Roque Saenz Pena
Roque José Antonio del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús Sáenz Peña Lahitte (Buenos Aires, March 19, 1851 - Ib., August 9, 1914) was an Argentine lawyer and politician, a volunteer combatant of the Peruvian army in the War of the Pacific. He was elected president of the Argentine Nation as a candidate of the modernist sector of the National Autonomist Party, holding office between 1910 and 1914, the date on which he died when there were still little more than two years left in office. His most outstanding work was the elaboration and promulgation of the Sáenz Peña Law or Law 8,871 that established in Argentina the universal, secret and obligatory vote for men.
His father, Luis Sáenz Peña, was also President of the Nation, holding office between 1892 and 1895, when he resigned.
Early Years
Roque José Antonio del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús Sáenz Peña, was the son of Luis Sáenz Peña and Cipriana Lahitte. He came from a family of supporters of Rosas: his paternal and maternal grandparents, Roque Julián Sáenz Peña and Eduardo Lahitte, had been deputies in the Legislature during his government. After the defeat of Rosas in the battle of Caseros, the federal tradition of the grandparents and the father, who did not change their convictions, kept them away from public service. He completed his secondary studies at the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires, under the direction of Amadeo Jacques. In 1875 he graduated as a doctor of law, with a thesis on "Legal status of foundlings".1912
During the Revolution of 1874, he defended the nation's authorities as Captain of Regiment No. 2, under the command of Luis María Campos. Once the revolution was defeated, he was promoted to Second Commander of the National Guards, but requested to be relieved of the ranks. An opponent of Bartolomé Mitre, he was a member of the Autonomist Party headed by Adolfo Alsina and in 1876 he was elected to a seat of Deputy in the Legislature of the Province of Buenos Aires. He came to serve as president of the body at the age of 26, thus being one of the youngest presidents of the Chamber. In 1877 he founded the Republican Party, together with Leandro Alem, Aristóbulo del Valle, Hipólito Yrigoyen, Lucio Vicente López, Pedro Goyena, José Manuel Estrada and Francisco Uriburu.
In 1878, as a result of the dissidences produced within the autonomism due to the conciliation policy initiated by President Nicolás Avellaneda to which Sáenz Peña was opposed, he resigned his position and ended up temporarily abandoning politics.
On February 4, 1887, he married Rosa Isidora González Delgado, daughter of Mendoza politician Lucas González and Rosa Delgado Ibarbaltz, in the Basilica of Nuestra Señora del Pilar (Buenos Aires).
Pacific War
When the Pacific War was declared that pitted Chile against Peru and Bolivia, in 1879 Roque Sáenz Peña silently left his country traveling to Lima. He offered his services to Peru, which awarded him the rank of lieutenant colonel (Commander). In the battle of Tarapacá he served under the command of Colonel Andrés Avelino Cáceres, where his side obtained a temporary victory over Chile. In the battle of Arica he was in command of the Iquique battalion, after being wounded in the right arm and helplessly contemplating the death of many of his Peruvian comrades, he was taken prisoner in the hands of the captain of the 4th Line of the Chilean army Ricardo Silva Arriagada.
Don Roque Sáenz Peña is still quiet, impassible; someone tells me that he is Argentine; he fixes me then more in him; he is tall, has a mustache and a beard; his porte is not very martial, because it is something girded; it represents about 32 years; he dresses levita blue black, as of marine; the belt, the shots of the saber, which does not have, above the Levite; At first glance, the worshiped man is seen from the world. I later handed my prisoners to the Military Superior, who deposited them, first in the Customs, and then embarked on the Itata.Ricardo Silva Arriagada
Roque Sáenz Peña was court-martialled and confined near the Chilean capital. Released after six months, at the request of his family and the Argentine government, he returned to Buenos Aires in September 1880. The Congress of the Argentine Nation, in a unanimous vote, restored his Argentine citizenship, which he had lost ipso iure upon joining the Peruvian army.
The civil servant years
The country was then presided over by General Julio Argentino Roca, and his Foreign Minister, Bernardo de Irigoyen, appointed him Undersecretary in 1880. A year later he resigned as Undersecretary, and moved to Europe for two years.
Roque Sáenz Peña was initiated a Freemason on March 14, 1882 in the Teaching Lodge.
In 1884, back in Buenos Aires, he conceived the project of founding the magazine Sud América together with his friends Paul Groussac, Carlos Pellegrini and Exequiel Ramos Mejía, in which his Americanist ideas were widely publicized. From the publication he faced the ideas of Dardo Rocha.
He supported the presidential candidacy of Miguel Juárez Celman. In 1887, with Juárez Celman already in the presidency, he was appointed ambassador plenipotentiary in Uruguay. In 1889 he stood out as the country's representative at the Montevideo Conference on Private International Law.
In 1889 - 1890, together with Manuel Quintana, he represented Argentina in the Washington Conference. There he defended the principle of inviolability of the states and ardently opposed the US project to create a continental customs union and a single currency on the continent. To the Monroe Doctrine, which upheld the slogan & # 34; America for the Americans & # 34;, he opposed the slogan & # 34; America for humanity & # 3. 4;. The prestige acquired by his diplomatic performance in Washington, and the political and financial crisis of the Juarista administration, catapulted him to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Worship on April 18, 1890, a position he held until the president's resignation in August.. When Carlos Pellegrini assumed the presidency, Saénz Peña was appointed president of the National Bank.
The task of cleaning up banks was not easy. The financial crisis of 1889, due to the continuous rise in the price of gold, and the enormous flexibility of the unicato loan system, intended to finance the purchase of land, and investments in the Stock Market, made the obligations of the entities impossible to comply with. official banking institutions, among which were the Banco Nacional and the Banco de la Provincia de Buenos Aires. In this context, the subscription of an internal loan through the Stock Exchange, at the initiative of President Pellegrini, failed and meant the suspension of the operations of the official banks on April 7, 1891. The National Bank never managed to recover and it finally went out in 1893.
The Modernist Party
In the midst of the serious political and economic crisis that was shaking the country, the figure of the young Roque Sáenz Peña emerged as a favorite for the 1892 presidential election promoted by the brand new Modernist Party created by the governor of Buenos Aires, Julio Costa, on December 17, 1891. It was the first serious attempt at institutional and political renewal made by conservative sectors since 1880, and had strong political support: Juarista youth; the governors of Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Santa Fe, Entre Ríos, Corrientes and Santiago del Estero; and important antiroquista figures such as Manuel D. Pizarro from Cordoba.
However, the candidacy of the young lawyer from Buenos Aires had important enemies, since he threatened to take control of the National Autonomist Party of former president Julio Argentino Roca, politically at odds with the young Juaristas and whom Sáenz Peña called " Napoleon of blonde sugar". To make his candidacy difficult, Bartolomé Mitre, leader of the National Civic Union and in collusion with Roca, promoted that of Roque's own father, the judge of the Supreme Court of Justice, Luis Saenz Pena.
The opaque and politically inconsequential figure of his father, Luis, a former legislator and former lieutenant governor of Buenos Aires, was enough to mortally wound the candidacy of his son, "the boy Roque", and that of his close friend Bernardo de Irigoyen, supported by the revolutionary Radical Civic Union. The Mosquito mocked the high court magistrate by presenting him as an aged and senile William Tell, reluctant to shoot the arrow hit by Rock and Mitre at his son's head.
Rather than confront his father, Roque preferred to renounce his candidacy and kill the Modernist Party, after which he declared:
"I regret that circumstances beyond my will, but do not miss my heart, they prevent me from accepting the high honor."
The elections gave Luis Sáenz Peña the winner, who appointed Roque head of the National Guards Regiment. In June 1892 he joined the Chamber of Senators of the Province of Buenos Aires, but shortly after he resigned from both positions to retire from public life.
Modernism would continue as an internal current of the PAN, led by Roque Sáenz Peña himself.
The leadership of the anti-rock movement
The political alliance between Pellegrini and Roca weakened in July 1901, without yet disappearing completely, due to differences over a financial project. In this context, Roque Sáenz Peña headed the list of national deputies of pellegrinismo in the Federal Capital that was defeated in the elections of March 9, 1902. As the complete list system of the Law still governed 140, the ex-chancellor could not enter the national Congress.
As of July 1902, a formal and definitive division took place in the Argentine Republic in the National Autonomist Party around the succession of the two-time president Julio A. Roca. The "convention of notables", established since 1903 as an informal body for the selection of the presidential candidate of the dominant party, fractured around the breach of the commitment to nominate former president Carlos Pellegrini and Roca's decision to promote the lawyer Manuel Quintana in the 1904 election.
Two political expressions were born there within the conservative ideology: the "national autonomists" or roquistas, with their intransigent policy of maintaining electoral fraud, and the & #34;autonomists" or pellegrinistas, sectors split from the P.A.N. influenced by radical revolutions, anarchist attacks and worker strikes. One of the main concerns of the Pellegrinistas was to transpose the protests from the streets to parliament, giving political space to the new social actors. For this, it was necessary to give spaces of representation to the main opposition party, the Radical Civic Union, but also to the moderate Socialist Party. In this way, the three great emerging social forces of the time would be weakened: the labor movement, socialism and anarchism.
When the P.A.N. and confirming Quintana's candidacy on October 12, 1903, Sáenz Peña organized a banquet for Pellegrini two days later at the Café de París. There, the former president announced the reasons for the new antiroroquist political movement: "The political party to which we belong has disappeared, replacing it with a single thinking head, a will that resolves, a voice that orders, a voter who chooses&# 34;.
Between the institutional ups and downs of Manuel Quintana's presidential policy and the radical revolution of 1905, Julio A. Roca's enemies outnumbered his friends and allies. Thus, in the election of March 11, 1906, again under the complete list system, the coalition "Popular Concentration" was imposed on the official list amid scandals and vote-buying protests. A political front of ex-modernists, mitristas, the conservative Benito Villanueva and radical Bernardistas that nominated Carlos Pellegrini, Emilio Mitre, Roque Sáenz Peña and Ernesto Tornquist in the first places.
The year 1906 was the time of decline of the personalist system and institutional fraud in Argentina, marked by the death of some of its main political referents and the birth of new leaders. On January 9, Bartolomé Miter died, who, although he had announced his retirement from politics at the age of 80, continued to enjoy a certain influence, at least in the Capital and the Province of Buenos Aires; On March 12, less than 24 hours after the defeat of the ruling party in the Capital, President Manuel Quintana died; on July 17, Carlos Pellegrini died; and on December 27, Bernardo de Irigoyen died.
In this fateful setting, Roque Sáenz Peña became the political heir of Pellegrini and the "natural" of the reformist conservatives for the presidency in 1910, due to his international prestige and his political closeness to the new president of the Republic, José Figueroa Alcorta.
The greatest international recognition, although not exempt from criticism in Buenos Aires political circles, came from Peru for its military performance. In 1879, he enlisted to fight for Peru in accordance with his convictions, during the bloody war he was waging with Chile. Incorporated with the rank of lieutenant colonel, he attended the Battle of Tarapacá, where he commanded the Iquique battalion, later moving to Arica. On June 5, 1880, the Chileans bombarded that square from sea and land and began the assault on the 7th. The combat ended at El Morro and its result was favorable to Chile. Lieutenant Colonel Sáenz Peña fought bravely in that action, seeing other Peruvian leaders fall alongside him, such as Colonels Francisco Bolognesi and Juan Guillermo More Ruiz. On October 25, 1885, the government of Peru promoted him to colonel and years later, on August 26, 1905, at the proposal of Peruvian President José Pardo Barreda, Parliament granted him the position of "Brigadier General". 3. 4; and on October 5, 1905, the authorization by law of the Argentine Congress was given to Roque Sáenz Peña to accept the position of "General of the Army of Peru".
On November 6, at the inauguration ceremony of the monument to Colonel Bolognesi, General Roque Sáenz Peña was given command of the Peruvian Army during the ceremony. A call of honor was made and the commanders of each of the units delivered them to Sáenz Peña. The assistant to the Minister of War, Lieutenant Colonel Dupont, handed over command by pronouncing the following words: "By Supreme Order, I hand over command of the Army of Peru to General Roque Sáenz Peña, who will be obeyed and respected& #34;. Peru honored Sáenz Peña with the following awards and recognitions: Silver Medal of Tarapacá, honored by declaring him Medicated of Peru and giving him the Command of the Peruvian Army for the Ceremony of Monument to General Bolognesi and Gold Medal of that Ceremony.
In 1906 the government of José Figueroa Alcorta appointed him extraordinary representative to attend the wedding of King Alfonso XIII of Spain. There he was appointed extraordinary envoy and plenipotentiary minister to Spain, Portugal, Italy and Switzerland. Back in Argentina, in 1907 he was appointed to head the diplomatic missions in Switzerland and Italy. Arriving in Rome, he received instructions from his government to represent the country at the Second Peace Conference in The Hague together with Luis María Drago; there they held a position favorable to the creation of an international court of arbitration. In 1909 he was part of the arbitral tribunal that adjudicates the differences between the United States and Venezuela. His diplomatic mission to the Italian and Swiss governments lasted until 1910; in Italy he learned of the official proclamation of him as a candidate for President of the Republic.
President of the Nation
In the first months of 1909, the presidential candidacy of Roque Saenz Peña began to be prepared and his personal friend Paul Groussac published an article entitled Saenz Peña praising his conditions and supporting such a candidacy. On September 4, 1909, when his candidacy It was already consolidated and accepted, Saenz Peña left for Europe, leaving it unclear who would accompany him as a vice-presidential candidate. Those who were mentioned for this in the press were Manuel de Iriondo, Benito Villanueva, Pedro Olachea Alcorta and the Minister of the Interior Marco Avellaneda, who claimed to have the support of President Figueroa Alcorta. There were several meetings of his supporters without reaching an agreement. agreement and Saenz Peña, who until now had let his supporters choose the vice-presidential candidate, was alarmed considering that if it appeared as a nomination by indication of Figueroa Alcorta his investiture would be undermined and on December 1, 1909 he published a letter expressing his preference for Victorino de la Plaza. On December 2, the assembly of the National Union met and voted in favor of Plaza's candidacy. The electoral act that led Roque Sáenz Peña to the presidency of Argentina took place on March 13, 1910, with a large number of irregularities usual at that time. The new president had not even participated in the electoral campaign: he was the Argentine ambassador in Italy. A single list of candidates for voters participated in the elections, of which ten —out of 273— did not vote for Sáenz Peña.
Days before assuming the presidency, Sáenz Peña met with President Figueroa Alcorta and with the opposition leader, Hipólito Yrigoyen. In this last interview, the radical leader promised to abandon the revolutionary path, and Sáenz Peña to promulgate an electoral law that would modernize the elections and prevent electoral fraud. Yrigoyen requested the intervention of the provinces to prevent their governors from interfering with said process, Sáenz Peña refused but allowed radicalism to form part of the government.
Governance Management
From the moment he took office —on October 12, 1910— Roque Sáenz Peña changed the appearance of the Casa Rosada, adding ostentatious luxury to the ceremonial.
His tenure was marked by the discussion around electoral reform and its immediate results, and a good part of the political events of those years were overshadowed by that dispute. For example, the first subway in Buenos Aires was inaugurated, and the monumental Estación Retiro was finished.
In 1912, at the initiative of the Minister of Agriculture, Ezequiel Ramos Mexía, Law 5,599 for the Promotion of National Territories was enacted. Most of the national territories had the vast majority of their population concentrated on their maritime or fluvial coastline; For this reason, the law provided for –and to a large extent achieved– the construction of a large number of railway branches, which would allow the establishment of its population towards the interior. Branches were built in the national territories of Chaco, Formosa, Río Negro, Chubut and Santa Cruz; and a railway branch even reached Posadas, the capital of Misiones.
In June 1912, a large protest movement broke out by tenant farmers against the worsening of the conditions of their contracts with the owners of the fields they worked, known as the Grito de Alcorta. It spread throughout the Pampas region and ended with a massive drop in rents. It marked the irruption of a portion of the rural middle class, made up of the chacareros, in the national politics of the XX century. But at the same time it began a gradual trend towards the self-administration of the fields by the owners, who began to consider the presence of tenants dangerous.
On August 10, 1912, he signed the decree creating the Military Aviation School (EMA), together with G. Vélez, according to official bulletin 692-2 part). In it, it was established that in the meantime there would be no military personnel trained in Aerostation and Aviation, the Technical Directorate would be in charge of the Aeroclub Argentino and the Military Directorate would be in charge of the Chief of the Argentine Army with the title of Director of the Military Aviation School. The direction of the school would belong to the Ministry of War
The Sáenz Peña Law
Sáenz Peña was a convinced democrat; he thought that, free of professional politicians , the people would elect the best for his government. He was also concerned about the social question , that is, about the possibility that – away from politics – the workers could adhere to anarchism or socialism. Finally, he feared that the huge proportion of the foreign population, which did not participate in any way in politics, could fall into maximalist positions or remain as a foreign body in the society. For all these reasons he supported the political reform based on the universal and free vote.
Given the history of pressure on voters – who voted out loud – the only possibility of electoral freedom was secret suffrage, by means of ballots written in sealed envelopes. And to ensure that no one was prevented from going to vote, he also made it universal and mandatory. The military registry would be used as the electoral register. On the other hand, the participation of the population in the elections was very low, barely exceeding 20% of potential voters.
Sáenz Peña presented the project in Congress with these words:
"I have told my country all my thoughts, my convictions and my hopes. I want my country to hear the word and advice of its first president, I want the people to vote. "
The person in charge of designing the project and defending it in Congress was the Minister of the Interior, the Catholic Indalecio Gómez. He had to face stiff resistance from conservative deputies, whose privileges were clearly threatened by the reform, and who were unaware of any other way of doing politics. Thus, many legislators from conservative sectors, even if they are not openly opposed, hinder the reform. After a month of discussion in the Chamber of Deputies and a week in the Senate, the Sáenz Peña Law was approved and promulgated on February 13, 1912.
The law was a great advance in its time since it allowed large masses of the population to participate in the electoral act, although it was still far from being completely universal: women and foreigners —who at that time were a large part of society— they did not yet have the right to vote. Although they did not vote, they were instead taken into account when determining the population of the districts and the number of deputies that could be elected from each one.
The first test of the Law in operation was in a provincial election: the Province of Santa Fe was intervened by the government, which ordered the holding of gubernatorial elections in accordance with the Sáenz Peña Law; the UCR abandoned abstentionism and participated, achieving victory. Shortly after, he obtained a new victory in the elections for deputies in the City of Buenos Aires, in elections in which popular participation rose to 62.85% of the electoral roll; in them the Socialist Party also obtained notable growth.
The Cry of Alcorta
During 1912, the agrarian rebellion of small and medium-sized rural tenants took place, known as the Grito de Alcorta, which shook the south of the province of Santa Fe (Argentina) and spread throughout the Pampas region, centered on the city de Alcorta, and which marked the irruption of the chacareros (mainly from European immigrants, especially Italians and Spaniards) in the national politics of the 20th century, also giving rise to their representative union organization, the Argentine Agrarian Federation.
Cabinet of Ministers
 Roque Sáenz Peña | ||
|---|---|---|
| Portfolio | Owner | Period |
| Ministry of the Interior | Indalecio Gómez Miguel S. Ortiz | 12 October 1910 – 12 February 1914 16 February 1914 – 9 August 1914 |
| Ministry of External Relations and Worship | Epifanio Portela Ernesto Bosch José Luis Murature | 12 October 1910 – 17 December 1910 17 December 1910 – 16 February 1914 16 February 1914 – 9 August 1914 |
| Ministry of Finance | José María Rosa Enrique Simón Pérez Norberto Piñero Lorenzo Anadon Enrique Carbó Ortiz | 12 October 1910 – 5 August 1912 5 August 1912 – 28 March 1913 1 April 1913 – 16 July 1913 21 July 1913 – 16 February 1914 16 February 1914 – 9 August 1914 |
| Ministry of Justice and Public Instruction | Juan M. Garro Carlos Ibarguren Thomas Cullen | 12 October 1910 – 16 July 1913 21 July 1913 – 12 February 1914 16 February 1914 – 9 August 1914 |
| Ministry of Agriculture | Eleodoro Lobos Adolfo Mugica Horacio Calderón | 12 October 1910 – 21 December 1911 21 December 1911 – 16 February 1914 16 February 1914 – 9 August 1914 |
| Ministry of Public Works | Ezekiel Ramos Mexía Carlos Meyer Pellegrini Manuel Moyano | 12 October 1910 – 16 July 1913 21 July 1913 – 16 February 1914 16 February 1914 – 9 August 1914 |
| Ministry of War | Gregorio Vélez Angel Allaria | 12 October 1910 – 12 February 1914 16 February 1914 – 9 August 1914 |
| Ministerio de Marina | Juan Pablo Sáenz Valiente | 12 October 1910 - 9 August 1914 |
Note: The ministers appointed on February 12, 1914 and assumed office on the 16th were appointed by Vice President De la Plaza, while Sáenz Peña continued to use his license for the disease that would lead to his death, without having resumed the position.
Death
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From the moment Roque Sáenz Peña took office as president, his health was not good, but it worsened noticeably from the year 1913. The version that circulated at the time was that the president suffered the neurological consequences of a syphilis that he would have contracted during the Pacific War. Several times he had to request leave. Sáenz Peña was the only president who lived in the Casa Rosada because of his sensitive health that prevented him from traveling with his cart from his home. He adopted a sector as his home and had heating, carpets, rocking chairs and stained glass.
Finally, he delegated the presidential command to his vice president Victorino de la Plaza. He died on August 9, 1914, two years before the end of his term, and was buried the following day in the Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires.
Tributes
The figure of Roque Sáenz Peña -as a soldier- is well remembered in Peru, where many cities in this country have a street named after Sáenz Peña and there are monuments to his memory. In the city of Lima, the historic monument made by the sculptor José Vivanco Quintanilla is exposed, on Avenida Javier Prado, in the district of San Isidro. One of the main avenues of the Constitutional Province of El Callao bears his name.
In Argentina, mainly in Buenos Aires, he is also highly honored, with streets, avenues and towns named after him. The second city of the province of Chaco honors his presidency.
In Rio de Janeiro, his name is remembered in the Sáenz Peña square and the respective subway station.