25 September 1906 25 September 1906 – 21 November 1906 21 November 1906 – 27 September 1907 27 September 1907 – 8 March 1910 8 March 1910 - 23 July 1910 23 July 1910 - 12 October 1910 |
| Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Worship | Manuel Montes de Oca S. Zeballos Victorino de la Plaza Carlos Rodríguez Larreta | 14 March 1906 – 21 November 1906 21 November 1906 – 21 June 1908 22 June 1908 – 9 August 1910 9 August 1910 – 12 October 1910 |
| Ministry of Finance | Norberto Piñero Eleodoro Lobos Manuel M. de Iriondo | 14 March 1906 – 21 September 1906 21 September 1906 – 20 September 1907 20 September 1907 – 12 October 1910 |
| Ministry of Justice and Public Instruction | Federico Pinedo Juan A. Bibiloni S. Zeballos Rómulo Naón | 14 March 1906 – 11 July 1907 11 July 1907 – 14 January 1908 14 January 1908 – 22 June 1908 22 June 1908 – 12 October 1910 |
| Ministry of Agriculture | Ezekiel Ramos Mexía Pedro Ezcurra | 14 March 1906 – 4 November 1907 5 November 1907 – 12 October 1910 |
| Ministry of Public Works | Miguel Tedín Carlos Maschwitz Ezekiel Ramos Mexía | 14 March 1906 – 12 July 1907 12 July 1907 – 4 November 1907 4 November 1907 – 12 October 1910 |
| Ministry of War | Luis María Campos Rosendo Fraga Rafael María Aguirre Eduardo Racedo | 14 March 1906 - 5 July 1906 5 July 1906 – 11 July 1907 11 July 1907 – 2 March 1910 2 March 1910 - 12 October 1910 |
| Ministerio de Marina | Onofre Betbeder | 14 March 1906 - 12 October 1910 |
The Supreme Court of Justice
In 1912 he was appointed ambassador to Spain by President Sáenz Peña.
In 1915 he was appointed minister of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Argentine Nation.
On September 5, 1930, one day before the coup d'état that deposed Yrigoyen, Yrigoyen appointed him president of that organization. When the military coup took place, he proposed to his colleagues that they all resign together. However, due to the lack of support from the other ministers, he ended up accepting the agreement of the 10th of the same month, which established the doctrine of de facto governments, by which all military dictatorships in Argentina during the century were legalized. XX.
He remained on the Supreme Court until his death in 1931.
In the three branches of the State
In the almost 160 years of constitutional life of the Argentine Republic, José Figueroa Alcorta is the only Argentine who has presided over the three powers of the national State: when he was elected Vice President of the Nation in 1904, he held the Presidency of the Senate; When President Manuel Quintana died in 1906, he assumed the Presidency of the Argentine Nation between that year and 1910, and judge of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, from 1915, being its president from 1929 until his death. in 1931.
Death
He died in Buenos Aires in 1931. His remains rest in the Recoleta Cemetery.
Public track record
- The content of this article incorporates material from a Entry of the Universal Free Encyclopedia, published in Spanish under the Creative Commons Share-Igual 3.0 license.
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