Julio Argentino Roca

Alejo Julio Argentino Roca (San Miguel de Tucumán, July 17, 1843 – Buenos Aires, October 19, 1914) was an Argentine politician, soldier, and statesman who served twice as president of the Argentine Nation, from 1880 to 1886 and from 1898 to 1904. With a total of twelve years between his two non-consecutive six-year presidential terms, Roca is the person who has served as constitutional head of state for the longest time of Argentina.

Roca is the most influential representative of the so-called Generation of the 80s and led Argentine politics for more than thirty years through the National Autonomist Party (PAN), a party that remained in power for 42 years without any alternation, weaving complexes systems of alliances with different forces, which earned him the nickname "el Zorro". He led the "roquista" current, characterized by personalism and the control of political power by a small group of people, opposing the reforms democratizing electoral measures such as secret suffrage and compulsory voting that the anti-roquist sectors demanded.

He is known for leading the Conquest of the Desert, a series of strategic military campaigns against the indigenous peoples who inhabited Patagonia and part of the pampas.

During his two terms as president, many important changes occurred, particularly large infrastructure projects for railways and port facilities; increased foreign investment, along with large-scale immigration from Europe and Asia; expansion of the agricultural and pastoral sectors of the economy; and secularization of legislation that strengthens state power (public education and civil registration). Roca's main concern in foreign policy was to set border limits with Chile, which had never been precisely determined. Roca took advantage of the fact that in 1881 Chile was waging the War of the Pacific against Bolivia and Peru, so it was strategically important for Chile not to have a second military front. Thanks to this, Argentina gained territory after the signing of the 1881 treaty.

Roca's legacy is widely controversial, and has been the subject of deep debate among historians. His supporters highlight his role in the definitive consolidation of the Argentine State, his territorial expansion and the high economic growth that led the country to be among the richest nations in the world for several decades. His detractors emphasize the brutal treatment received by the original peoples during the "Conquest of the Desert" (with some going so far as to describe it as genocide), as well as the anti-democratic, fraudulent and oligarchic nature of the political and economic model implemented during his period of government. In general, there is a consensus regarding the fact that Roca was one of the most important presidents and a determining figure for Argentine history during the last stage of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, and he is remembered in Argentina through numerous memorials.

Early Years

Julio Argentino Roca —Alejo Julio Argentino Roca according to his baptismal certificate— was the fifth of eight children —seven boys— of Colonel Segundo Roca and Agustina Paz de Roca. He was born on the “El Vizcacheral” ranch, owned by his parents, on July 17, 1843. From 1849 to 1855 he attended the Franciscan school of San Miguel de Tucumán.

He studied at the National College of Concepción del Uruguay, where his father had moved called by Justo José de Urquiza, together with his brothers Celedonio and Marcos. Despite presenting a high degree of interest in medicine, in 1858 he entered a military career, with the offices of artillery lieutenant, serving in the artillery brigade "October 7" of the 1st line Regiment of Entre Ríos. He participated in the war between Buenos Aires and the Argentine Confederation, which occurred between 1859 and 1861.

He also participated in the war of the Triple Alliance against Paraguay, appointed commander of the National Guard regiment of the province of Salta in 1865. In that war his father and two of his brothers died. He returned to his country —with the rank of colonel, won in the battle of Curupaytí— before the end of the war; At the end of 1868 he was sent to the Puna to repel the last insurrection attempt of the caudillo Felipe Varela, who was defeated by one of his subordinates.

At the orders of the governor of Corrientes, Santiago Baibiene, he fought the federal rebellion of Ricardo López Jordán in 1871, his crucial participation being in the battle of Ñaembé. At the end of the 1874 revolution, he reached the rank of general, after defeating the rebel general José Miguel Arredondo —who responded politically to Bartolomé Mitre— in the battle of Santa Rosa.

The Desert Campaign

Background

The evil one (1845; oil of Mauritius Rugendas).

Patagonia and the western portion of the Pampas region had formerly been inhabited by indigenous peoples of the Tehuelche ethnic group until they were gradually absorbed by groups of Mapuche origin that came from the Andes region, mainly from territories that today form part of Chili.

Since the middle of the XVIII century, there was a continuous conflict between these indigenous people and the white population of the adjoining regions, especially focused in control of the territory and its livestock resources. Before the advance of the territory occupied by the whites, the indigenous people reacted by launching raids on the white populations and the ranches, from which they looted cattle —mainly to sell it in Chile— and kidnapped women, who were transferred to the indigenous settlements.

After the May Revolution, numerous military expeditions were carried out with the aim of containing the raids and/or advancing on those regions to effectively incorporate them into Argentine sovereignty. The most notable of the expeditions of the first half of the 19th century was the Roses to the Desert Campaign.

Until after the end of the Paraguayan War, it was not possible to take any important initiative against the indigenous people, who in the 1870s launched the largest attacks in their history.

Alsina campaign

In 1876, Adolfo Alsina —the Minister of War of the President of Argentina, Nicolás Avellaneda— launched a new campaign to occupy western Buenos Aires, taking the main outposts of the Indians and building a defensive work, known as the Zanja de Alsina, 374 km long between the south of the province of Córdoba and the vicinity of Bahía Blanca. With this campaign, he occupied the territories used to feed his horses and fatten the animals herded by the raids. This circumstance —added to the smallpox epidemic that cost the lives of thousands of indigenous people— caused a military and demographic crisis that greatly weakened them.

Julio Argentino Roca wearing the uniform of the Argentine army (1878)

Rock's campaign

After the death of Alsina (head of the Autonomist Party) in December 1877, Avellaneda appointed General Roca as his replacement, who had criticized Alsina's supposed defensive attitude. In contrast to his predecessor, who had tried to incorporate the Indians into Western civilization, Roca believed that the only solution against the Indian threat was their final submission. He expressed his position in the speech he gave before the National Congress on September 13, 1878, in which he raised the "absorption and assimilation" of the Indian:

We have six thousand soldiers armed with the latest modern inventions of the war, to oppose two thousand Indians who have no other defense than dispersion or other weapons than the primitive spear.

Based on this premise, he proposed a bill to occupy all the indigenous territory up to the Negro and Neuquén rivers in two years. Law No. 947 of land distribution was sanctioned on October 4, 1878, agreeing 1,600,000 strong pesos to the project, when the plan was already underway. In the recitals of the law it was stated that

...the presence of the Indian prevents access to the immigrant who wants to work.

and in article 1 of its text the border line was established

...previous subjugation or eviction of the barbarian Indians of the Pampa,...

President Avellaneda supported Roca's project because he feared the occupation and conquest of those territories by the Chilean army, since the area south of the Colorado River was in dispute between the two nations. Indeed, once After the War of the Pacific, Chile would fully dedicate itself to dominating the indigenous people south of the Bío-Bío river —the former border between the Spanish Empire and the Mapuche people— through the Occupation of Araucanía.

But there were also internal political reasons for the president's endorsement, since territories that were considered part of the province of Buenos Aires would be incorporated under national jurisdiction. This is how Carlos Tejedor, then governor of the province, explains it:

Dr. Avellaneda pursued his plan to destroy the economic power of the Province. The occasion was favourable.

Dr. Alsina had just died, and replaced him with General Roca.

He thus attained a double object, raising the candidacy of the candidacy, and harming Buenos Aires, its golden dream of ever.

It was like to soften your hands.

Then no more, the Minister presented to Congress (August 1878) a project for the military occupation of the Black River, as the border of the Republic on the Indians of the Pampa, declaring the national land that was between the effective line of that time, and that which was to be established.

The Congress reformed this project, declaring the line of the Río Negro, from its mouth in the Ocean, going back to its current to the 5th grade of western length of the Buenos Aires meridian.

For this reason, they were belonging to the National Government, not only the lands to the Sud del Río Negro, which the Province understood to have possessed as its own, although it did not occupy them effectively but also a population founded by the name of Mercedes, on the right bank of the river.

Military occupation of the Black River in the expedition led by General Julio A. Roca (Oleo de Juan Manuel Blanes).

On October 11, 1878, through Law 954, the Government of Patagonia was created, with headquarters in Mercedes de Patagones, present-day Viedma, whose first governor was Colonel Álvaro Barros; his jurisdiction extended to Cape Horn.

Throughout 1878, successive offensives were launched against the indigenous positions, causing hundreds of casualties to the Namuncurá forces and the capture of the feared Ranquel caciques Pincén, Catriel and Epumer. Some 4,000 indigenous people—mostly women and children—were captured in these campaigns.

Sable of steel with the sheet ladies and with a heated handle; it belongs to the military uniform used in the Desert Campaign by Colonel Julio A. Roca, whose name bears engraved on the leaf.

In April 1879 the final attack was launched: five divisions totaling 6,000 men —including 820 indigenous allies— advanced towards the Río Negro, and Minister Roca celebrated May 25 on Choele Choel Island. According to In the Report presented by the Minister of War, 1,313 spear Indians were killed and 1,271 taken prisoner; five main caciques were taken prisoner and one was killed; 10,513 Indians de chusma —women and children— were taken prisoner, and another 1,049 were reduced. According to the report presented by Roca to Congress, 10,539 women and children and 2,320 had been taken prisoner. Warriors.

About the origin of the term Conquest of the Desert there are at least three theories: according to one of them, it was named that way due to the geographical conditions of Patagonia, which had a desert climate. According to another, the denomination derives more from the ethnocentrism of the Argentine government: the region was completely uninhabited by white people and European civilization. It was only populated by nomadic Indians, representatives of barbarism, therefore, it was a "desert" of civilization. A third hypothesis holds that the conquered territory, occupied until recently by more than 30,000 indigenous people, at the time of the campaign It surprised the expedition members due to the low population, the result of the overestimation of their number, the depopulation in recent years and the flight of the indigenous people towards the Andes Mountains.

The tribes that survived were displaced to the most peripheral and barren areas of Patagonia. Some 10,000 natives were taken prisoner and some 3,000 were sent to Buenos Aires, where they were separated by sex, in order to prevent them from procreating children. The women were dispersed through the different neighborhoods of the city as servants, while a part of the men were They were sent to Martín García Island, where the great majority died after a few years of imprisonment.

On January 21, 1879, La Nación published the following chronicle:

The Indian prisoners arrived with their families to whom they were brought walking in their majority or in chariots, despair, the crying does not cease, their mothers are taken away from them to give them in their presence despite the shouts, the boasts and the supplications that Indian women lead with their arms to heaven. In that human framework Indian men cover their faces, others look at the ground resignedly, the mother squeezes against the son of her bowels, the Indian father crosses to defend his family from the advances of civilization.

Territorial Consequences

The Official Report of the Scientific Commission that accompanied the Argentine Army is considerably specific regarding the results of the war, and the opinion that the Argentine government had about the indigenous people:

It was about conquering an area of 15,000 square leagues occupied at least for about 15,000 souls, as the number of deaths and prisoners reported by the campaign is 14,000. It was about conquering them in the most lato sense of expression. It was not a matter of travelling and dominating with great apparatus, but transitorily, as the Gral expedition had done. Pacheco al Neuquén, the space that stood on the helmets of the army horses and the circle where they reached the bullets of their rifles. It was necessary to conquer those 15,000 leagues really and effectively, to clean them of Indians in such an absolute, so unquestionable way, that the most frightening of the frightening things of the world, the capital destined to vivify the companies of cattle and agriculture, he himself had to pay tribute to the evidence, that he did not experience himself to throw himself on the footsteps of the expeditionary army and to seal the inauguration so dilated.

It is evident that in a large part of the plains recently opened to human work, nature has not done everything, and that art and science must intervene in their cultivation, as they have had part in their conquest. But it should be considered, on the one hand, that the efforts to transform these fields into valuable elements of wealth and progress are not out of proportion with the aspirations of a young and enterprising race; on the other hand, that intellectual superiority, activity and enlightenment, which widen the horizons of the future and bring forth new sources of production for humanity, are the best titles for the domain of new lands. Precisely under these principles, they have been removed from the sterile race that occupied them.

Millions of hectares were thus added to the Argentine Republic. These enormous extensions were awarded at low prices, or directly given away, to landowners and influential politicians. Before the military operation, the lands had been assigned to the new owners through the subscription of 4,000 bonds of 400 pesos, each of which gave the right to 2,500 hectares. A total of ten million hectares were sold by the state to Buenos Aires merchants and ranchers prior to the conquest of the lands, while the surplus obtained, in lots of 40,000 hectares each, was auctioned off in 1882 in London and Paris.. In 1885 the debts accumulated with the soldiers since 1878 were canceled with land; as both the officers and the militia needed cash, they ended up selling off their parts to the same ones who had been the original financiers, in such a way that all that acreage passed into the hands of 344 owners, at an average of 31,596 hectares each.

Election as president and federalization of Buenos Aires

In mid-1878, after the death of Adolfo Alsina, the most prestigious figure of the National Autonomist Party was General Julio Argentino Roca, who was proposed as a candidate by his brother-in-law, the Cordovan governor Miguel Juárez Celman, and in Buenos Aires by the doctor Eduardo Wilde; quickly acquiring the support of most of the Argentine governors. On April 11, the elections for president were held, from which a wide victory emerged for Roca's voters, except in Buenos Aires and Corrientes.

On June 13, the Electoral College met, which elected General Roca president and Francisco Bernabé Madero vice president. But in Buenos Aires a revolution was brewing against Roca's triumph and Nicolás Avellaneda's project to federalize the Buenos aires city.

Four days later the fighting began, which ended on June 25 with an agreement between the province and the Nation; the revolution of 1880 had cost 3,000 dead. Shortly before Roca's inauguration, the federalization of Buenos Aires was approved in Congress.

First Presidency

President Roca opening the legislative period of 1886.

With the presidential inauguration of Julio Argentino Roca, on October 12, 1880, the historical stage called «of the historic presidencies» culminated and the period called «conservative republic» began, which was supported by an elite that integrated the eighties generation.

At the time of taking office, Roca was 37 years old, which made him the second youngest president in Argentine history, preceded only by Avellaneda, his predecessor, who was only a few months younger when he took office. The motto of his government was "Peace and Administration":

I need lasting peace, stable order and permanent freedom; and in this regard I declare it very high from this high seat, so that the whole Republic may hear me, I will use all the resorts and powers that the Constitution has placed in the hands of the executive branch to avoid suffocating and suppressing any attempt against public peace.

The political system that had carried him to the presidency, and which remained remarkably stable long after he left, rested on a series of shaky deals between provincial governors—who controlled elections through electoral fraud and patronage—and the president, who had control of the national budget for or against the provinces and could remove disaffected governors through federal intervention. Needing each other, the governors and the president carried out continuous agreements that allowed each other to advance in the desired policies. In any case, the stability of such a system required –in practice– the absence of any opposition; Fraudulent political practices also aimed at that objective.

During his tenure, the Penal Code and the Mining Code of the Nation were sanctioned; the municipal government of the new Federal Capital was organized and the city of La Plata, capital of the province of Buenos Aires, was founded.

The country's health situation had not improved significantly since the yellow fever epidemic of 1871: between 1884 and 1887, a series of cholera epidemics caused hundreds of deaths in the capital and the interior.

Economy

Refrigerator River Plate Fresh Meat Campana. The first fridge installed in South America in 1883. During the presidency of Roca the first fridges were installed that allowed the export of meat to Europe.

Roca began his first term (1880-1886) in a favorable economic situation, since that year the Great World Depression that began in 1873 began to be overcome in a large part of the world. This period would be characterized by the introduction in 1883 of the refrigerator, invented shortly before, as one of the central axes of the Argentine economy. The refrigerator led the Buenos Aires landowners to adopt a modality of mixed production on their farms, combining agriculture and livestock, a dual modality that gave generality in Argentina to the adjective "agropecuario", although it would take more than two decades to adapt the cattle to the English market, maintaining a high production of jerky (destined for the consumption of slaves and the population in servile situation) produced by salting houses until the end of the century.

The economic system was sustained by the exchange of primary products —exclusively of agricultural origin, and largely generated in the Pampas region— for products manufactured abroad, especially Europe.

If when Roca took office the main export item was, by far, sheep's wool, during his government corn will be the product that will rise vertiginously, leaving wool behind, now closely followed by wheat.

Public works

The first government of Roca stood out for the large amount of public works carried out, financed with a high fiscal deficit. The State financed a broad plan of infrastructure works, mainly railways, ports, public buildings and subsidized credits, which they were needed to establish the system of international trade that established Europe, and within Europe the British Empire, as the industrial center of the world.

The railway network went from 2,516 to 6,161 km during his tenure. Likewise, a very important part of the resources was used to build important buildings, mainly in Buenos Aires and the new Buenos Aires capital, La Plata. of loans to individuals, of which an alarming proportion ended up in the hands of speculators and even chronic debtors, who would never cancel them.

During his first term (1880-1886) he issued a decree in 1882 ordering the construction of the Port of Ensenada in the province of Buenos Aires, shortly after declaring La Plata its capital. Also in 1882 it was approved in Congress the project for the construction of a new Port of Buenos Aires (Puerto Madero and Dock Sud), following the design of Eduardo Madero. The law was immediately promulgated by Roca, but the contract for its construction was signed in 1884 and the works only began in 1886, when Roca finished his presidential term. The development of port infrastructure was key to allowing the growth of exports and imports, as well as passenger transport, including the great wave of European and Arab immigration that entered the country between 1870 and 1930.

Monetary Policy and the "Big Debt Period"

Roca was the one who created the Argentine currency as such, initiating a tradition of monetary instability that would extend throughout Argentine history, at the same time that he adopted a policy of high indebtedness and fiscal deficit, which made the currency grow strongly. foreign debt. and continued by his son-in-law and successor in power, Miguel Juárez Celman, exploding in 1888, when the country entered default for four years.

Until the first government of Roca, there was no Argentine currency, strictly speaking; it was Roca who created it as such.

The national State practically lacked its own currency, to which the Roca government responded by creating the national currency peso (symbol: m$n), or "peso oro", because its parity with gold was guaranteed, which could only be maintained for 17 months.

Law No. 1130 on National Currency, enacted in 1881, unified the Argentine monetary system and allowed five banks to issue currency: Banco Nacional, Banco de la provincia de Buenos Aires, Banco de Córdoba, Banco de Santa Fe and Banco Otero. The new currency began to circulate in July 1883.

In 1884 a crisis broke out that forced Roca to annul the gold peso that he had created the previous year, decreeing the forced circulation of paper money and taking out a new external loan.

Already in 1884 the European lenders, restless of the unprecedented frequency with which Argentina presented itself in the loan market, began to worry.

Pablo Gerchunoff and Lucas Llach.

Despite these signs, the high fiscal deficit and the country's high indebtedness, the Argentine peso remained 40% above gold, leading international markets to buy large amounts of Argentine bonds, in an operation that did not had a worldwide comparison. policy of fiscal deficit, investment and indebtedness, without major shocks, but the imbalances would manifest themselves only two years later, when Argentina entered default and the economic crisis created enormous social discontent, which led to the Parque Revolution, led by an alliance led by Leandro Alem and Bartolomé Mitre, which caused the fall of President Juárez Celman.

Educational and cultural policy

On May 10, 1881 Roca sent this telegram to Juan B. Alberdi, who was in France.

Driven by secularism, President Roca and his government strove to separate the Catholic Church from the state: the Civil Registry Law was sanctioned and, after the first National Pedagogical Congress was held, Law 1420 on Education was promoted, initiative of former President Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, then director of the National Council of Education, who considered that education is the main democratizing tool of a society. The law established compulsory, free and secular primary education. Prior to the sanction of this law, in 1883, the first educational census in the nation (National School Census) was carried out, which allowed the collection of exact data on the school-age population., literacy rates and conditions of existing educational establishments. This census allowed the development of subsequent educational policies at the national level.

Through the Education Law, Roca and Sarmiento achieved three objectives: first, to force access to basic education for the Argentine population; the second, to reduce the levels of national illiteracy and the third, to use these resources as a skillful instrument for the consolidation of democracy.

By virtue of that law, great progress was made in terms of the literacy of the population: upon his arrival there were 1,214 public schools throughout the country, bequeathing to his successor a total of 1,804; Normal schools, aimed at educating teachers, went from 10 to 17, the total number of teachers increased from 1,915 to 5,348, and the total number of students went from 86,927 to 180,768.

The apostolic internunciation, Monsignor Luigi Matera, attacked with an exalted tone the Education Law because it prohibited public schools from providing religious education, including veiled calls for civil disobedience. In response, by order of President Roca, Minister Francisco J. Ortiz returned his credentials to the nuncio and ordered his immediate departure from the country; foreign relations with the Holy See were interrupted for several years. In response, a Catholic political group led by José Manuel Estrada was formed, which sought to confront the liberal and anticlerical hegemony of the ruling group, which they considered attacked traditional religion.

On June 25, 1885, the law National Universities Statutes, also known as the Avellaneda Law, was promulgated. The importance of this law, drafted by Nicolás Avellaneda, lay in the fact that it granted universities autonomy on various issues and an operating framework for the election of the rector through a university assembly and voting of professors for vacant chairs, although their election ultimately depended on the executive branch. It also enabled the faculties to prepare study plans. Another relevant point of the law is the constitution of an own university fund obtained from university rights (tariff).

Expansion of the Argentine territory: national territories

In Celeste, the territory of Argentina before the presidency of Roca.

As president, Roca continued with the war actions begun in the previous decade in order to conquer indigenous territories to the south (Pampas region and Argentine Patagonia) and to the north (Gran Chaco).

After the main phase of the so-called Conquest of the Desert or Puel Mapu according to the indigenous peoples (1878-1879) that he himself commanded on the ground, Roca decided to end the last indigenous resistance by ordering the Campaign to Neuquén and Río Negro (1880-1881) and the Campaign to the Andes (1882-1883), as well as the final campaigns (1883-1885). Through these military campaigns, the Argentine Republic finished occupying the current territories of the provinces of Neuquén and Chubut, and the south of Río Negro.

To the north, Roca continued with the conquest of the Chaco, which President Sarmiento had begun in 1870. The most important campaign was the one led by War Minister Benjamín Victorica in 1884, defeating the great Qom caciques Yaloshi (executed and decapitated to use his head as a symbol of the founding of the town that he baptized with the name of the president), Cambá and the Mocoví Juan el Raí.

In 1884 Law No. 1532 on National Territories was enacted, establishing the national territories of Misiones, Formosa and Chaco in the north, and those of La Pampa, Neuquén, Río Negro, Chubut, Santa Cruz and Tierra del Fuego in the south. The inhabitants of the national territories lacked political rights until they were provincialized more than six decades later during the government of Juan Domingo Perón.

In the new territories there were continuous property conflicts between owners who had bought their titles in Buenos Aires and settlers established in the place. The situation of the indigenous people was much worse, since they were gathered by force in reductions located on marginal lands and that -in many cases- moved periodically.

The only exception was the Welsh colony of Chubut, socially and culturally organized on the margins of Argentine society in 1865, but carefully controlled by the authorities. From 1884, they even had their own railway.

Foreign Policy

The main foreign policy concern of the Roca government was to set the limits with Chile, which had never been determined with sufficient precision. Roca took advantage of the fact that in that year of 1881, Chile was disputing the War of the Pacific against the allies Bolivia and Peru, and it was convenient for him not to have a second open front with Argentina.

To this end Buenos Aires the Boundary Treaty with that country, from the year 1881; which established "The border line will run in that extension through the highest peaks of said Cordillera that divide the waters and will pass through the slopes that flow off to one side and the other..." to the parallel 52º South; From there, it was established that the Strait of Magellan would be entirely Chilean, that a fraction of the Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego would belong to Argentina, that the islands located to the south of the Beagle Channel up to Cape Horn would belong to Chile; while the Isla de los Estados and the other islands in the Atlantic to the east of Tierra del Fuego and the eastern coast of Patagonia will belong to the Argentine Republic.

While the treaty was an obvious advance, several issues remained unresolved, especially determining the boundaries in the vast areas where the “highest peaks” did not coincide with the watershed.

An expedition, under the command of Augusto Lasserre, visited Tierra del Fuego in October 1883, when it bought its facilities on the Beagle Channel from the British missionary Thomas Bridges, the date on which the city of Ushuaia was founded. Argentina also sought to secure possession of the richest valleys of the Patagonian Andes; The governor of the National Territory of Chubut, Luis Jorge Fontana, occupied the October 16 Valley, where he founded the city of Trevelin together with the Welsh settlers, in October 1885.

Regarding relations with Europe, the government prioritized all actions aimed at strengthening trade relations or promoting immigration. Regarding this, agreements were signed with various countries to ensure the continuity of the immigration flow to Argentina.

Relations with Great Britain, excellent throughout his presidency, encouraged Roca to reinitiate Argentine claims for sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands, which had been initiated in the time of Juan Manuel de Rosas, but had not been formally claimed by any government at the time of the National Organization. By order of President Roca, Minister Ortiz informed the representative of the United Kingdom in Buenos Aires that his government was trying to resort to an international award to settle the matter. Despite the fact that this mechanism had been promoted by Great Britain in different conflicts between South American nations, the attempt was rejected outright.

At the end of his term, the support given by his government to the Uruguayan soldier José Miguel Arredondo during the Quebracho Revolution led to a brief incident with Uruguay, which was resolved with a promise —which would never be fulfilled— to punish the responsible for that help.

Ministerial Cabinet

Ministries of the First Government Julio Argentino Roca
Portfolio	Owner	Period
Ministry of the Interior	Antonio del Viso Bernardo de Irigoyen Benjamin Paz Isaac Chavarría	12 October 1880—11 February 1882 12 February 1882—30 May 1885 30 May 1885—9 February 1886 10 April 1886—12 October 1886
Ministry of External Relations	Bernardo de Irigoyen Victorino de la Plaza Francisco J. Ortiz	12 October 1880—11 February 1882 11 February 1882—25 October 1883 October 25, 1883—October 12, 1886
Ministry of War and Marina	Benjamin Victorica Carlos Pellegrini	12 October 1880—11 July 1885 11 July 1885—12 October 1886
Ministry of Finance	Santiago Cortínez Juan José Romero Victorino de la Plaza Wenceslao Pacheco	12 October 1880—9 April 1881 9 April 1881—12 October 1883 25 October 1883—9 March 1885 9 March 1885—12 October 1886
Ministerio de Justicia, Cultoe Instrucción Pública	Manuel D. Pizarro Eduardo Wilde	12 October 1880—13 February 1882 14 February 1882—12 October 1886

Action after his first presidency

He was succeeded by his brother-in-law, Miguel Juárez Celman, although the springs of national politics remained largely in the hands of Roca. Juárez Celman's effort to appropriate the structure of the PAN led to the concentration of all power in the hands of the president, which was called the Unicato. The name came from his intention to be recognized as the Sole Head of the Nation.In his message to Congress in 1889, Juárez Celman stated that

There is no other party than the National Autonomist Party, to which the parliamentary majority and all the national governments and their states belong.

Around 1890, a serious economic crisis erupted, which, added to corruption and general opposition to the hegemonic claims of Juárez Celman, created the propitious environment for the Parque Revolution, which broke out on July 26, 1890: the rebels controlled a large part of the city of Buenos Aires for three days, although they were finally defeated. But Juárez Celman no longer had any support: former President Roca had made a deep enemy with him, and Vice President Carlos Pellegrini denied him his support, so that the president had to resign.

During Pellegrini's presidency, Roca emerged as his main political ally; with their support, the new president managed to reverse the crisis through an austerity program, the renegotiation of the public debt and the reformulation of the banking system based on the Banco de la Nación Argentina, founded in 1891. The continuous expansion of the area planted, especially wheat, together with the rise in prices of this and meat helped significantly to overcome the crisis; the wool cycle gave way to the grain and meat cycle.

In 1891 the search for a successor to the presidency began: the main candidacy seemed to be that of Roque Sáenz Peña, leader of the Modernist Party, followed by that of former president Bartolomé Mitre, candidate of the Civic Union, who had led the revolution of 1990. Roca began to maneuver to destroy both threats: firstly, he offered Miter the presidential candidacy for the PAN, in exchange for him joining the lists of candidates of the ruling party and the UC. The majority of the Civic Union rejected the agreement, so the followers of Miter separated from it, founding the National Civic Union, which for ten years would continue with the policy of the agreement. For their part, the members of the other faction founded the Radical Civic Union, directed by Leandro N. Alem.

Then Roca convinced Miter that they should both show themselves to be dispensable, and then he convinced Roque Sáenz Peña's father, Luis Sáenz Peña —a lawyer with very little political vocation— to be the pro-government candidate for the presidency. The son resigned from his presidential candidacy to avoid confronting his father.

Finally, he convinced Pellegrini to arrest Alem and the main radical leaders, accusing them of having planned a bloody revolution. The presidential candidate of the UCR was imprisoned, the elections were held without any other list than the official list: Luis Sáenz Peña and José Evaristo de Uriburu were elected president and vice unanimously by the Electoral College.

During the presidency of Sáenz Peña a new radical revolution took place, which —added to the president's evident inability to carry out a political management— led to his resignation in 1895. After a frustrated participation in provincial elections, the UCR he locked himself in an absolute electoral abstention.

The successor to Luis Sáenz Peña was José Evaristo Uriburu, a capable politician but without personal ambitions; Under his government, Roca presented himself as the only candidate capable of gathering the necessary support —both at the national government level and in the provinces— to sustain a successful presidential candidacy. Based on agreements between leaderships and fraudulent elections, Roca was elected president again in 1898.

Second Presidency

When he assumed his second presidency, Roca seemed prematurely old.

Roca assumed the presidency of Argentina for the second time on October 12, 1898. All the provinces responded to him except Buenos Aires, where Bernardo de Irigoyen of the Radical Civic Union, in favor of reaching agreements with the roquismo, triumphed and confronted with the revolutionary wing led by Hipólito Yrigoyen, who supported electoral abstention as long as there was no system of free elections based on secret ballots.

Economic policy

The Argentine economy had undergone important changes in the previous decade, ceasing to revolve around the export of wool to become dependent on exports of bovine meat —first frozen and then chilled— and grains, mainly wheat, corn and flax.

The Minister of Public Works Emilio Civit initiated a moderate reform in the policy of railway concessions, stopping the expansion of private companies, increasing the extension of state lines and exercising with some rigor control over the rates of British companies, which were consciously designed to undermine local productions that could compete with the British.

During their presidencies the development of Argentine telegraphy continued: in 1905 the telegraphic link that linked Cabo Vírgenes in the Strait of Magellan with the national network was completed, which by then had a 50,000 km route, which in relation to a population of eight million inhabitants, made it one of the most important in the world. It would also be one of the main proponents of the military use of such technology.

The economy continued to grow, driven by a constant increase in agricultural prices, which had been maintained since the Uriburu years. So the president wanted to take advantage of the occasion to reorganize the financial situation and unify the external debts. But the economic situation was complicated when the value of paper money in relation to gold began to fall rapidly. In current terms, there had been a process of accelerated inflation in terms of paper money. Only those who had their income insured in gold pesos were free of it. In response, Senator Pellegrini presented and defended the Conversion Law, which was a first step towards a return to free convertibility.

Two years later, the same Pellegrini was commissioned by the president to initiate efforts in Europe to unify the country's external debt: he had to exchange a debt of 392 million gold pesos at different rates for another of 435 million at 4%. According to Pellegrini, that would mean a net saving of 10 million, but public opinion understood that the total amount was increased by 43 million.

When the bill was presented in the Senate, it was approved by a narrow margin of the senators present, because most of their opponents had been absent. And in the discussion in the Chamber of Deputies, Pellegrini himself had to confess to the deputy José Antonio Terry that the country promised to transfer daily to a special account in the Banco de la Nación 8% of the daily income from Customs. Public opinion exploded with indignation and a large number of students took to the streets –in Buenos Aires, Rosario and La Plata– to protest against the project and also against the absence of a real democracy. It was the largest opposition demonstration the country had seen up to then, and ended with incidents of violence.

The government responded by asking Congress to declare a state of siege, and immediately the president withdrew the debt unification project, assigning its authorship to Pellegrini.

Foreign Policy

Roca and his Chilean pair Federico Errázuriz in the Strait of Magellan.

Roca runs through the City of Buenos Aires along with his Brazilian pair Manuel Ferraz de Campos Sales (1900; AGN Archive).

Less than three months into his government, Roca undertook a trip to the south of the country; the first step was a brief visit to the Welsh colony of Chubut. He continued his navigation to Ushuaia and from there he continued his journey west through the Beagle Channel, then continuing through the Strait of Magellan to Punta Arenas, where he met with President Errázuriz, in a gesture that served to speed up the resolution of the dispute. of the Puna de Atacama, which was resolved with an arbitration award by US President James Buchanan, which he settled on March 24, 1899. As a consequence of it, in the year 1900 the new National Territory of Los Andes was created.

He then visited Uruguay and Brazil, visits that were reciprocated by the presidents of those countries, in an exchange without major consequences.

In 1901, by presidential initiative, the government reinitiated diplomatic relations with the Holy See; in the following years he made several gestures of rapprochement with the Catholic hierarchy.

On May 28, 1902, its representative in Chile signed the so-called May Pacts with that country, which limited the arms race with that country, and agreed to submit border disputes that had already arisen to arbitration by the British crown and those that will arise in the future.

In December 1902, Chancellor Luis María Drago began a broad campaign to repudiate the military attack by the United Kingdom and the German Empire on the coasts of Venezuela to demand payment of debts, establishing the Drago Doctrine, principle of universal acceptance since then, which prohibits public debt from giving rise to armed intervention.

In 1902, Ensign José María Sobral participated in Otto Nordenskjöld's expedition, which in turn was rescued the following year, after the loss of the ship they were traveling on, by Lieutenant Julián Irízar. In 1904, Argentina began the occupation of the first permanent establishment in Antarctic territory, by establishing a base in the South Orkney Islands.

The “social question”

During his second presidency there was a boom in the nascent Argentine labor movement: in 1901 the first Argentine trade union center was founded, which would be known as FORA and on November 22, 1902 the first general strike was declared. known in those years as "social question" or & # 34; labor question & # 34;, and he was confronted by Roca from two angles: a repressive angle and a concessional angle. From the repressive angle, he sanctioned laws and ordered the first armed repression against worker demonstrations and unions. From the concessional angle, he started in Argentina the right to social security and labor law.

From the repressive angle, Roca carried out a policy of repression of the labor movement that took shape mainly in Law No. 4144 on the Residence of Foreigners, better known as the Residence Law or Cané Law, sanctioned in 1902, which allowed the imprisonment and expulsion of immigrants without prior trial. A tango sung by Gardel, At the foot of the Holy Cross, protests against those persecutions saying that "The employer law takes revenge on a man". The repressive policy of the Roca government adopted a strong racist, classist and anti-immigration tone, which was embodied mainly by Minister Miguel Cané.

During the Roca government, the first murders caused by the police in strikes and union demonstrations also took place, beginning with the assassination of Cosme Budislavich on October 20, 1901, a tragic succession of worker massacres that has extended to current times. On May 1, 1904, he ordered the repression by the police of a meeting of approximately 70,000 workers in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of La Boca, which produced the death of Juan Ocampo, an eighteen-year-old sailor; During his wake, the police also broke in and took his body.

On September 20, 1904, a few days before the end of his term, Roca started the Argentine social security system, by enacting the law creating the National Retirement and Pension Fund for Officials, Employees and Civil Agents, on the basis of a pay-as-you-go public tax system. Although there were some antecedents in Argentine legislation, it was Law No. 4349 that is considered the starting point. For this reason, September 20 is considered in Argentina as "Retiree Day" 34;. Over the years, the benefit, which initially covered all public employees and officials, was claimed and obtained by new sectors of public and private workers who would obtain their own "cajas": bank, employees of commerce, industry, provincial employees, etc.

Roca also anticipated labor legislation in Argentina. In his message to Congress, beginning the 1904 sessions, Roca announced and recommended sanctioning a National Labor Law project, sent by the Executive Power, regulating work and worker-employer relations. The National Labor Law project had been prepared under the management of Minister Joaquín V. González, based on the Report on the state of the Argentine working classes entrusted to Juan Bialet Massé. It consisted of 465 articles and regulated all aspects of labor relations (employment contract, intermediaries, work accidents, home work, work for minors and women, apprenticeship contract, Indian contract, hygiene and safety; employer and worker associations, administrative authorities and conciliation and arbitration courts). Argentine labor law, Law No. 4661 on Sunday Rest, projected by deputy Alfredo Palacios, who had been elected to represent the working-class neighborhood of La Boca the previous year, and became the first socialist legislator in America.

Education policy

Its minister of public instruction, Osvaldo Magnasco, planned to create a large number of technical and agrotechnical schools, of which very few existed until then. The attempt was rejected by Congress, and Magnasco had to resign after creating only a few dozen technical schools.

Defense Policy

Roca's first war minister, Luis María Campos, founded the Escuela Superior de Guerra to achieve a constant and renewed formation of Argentine military thought, as well as uninterrupted research in matters of national defense, strategy and military history. His second minister of war, Pablo Riccheri, established compulsory military service by Law 4031.

Continuing the strategic policy on naval defense, initiated by José Evaristo Uriburu, the construction of the Military Port began on May 19, 1898 and the first stage ended in 1902, with the inauguration of the Carena Dock by the same President Roca, aboard the Battleship Garibaldi.

An accelerated modernization of the army also began and new military bases were acquired, such as Campo de Mayo, with the intention of preventing the barracks inside the capital from being an instrument for military revolutions. The Regiment of Grenadiers on Horseback, created by General José de San Martín, was refounded to function as an escort for the president of the nation.

Political situation

In response to the rebuff on the issue of public debt, Pellegrini broke with Roca and began to form the Autonomist Party, in which several leaders who had been followers of Juárez Celman and members of an ephemeral Democratic Party began to militate. and who was also joined by Roque Sáenz Peña. For their part, Miter's followers had left the National Civic Union to form a new party, the Republican Party. Despite the importance that the press assigned to them, in the 1902 elections –in which the single-member system had not yet been approved– both parties obtained poor results.

In the province of Buenos Aires, Marcelino Ugarte defeated the candidate of Roca and Governor Irigoyen, thus gaining access to the government; he immediately reinforced his caudillo structure, expanded his networks of contacts, and negotiated his incorporation into the National Party.

Although encouraged by the same conception of «progress» —creation of infrastructure, promotion of immigration, definition of an agro-export profile— that the Roca group, Carlos Pellegrini and other autonomist politicians such as Roque Sáenz Peña considered the the need to abandon caudillismo in politics and electoral fraud as a mechanism for access to power, seeking to open even a little the channels of participation and increase the number of voters.

Pellegrini's departure caused a cabinet crisis and forced Roca to reorganize the PAN. During the rest of his term he had to change ministers several times.

For his part, surprised by the protests of July 1901, Roca decided to distract public opinion by proposing and obtaining the sanction of a Law that established a political reform devised by the Minister of the Interior, Joaquín V. González: in search of In order to increase the representativeness of the deputies, the system of elections by complete list was replaced by a division of the country into constituencies, in each of which a deputy would be elected.

Roca decided to control the choice of his successor, for which he called a Convention of Notables, which discussed various alternatives. After the almost certain failure of Felipe Yofre's candidacy, he chose a former mitrista, Manuel Quintana, and former Cordoba governor José Figueroa Alcorta for vice president.

The law of uninominal constituencies was applied only to the election of national deputies and electors of president in the year 1904; It did not have notable effects on the distribution of political positions, with the sole exception of the election of Alfredo Palacios, the first deputy of the Socialist Party, which had been founded in 1896. For his part, Quintana was elected by an overwhelming majority, in elections in which the number of votes only increased significantly in Buenos Aires and the Capital.

For its part, the sector of the Radical Civic Union that followed Hipólito Yrigoyen and opposed the fraudulent electoral regime that the roquismo maintained on the basis of the sung vote, maintained its abstentionist position and organized a new armed uprising, which was would materialize in the radical Revolution of 1905.

Ministerial Cabinet

Ministries of the Second Government Julio Argentino Roca
Portfolio	Owner	Period
Ministry of the Interior	Felipe Yofre Joaquín V. González	12 October 1898 – 26 August 1901 9 September 1901 – 12 October 1904
Ministry of External Relations and Worship	Amancio Alcorta Felipe Yofre Luis María Drago José A. Terry	12 October 1898 – 21 January 1899 21 January 1899 – 7 May 1902 9 May 1902 – 18 July 1903 20 July 1903 – 12 October 1904
Ministry of Finance	José María Rosa Enrique Berduc Marco Avellaneda	12 October 1898 – 7 April 1900 7 April 1900 – 5 July 1901 11 July 1901 – 12 October 1904
Ministry of Justice and Public Instruction	Osvaldo Magnasco Juan E. Serú Joaquín V. González Juan Ramón Fernández	12 October 1898 – 1 July 1901 11 July 1901 – 15 January 1902 15 January 1902 – 22 April 1902 22 April 1902 – 12 October 1904
Ministry of Agriculture	Emilio Frers Emilio Civit Martín García Merou Ezekiel Ramos Mexía Wenceslao Escalante	12 October 1898 – 1 September 1899 1 September 1899 - 11 January 1900 11 January 1900 - 21 March 1901 21 March 1901 - 18 July 1901 18 July 1901 – 12 October 1904
Ministry of Public Works	Emilio Civit Wenceslao Escalante	October 12, 1898 –? 1904 – 12 October 1904
Ministry of War	Luis María Campos Rosendo Fraga Pablo Riccheri	12 October 1898 – 8 August 1899 8 August 1899 – 13 July 1900 13 July 1900 – 12 October 1904
Ministerio de Marina	Martín Rivadavia Onofre Betbeder	12 October 1898 – 23 February 1901 23 February 1901 – 12 October 1904

Corruption: the verb atalivar

Julio Argentino Roca has been considered one of the public officials who became most enriched through public service. "Together with his brothers and in-laws, he wove a network of negotiations based on the distribution of indigenous land and its former inhabitants who reported fabulous profits".

His first property was a 35-league ranch acquired three years before he became president, in a scandalous auction. During his presidency, in 1881, the Legislature of the province of Buenos Aires, controlled by his party, donated him 60,000 hectares in the place that he had. In 1887, during the presidency of his son-in-law, the National Congress, always controlled by his party, rewarded him by granting him another 15,000 hectares.

Former President Domingo Faustino Sarmiento denounced roquista corruption from his newspaper El Censor in the following terms:

[The Desert Campaign] was a pretext to lift an emprestite by alienating the fiscal land at the rate of 400 nationals the league, whose operation the Nation has lost 250 million gold pesos won by the Atalivas, Goyos and other stars from the sky of President Roca. But if it can be explained, even if it is not justified, this uneconomic and ruinous measure for the state, for the famous Desert Campaign, after it was carried out without battles or losses of any kind for the government, there is no reason, there is no reason for such an emprestito to remain open today... for the friends of General Roca, especially when the subscription was closed long ago. It is necessary to call the president and his accomplices to account for these inaudit frauds. Under what law, General Roca, clandestinely, continues to alienate the public land at the rate of 400 nationals the league worth 3000? President Roca, in disregard of the law, every so many days sends direct orders to the offices of the public credit, without files, nor useless procedures to subscribe to the graceful, who are always the same, hundreds of leagues. There are the Public Credit books that sing and loudly for everyone who wants to report to the prosecutor. As soon as we go, we will not have a palm of land in a position to give the immigrant and we are forced to expropriate what we need, by double the value, to the Atalivas.

Domingo F. Sarmiento

Most of Roca's deals were carried out by his brother Ataliva, who acted as a figurehead. Among other improper acquisitions, Ataliva Roca received 160,000 hectares of land in the province of La Pampa. to refer to corruption, a verb that entered everyday speech until at least the mid-20th century.

Historian Ricardo Titto tells the story of the verb "atalivar" as follows:

Roca's brother was called Ataliva and he was the one who managed the coimas and the one who has always favored to arm the army in the desert campaign. It was the one who handled the percentages that were going to the government family and the percentages of coimas that had to put the entrepreneurs of the time... Roca's brother remained in history as the one who gave him the theme of the institutional framework in Argentina.

Ricardo Titto

Last years and death

When his term ended, Roca withdrew from public life, residing most of the time in his ranch "La Paz", near Ascochinga, Córdoba. Although the autonomism continued to control the government for another decade, his lack of leadership allowed a sector of it to challenge Roca's friends. During the presidency of José Figueroa Alcorta they dedicated themselves to obstructing all his initiatives in Congress.

In January 1908, Congress still refused to discuss the National Budget for the year that had already begun. Figueroa Alcorta withdrew the project, decreed that it governed the previous year's budget, and closed Congress with the police.

He then actively intervened in the politics of the provinces, declared federal intervention in two of them, allied himself with former collaborators of Juárez Celman and friends of Pellegrini; with the completely renewed PAN he defeated Roca's friends in March 1908, achieving a parliamentary majority and unifying the provincial governments under his leadership. Roca's political scheme was liquidated.

General Julio Argentino Roca died on October 19, 1914 in the city of Buenos Aires, capital of the Argentine Republic. His remains rest in the Recoleta Cemetery, located in that city.

Equestrian monument to Julio Argentino Roca (Cívico Center of Bariloche).

Lake Roca (National Park Tierra del Fuego).

Tributes and questions

Aerial view of the city of General Roca (province of Río Negro).

Funeral monument to Roca (Cementerio de la Recoleta, Ciudad de Buenos Aires).

Julio Argentino Roca is the subject of certain disputes about the assessment of his role in Argentine history.

On the one hand, during the XX century, the figure of Roca has been recognized by the so-called «official history» as that of one of the statesmen who forged the foundations of the Argentine Republic. From that position, Roca has been honored by designating numerous cities, departments, lakes, streets, avenues, squares, monuments —the most emblematic is the one in Buenos Aires—, parks, schools, and railway lines throughout the country with his name.. By way of example, the following may be cited: the city of General Roca in the province of Río Negro, the town of Presidencia Roca in the province of Chaco, the town of Presidente Roca in the province of Santa Fe, the Colonia General Roca in the province of Entre Ríos, the General Roca Department of the province of Córdoba, Roca Lake in the province of Río Negro, Presidente Julio Argentino Roca Avenue in the city of Buenos Aires, Julio A. Roca Avenue in the city of Córdoba, Presidente Roca School of the city of Buenos Aires, and the railway company Ferrosur Roca. Decree 32,574, signed on March 1, 1948 by President Juan Domingo Perón, reorganized the old railway companies, including the State Railways, in its fundamentals it expresses "that it is a duty of the government to keep the cult alive in the people to the memory of the forgers of the nationality, as a tribute of gratitude to their patriotic efforts and to strengthen the feelings of solidarity with our past”, and baptizes one of its lines as the General Roca Railway.

Monument to Roca (the work of José Luis Zorrilla de San Martín).

On the other hand, prominent figures such as Presidents Domingo Faustino Sarmiento and Bartolomé Mitre, as well as Lisandro de la Torre, Leandro Alem, Aristóbulo del Valle, among others, harshly criticized his behavior, considering it a violation of human rights, corrupt and anti-republican. In the XX century, various political and historiographical currents have questioned its role, associating it, among other assessments, with what some of those currents and These positions call the oligarchic State prior to 1916 —the year the first president was elected by secret ballot— and the annihilation of thousands of indigenous people in Patagonia, calling it genocidal. This position proposes removing the name of Roca from places and areas with which he has been honored. This current of thought managed to replace the name of Roca in some lakes, schools, streets and squares. As an example, in Río Gallegos, Avenida Julio A. Roca was renamed "Presidente Néstor Kirchner". In Resistencia, the name of the street "Julio A. Roca" was changed to "Cacique Maidana". The name of Julio Argentino Roca street was changed to "Pueblos Originarios", a case similar to that of Elementary School No. 7 in the city of Tandil. The name of Julio Argentino Roca was also withdrawn from a street in the Sarmiento de Villa neighborhood Nueva de Córdoba. In the municipality of Del Campillo, the name of Roca street was changed to Ramón Cabral. The name of schools in the province of La Pampa has also been changed, and in the Buenos Aires towns of Azul, and in Tres Arroyos. The Middle School No. 2, in Jujuy, was renamed Marina Vilte. In Banfield, a school replaced its name with that of Julio Cortázar. Even sports clubs chose to change their name. In In the town of Sierras Bayas, the signs with the name of Julio Roca were removed in 2013. The Provincial School No. 38 of the Esperanza de la Antártida Argentina base changed the name of Julio Argentino Roca to "Raúl Ricardo Alfonsín".

Numismatics

A hundred Argentine pesos billet

The effigy of Julio Argentino Roca engraved with a burin by the Italian engraver Trento Cionini, is found on the obverse of the one hundred pesos bill of the Argentine Republic that the Mint issued from 1992 until 2015, the year in which it was replaced by the bill of the same denomination of Eva Perón.

On the obverse of the same banknote engraved with a burin by the Argentine engraver Hugo Urlacher. The image of the central part of the traditional painting The Conquest of the Desert —by the painter Juan Manuel Blanes, which is located in the National Historical Museum— is observed with the following legend:

JULIO ARGENTINO ROCA (TUCUMAN 1843 BUENOS AIRES 1914) MILITAR AND STAYER, REALIZER OF THE CHANGE OF DESERT (1878), FIRMED THE TREATY OF LIMITS WITH CHILE. FUE DOS VECES PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC (1880-1886, 1898-1904).

Ancestors