Who was Hipólito Yrigoyen?
Hipólito Yrigoyen was born in Buenos Aires in 1852 and took over the Radical Civic Union after the death of his uncle Leandro Alem in 1896. He pressed for honest elections. In 1916, once the Sáenz Peña Law had introduced the secret, universal and compulsory male vote, he became the first president chosen under it. He served from 1916 to 1922 and again from 1928 to 1930. A military coup led by José Félix Uriburu removed him on 6 September 1930, and he died on 3 July 1933.
Political views
- He argued that Argentina should control its own currency, credit, transport, energy networks and oil, and he drafted a state central bank that never passed.Source: todo-argentina.net
- He treated the Radical Civic Union as a redemptive mission rather than an ordinary party, and he saw himself as an apostle more than a chief.Source: todo-argentina.net
- He revoked public land grants that had been obtained irregularly; the total came to about eight million hectares by 1921.Source: todo-argentina.net
- A 1921 decree under his government created a general directorate for the state oil company YPF, though he failed to nationalize hydrocarbons.Source: todo-argentina.net
- He kept Argentina neutral in the First World War and protested to both sides over damaged ships, even under pressure to join the fighting.Source: todo-argentina.net
- He sympathized with the 1918 student movement at Córdoba and backed shared governance of universities.Source: todo-argentina.net
- Opponents charged that he ruled with an overly strong executive and that his federal interventions in the provinces upset the balance of power.Source: worldhistoryedu.com
Legacy
Admirers honor Yrigoyen as the first president who did not directly represent the landowning oligarchy, a champion of free elections, economic sovereignty and university reform. Critics point to his rule by decree and his unwillingness to bargain with rivals. During the Tragic Week of January 1919, police and paramilitary groups killed striking workers in Buenos Aires; the government counted about 65 dead, while some historians estimate more than 700. In Patagonia in 1920 and 1921 the army shot hundreds of rural strikers, and he refused to prosecute those responsible. The 1930 coup that toppled him opened the fraud-ridden Infamous Decade.