Everything about Hip Lito Yrigoyen totally explained
Juan Hipólito del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús Irigoyen Alem (
July 12 1852 –
July 3 1933) was twice
President of Argentina (from 1916 to 1922 and again from 1928 to 1930). Yrigoyen (he signed that way to differ from Bernardo de Irigoyen's poitical ideas) was popularly known as
el peludo (The mole) due to his beady eyes. Pro-Yrigoyen political supporters were known as "
personalistas", a rude suggestion that they were
sycophants of Yrigoyen, anti-Yrigoyen elements, not surprisingly, were known as "
anti-personalistas". One of the tragedies of Argentina is that Argentina reached its pinnacle of world political power (in 1929, it had the world's 4th largest
gross domestic product) during the Yrigoyen years, and hasn't approached that level of world influence since those times. He was a schoolteacher before turning to politics, Irigoyen in 1896 became the leader of the Radical Party, putting his personal stamp on it for the next four decades. He fought electoral corruption by boycotting elections until after reforms were carried out in 1912. Four years later he was elected president. Most popular with the middle class, which for the first time felt it was part of the political process, Irigoyen kept Argentina out of World War I, allowing it to profit from the high beef prices on the world market. He was elected president by a large margin in 1928, but his inability to deal with the crisis brought on by the worldwide depression caused his removal from office by an army coup in 1930.
Freedom activist
Born in
Buenos Aires, Yrigoyen worked as a school teacher before entering politics. In 1891 he co-founded the
Radical Civic Union (
Unión Cívica Radical), together with his uncle,
Leandro Alem. Following Alem's
suicide in 1896, Hipólito Yrigoyen assumed sole leadership of the Radical Civic Union. It adopted a policy of intransigency, a position of total opposition to the regime known as "The Agreement". Established by electoral fraud, this was an agreed formula among the political parties of that time for alternating in power. The Radical Civic Union took up arms in 1893 and again in 1905. Later, however, Yrigoyen adopted a policy of nonviolence, pursuing instead the strategy of "revolutionary abstention", a total
boycott of all polls until 1912, when President
Roque Sáenz Peña was forced to agree to the passage of the
Sáenz Peña Law, which established secret, universal, and compulsory male
suffrage.
First presidency (1916–1922)
Yrigoyen was elected President of Argentina in 1916. He frequently found himself hemmed in, however, as the
Senate was appointed by the legislatures of the
provinces, most of which were controlled by the opposition. Several times, Yrigoyen resorted to federal intervention by declaring a state of emergency, which deepened the confrontation with the establishment. Yrigoyen was popular, however, among middle class voters, who felt integrated for the first time in political process, and the Argentinian economy prospered under his leadership. Yrigoyen preserved Argentine neutrality during
World War I, which turned out to be a boon, owing to higher beef prices and the opening up of many new markets to Argentina's primary exports (meat and cereals). Argentina was known as the barn of the world, and its
gross domestic product placed it among the wealthiest nations on earth. Constitutionally barred from re-election, Yrigoyen was succeeded by
Marcelo T. de Alvear.
Second presidency (1928–1930)
On the expiration of Alvear's term in 1928, Yrigoyen was overwhelmingly elected President for the second time. In his late seventies, he found himself surrounded by aides who censored his access to news reports, hiding from him the reality of the effects of the
Great Depression, which hit towards the end of 1929. On
December 24 of this year he survived an assassination attempt.
Fascist and conservative sectors of the army and the intelligence (such as
Leopoldo Lugones) plotted openly for a regime change. On
September 6 1930, Yrigoyen was deposed in a military coup by
José Félix Uriburu. This was the first military coup since the adoption of the
Argentine constitution.
Twilight years
After his overthrow, Yrigoyen was placed under house arrest and confined several times to
Isla Martín García. He died in
Buenos Aires.
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