Between Revolution and the Ballot Box: The Origins of the Argentine Radical Party in the 1890s

Abstract

Alonso examines Argentine political history from the decline and fall of the government of Miguel Juárez Celman around 1887 to the restoration of political stability around 1895. Brief references occur in her book to the earlier 1880s and the later 1890s, although the analysis mainly dwells on the formation and initial consolidation of the Radical Party, founded in 1891. Alonso surveys the failure of the economic policies of Juárez Celman in the late 1880s, and the struggle for control over the Partido Autonomista Nacional (PAN) between Juárez Celman and his predecessor, Julio A. Roca. She reviews the formation of the Unión Cívica (UC), the parent body of the Unión Cívica Radical (UCR), in 1889 and the insurrection of July 1890 led by the UC. She details the factional struggles of 1891 leading to the division of the UC and the creation of the UCR. She continues with the election of Luis Sáenz Peña as president in 1892, and the Radical revolts of 1893 headed by the movements in Buenos Aires and Santa Fe. The book includes a discussion of the political leaders of the period, such as Julio A. Roca, Bartolomé Mitre, Leandro N. Alem, Carlos Pellegrini, and Hipólito Yrigoyen. The substantive part of the book ends with the elections of 1894. A brief review follows of the decline of Radicalism toward 1897.Alonso endorses recent research on the so-called oligarchy by Hilda Sábato. The latter illustrated the prevalence of political competition under the PAN against a traditional view stressing authoritarian control and the absence of such competition. Alonso emphasizes correctly that political competition remained confined to Buenos Aires; in most provinces, oligarchic rule survived uncontested. She makes an interesting comparison between the ideologies of the PAN and the UCR. Both parties were liberal, but the PAN belonged to the conservative strand of liberalism originally expounded in France by Benjamin Constant. The UCR represented an activist brand of liberalism reminiscent of the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Alonso also writes interestingly about the notions of revolution propounded by the Radicals, who understood the term in the literal sense of the word —a return to the point of origin. For the Radicals, (as Timothy Duncan originally stated), revolution indicated nostalgia for the politics of the 1860s and 1870s, which the rise of the PAN in 1880 destroyed. Alonso endorses earlier studies (originating with Ezequiel Gallo) emphasizing the ties between the Radicals and upper class groups. She provides an enlightening description of the elections of 1894 in the Federal Capital and the Province of Buenos Aires. Her brief discussion of friction between Roca and Pellegrini in 1897 presents new data on a conflict that played a central role in the collapse of the oligarchy.The shortcomings of the study stem from the author’s failure to place the work in the full context of Argentine political history during the nineteenth century. In the 1890s, the country betrayed many features of the long-standing regional division between the thirteen provinces on one side and Buenos Aires on the other. Roca (and briefly Juárez Celman) dominated the provinces through patronage ties with the governors; others such as Mitre, Pellegrini, and later the Radicals competed for control over Buenos Aires. Roca temporarily repressed the interregional division by the conquest of Buenos Aires in 1880, forming the shaky alliance known as the PAN. However, interregional tension revived and became critical following the policies of Juárez Celman from 1886. Alonso interprets Juárez’s Law of Guaranteed Banks of 1887 as favoring economic and political cen-tralization. On the contrary, the banking law alienated central power by granting the provinces control over the supply of money. Alonso’s failure to recognize the persistence of the underlying regional contest leads to other interpretive errors. She does not perceive that the formation of the UC and the 1890 revolt were metropolitan reactions against the government policies favoring the provinces. Regional concerns partly explained the failure of the forces of the UC under General Manuel Campos to make a more determined attempt to defeat the government in July 1890. Mitristas like Campos feared that the complete destruction of the government would lead to renascent civil war pitting Buenos Aires against the other provinces.Alonso follows Duncan in underestimating the influence of Roca in the early 1890s. During the economic depression, Roca commanded less influence in the outer provinces than before, mainly because he had less patronage to offer his supporters. His chief weakness lay in Buenos Aires, where he had always needed allies and proxies in order to exercise control. Nevertheless, he remained the country’s leading political figure and the architect of the gradual return to stability. In the early 1890s, he prevented a seizure of power by the factions in Buenos Aires. By early 1895, he had reconstructed the PAN as an alliance between the provinces and Buenos Aires. Roca’s actions during this period that Alonso sees as his weaknesses illustrated his objectives of rebuilding the PAN in its original form as precisely this kind of alliance of the provinces with Buenos Aires. In 1891, the attempted acuerdo between Roca and Mitre signified Roca’s first effort to restore Buenos Aires to the system of alliances controlled by the PAN. Roca did not propose the acuerdo because he was weak in the provinces, but because he wanted Mitre’s support in Buenos Aires. The acuerdo failed when the provincial governors reiterated their loyalty to Roca and refused to share power with the Mitristas. In another effort to rebuild the PAN, in 1892 Roca proposed Luis Sáenz Peña as president. He allowed a Porteño to become president, but only a person he could influence or coerce. In the early 1890s, Roca quickly regained supremacy over the outer provinces while reconstructing his influence in Congress. He achieved his objectives in Buenos Aires when his ally Pellegrini gained control over the province in 1894–1895. Underestimating Roca, Alonso exaggerates the influence of the anti-Roca groups based in Buenos Aires, the Radicals and the Modernists. By inflating their power, she applies to the 1890s conditions that remained unmet until the fall of Roca’s influence in 1908. By 1910, power no longer lay in Córdoba, the bastion of the PAN; economic and demographic growth shifted power into Buenos Aires. Two Buenos Aires-based political movements, the Unión Nacional of 1910 and the Unión Cívica Radical of 1916, provided the backing for the destruction of the provincial based oligarchy and the transition to representative democracy.