When in 1930 factions of the army overthrew the Radical regime of Hipólito Yrigoyen, the action marked the emergence of modern militarism in Argentina. Modern Argentine militarism is distinguished from previous military intervention in politics by the fact that since 1930 professional army officers rather than civilian politicians have exercised revolutionary leadership. Prior to that date the Argentine army or factions thereof had served as the necessary instruments of force in attempts by civilian political leaders to overthrow the constituted authorities.1 With the revolution of 1930 army officers began to initiate, plan, and lead military conspiracies. Furthermore, rebel army leaders now aspired to rule Argentina in the aftermath of military revolution.
The revolution of 1930 is generally viewed as the event which launched Argentina on the tortuous path of modern militarism and chronic instability. There has been a tendency to neglect the important fact that the revolution was the culmination as well as the inauguration of a significant political process in Argentina. Modern militarism did not suddenly emerge like a new volcano on the Argentine political scene. It was the product of institutional and political trends which began many years before the revolution of 1930.
The striking characteristic of modern Argentine militarism is that it evolved in one of the most highly professionalized armies in Latin America. For those who believe that military professionalization is an antidote to militarism, the Argentine case offers serious doubts. By professionalization is meant the formation of a technically trained army officer corps comprised of paid career men dedicated solely to professional matters. This objective necessitated the establishment of academies for advanced training in modern methods and weaponry along with the adoption of objective criteria for promotion based on merit and seniority. Paradoxically, professionalization in Argentina, with its emphasis on strict subordination to civilian authority and dedication to military matters alone, proved to be a necessary condition for the rise of modern militarism.
The process of military professionalization began with President Domingo F. Sarmiento, who in 1869 established the Colegio Militar to train officers for the Argentine army. Sarmiento looked to the formation of a professional army as the answer to the improvised gaucho militias of provincial caudillos who had spread havoc in Argentina during the long conflict between the port and the province of Buenos Aires.2 After this conflict ended in 1880 with the federalization of the city of Buenos Aires, the national army began to play a new role in Argentine history. It became the pretorian guard of an all-powerful president representing the landed oligarchy.3 From 1880 to 1886, President Julio A. Roca established the unicato, the one-man rule of the president, largely through the use of an army now well equipped with the new Remington rifle and capable of swift transport on recently constructed railroads. Using the power or the threat of army intervention, Roca transformed the once-powerful provincial governors into docile instruments of the president. Through these governors, in turn, and the Ministry of the Interior, charged with electoral supervision, Roca controlled elections to the congress. Thus it was that the armed forces, the provinces, and the legislature, were all subordinated to the unicato.4
While Roca was converting the army into a tool of the president he also pressed for military professionalization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His protegé, General Pablo R. Riccheri, was also a major figure in transforming the “Old Army” into the “New Army.” What had been an ill-disciplined cavalry force of impressed soldiers led by amateur officers became a conscript army with modern arms and a professional officer corps. According to military historians, the “three basic columns” which served as the foundation of the “New Army” were the modernization of weaponry and war material, the establishment of the Escuela Superior de Guerra, and the law of obligatory military service.5
In 1884, during his first administration, Roca converted the Argentine general staff from a simple bureau for the transmission of orders into a major institution intended to prepare the nation for war.6 During the 1890s Riccheri headed an armaments commission in Europe which purchased modern German weaponry on a large scale for the Argentine army.7 Both developments led to the creation of a war academy to train general staff officers in new military methods and weaponry. In 1899 Roca, then in his second term (1898-1904), engaged the first German training mission to organize such an academy on the Prussian model. On January 29, 1900, the Escuela Superior de Guerra was created by general order of the Ministry of War.8 One year later, the famous law no. 4031, sponsored by Minister of War Riccheri, established obligatory military service in Argentina.9
Military professionalization was destined to have a profound impact on the course of Argentine political history. Professionalization heightened the corporate consciousness of the army officer corps, especially its determination to acquire and maintain autonomy on vital matters such as promotion. By 1910, the criterion for promotion had shifted from political or presidential favoritism to mastery of the techniques of modern warfare.10 Officers of the “Old Army” were being retired in large numbers to enforce the new criterion. A related development was the shift in the control of promotions from the presidency to the professional army, represented by a Tribunal de Clasificación. The tribunal was comprised of commanders of army divisions headed by the highest ranking general.11 This shift meant that able officers could rise in the profession and acquire military prestige apart from that formerly bestowed by the president. In other words, a peacetime military establishment had become the first institution of state to escape the shadow of presidentialism. Should the presidency falter in a grave crisis and the state cease to operate, as happened in 1930, the army officer corps was prepared to provide not only the force but also the leadership needed to define political change.
From the institutional standpoint, modern Argentine militarism erupted as a challenge to a popular form of presidentialism. In 1916, the Radical leader, Hipólito Yrigoyen, became president of Argentina after the first honest elections in the nation’s history. All evidence indicates that most army officers looked favorably upon the transition in 1916 from rule by the landed oligarchy to that of the Radical middle class.
This shift in the army’s political sympathies resulted from the fact that professionalization had opened the officer corps to the sons of Argentina’s new middle class. By 1912 virtually all of the high ranks in the officer corps were occupied by young men, drawn mainly from the middle class.12 From 1900 to 1912 Yrigoyen had propagandized intensively for the support of these junior officers. After Roca’s retirement Yrigoyen established political connections with such influential roquista generals as Riccheri and Edmundo Racedo, governor of Entre Ríos. When in 1912 the famous Sáenz Peña Law was passed, assuring the secrecy of the ballot and honest elections, most army officers had come to see in Radicalism the great national movement of the day.13
Soon after taking office, however, Yrigoyen attempted to reestablish presidential domination over a professional army which had striven for more than a decade for a large measure of autonomy in institutional matters. Popular presidentialism and military professionalism thus collided head on. During the unsuccessful revolts of 1890, 1893, and 1905, the Radicals had built up a backlog of active sympathizers in the officer corps whose careers had suffered because of participation in these upheavals. To reward these officers and, more important, to convert the military into part of his personal political machine, Yrigoyen used the army as a source of patronage. Dead and retired fighters for the Radical cause were raised in rank to enlarge their pensions and those of their families. For the living, promotions and citations of merit, granted with little regard for military regulations and practice, rewarded past services and promised further benefits for future support.14
Resistance to Yrigoyen within the army at first took the form of defending military professionalism. Following a century-old tradition, discontented army officers in 1921 formed a secret lodge, the Logia de San Martín. The “Bases de la Logia San Martín,” formulated in 1922, provide an excellent example of professional protest as a stage in the rise of militarism.15 The document contains an oath taken by lodge members to comply strictly with the orders of their superiors, especially those of the president, maintaining a complete separation from political affairs. This is followed by the “Razón de Ser” of the lodge—the three general grievances which led to its formation: 1) the connection of officers to polities; 2) the relaxation of the sentiment of duty; 3) organic defects within the army.
With regard to the first grievance, political intervention in the army had undermined discipline. Such favoritism, the document continued, had led to injustices, the depreciation of law and regulations, and the loss of faith in military justice. Most important, political favoritism had undermined merit as the criterion for military advancement. These developments, in turn, had transformed the sentiment of duty into flagrant utilitarianism in the army. No longer was idealism the basis for selecting an army career; instead the career had become a modus vivendi through which officers pursued personal advantages. Fatalism had developed on all levels of the army, especially among the junior officers who tended to emulate their seniors.
In its drive to restore professionalism, however, the lodge was drawn into the arena of politics. By 1922, lodge members won control of the directorate of the Círculo Militar, the army club which could be used as a vehicle for protest and pressure. When in 1922 Marcelo T. de Alvear, Yrigoyen’s hand-picked successor, became president, the lodge moved into action. It insisted that no civilian or army officer close to Yrigoyen be appointed to the Ministry of War. Instead, the lodge backed the candidacy of Colonel Agustín P. Justo, popular director of the Colegio Militar. Alvear, determined to prove he was no mere instrument of Yrigoyen, complied with the demands by naming Justo to the post.16
The appointment of Justo marked still another stage in the professional army’s encroachment on presidentialism. An organized faction of the officer corps had decisively influenced the selection of the Minister of War. This event also had significant political repercussions. It enraged Yrigoyen and foreshadowed the split in 1924 of the Radical Party into the Radical personalists (followers of Yrigoyen) and the Radical anti-personalists (supporters of Alvear). When the appointment of Justo and other ministers was made known, cries of “treason! treason!” swept the plenary committee of the Radical Party of Buenos Aires.17
The appointment of Justo also caused deep divisions within the leadership of the professional army. It came as a blow to the most distinguished officer in the Argentine army, General José F. Uriburu.18 Destined to lead the revolution of 1930, Uriburu had been identified with every major development in the army since the turn of the century. Born of the traditional landholding elite of Salta in 1868, Uriburu would place his portrait in a family gallery which included generals, governors, and one president. After he had attended the Colegio Militar from 1885 to 1888, Uriburu’s young career was interrupted by participation in the unsuccessful revolution of 1890. The interruption was a brief one, and Uriburu climbed the military ladder through his abilities as a cavalry officer. In 1892 he was promoted from sub-lieutenant to lieutenant and in 1895 to lieutenant first class and named a member of the Commission on Boundaries to Chile; in 1897 he was promoted to captain and in 1902 to the rank of major.19
Uriburu came to personify the new officer of the “New Army.” In his rise to military fame, he was associated with a group of officers known as the “Young Turks,” who were dedicated to spreading techniques of modern warfare over the resistance of survivors from the “Old Army.”20 In 1908 Uriburu went to Germany to receive advanced training as a cavalry officer with the Uhlan guard of Berlin. One year later, he was promoted to the rank of colonel, and in 1910 he became director of the Escuela Superior de Guerra.
The high point of his rise to military prominence came in 1913, when President Roque Sáenz Peña sponsored a special law promoting the forty-five year-old Uriburu to the rank of brigadier general. This law was meant to dramatize President Saenz Peña’s commitment to the modern military outlook, and it caused stirrings within the army by elevating a young colonel, who had served only four years in rank, to brigadier general over candidates who had served as many as fourteen years in the colonelcy.21 Hence Uriburu, who is identified by historians with the rise of militarism in Argentina, had once been viewed as the very personification of professionalism.
Like Uriburu, Minister of War Justo was also destined to translate professional leadership into political power. Yet compared to Uriburu, Justo was a relative newcomer to military fame, for his appointment as Minister of War at the age of forty-six climaxed a meteoric rise in the army. He was born in 1876 in the province of Entre Ríos, the son of a middle-class lawyer. At the age of eleven, Justo, a precocious child, was admitted to the Colegio Militar. Having graduated from that institution at the age of sixteen, Justo entered the Faculty of Exact Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires where he studied engineering. He climbed the military ladder as a skilled professor of mathematics and a gifted subordinate to whom superiors turned for technical advice. In 1915, after serving two years as an artillery officer in Córdoba, Justo was named director of the Colegio Militar, a post which he held until 1922. As one of the most efficient and popular directors in the history of that institution, Justo’s word was law to seven graduating classes.22
Both Justo and Uriburu would seek to exploit the rise of professional discontent in the army against the policies of Yrigoyen. A third rival for the Ministry of War in 1922 was General Luis J. Dellepiane, a skilled professional officer, who bound his political destiny to Yrigoyen and the Radical personalists. Having won fame first as the officer who did most to develop the engineering division of the army, Dellepiane had gained Yrigoyen’s support by virtue of his strong leadership during the bloody labor strife of January 1919. Given virtually complete authority during that “Tragic Week,” Dellepiane restored both order to the city and authority to the civilians.23 He was Yrigoyen’s candidate for the Ministry of War in 1922 but was denied appointment by Alvear’s “treason.”
By 1922, then, it was clear that professionalization had created rival leaders of the army whose destinies were closely related to political developments. As a dynamic Minister of War in the years from 1922 to 1928, Justo executed a sweeping program of reform in the armed forces. Backed by President Alvear, he purchased modern weapons and war matériel for the military, built new barracks and officers’ quarters, and in general restored professionalism to the armed forces.24 In other words, Justo fulfilled the objectives of the pressure group known as the Logia de San Martín.
With Justo rising as the hero of the professional army, a collision with Uriburu was inevitable. In 1923 the ambitious young brigadier was named Inspector-General of the army. Unwilling to take orders from the upstart Minister of War, Uriburu maintained that he was responsible directly to the president and not to Justo. But the Judge Advocate of the armed forces, Dr. Carlos Risso Domínguez, ruled against him.25 In 1926, after repeated conflicts with Justo on military matters, Uriburu requested to be relieved from his post.26 Thus it was that a contest for power within the institutional framework of the professional army had created a rivalry which would later take on political and ideological overtones.
The growing fragmentation within the Argentine army officer corps was dramatized by a duel between Minister of War Justo and General Dellepiane on March 24, 1924. At that time the disappointed Dellepiane occupied the honored but innocuous post of adviser to the Section on International Boundaries in the Ministry of Foreign Relations. Envious of Justo’s climb to military prominence, Dellepiane leveled charges of corruption against him and his program of military modernization. The charges resulted in a duel between the two rivals, fought with sabers and lasting fifty-five minutes. After eleven separate assaults had inflicted minor wounds on both officers, the affair was stopped by the referee, Inspector General Uriburu.27 It had brought to the field of personal battle the three rival officers who represented the growing divisions within the army. A loyal Yrigoyenist, General Dellepiane represented the Radical personalists in the Argentine army. Pitted against him were the professional rivals, Uriburu and Justo, who competed to exploit the rising anti-Yrigoyen sentiment within the army.
The anti-Yrigoyenists of the army had tasted real power during the Alvear regime. However, the very success of the Logia de San Martín in achieving its professional goals had created a militant political minority within the army officer corps, determined to resist any resumption of Yrigoyen’s policies. Lodge members probably numbered no more than 188 out of an officer corps of 1600.28 Although the lodge was formally dissolved in January 1926, personal bonds between its members remained and were strengthened in conspiracies preceding the revolution of 1930.29
These conspiracies were stimulated by the imminence of Yrigoyen’s reelection in 1928. Faced with this prospect, ex-members of the lodge and other discontented officers of the army began to look either to Justo or to Uriburu for revolutionary leadership.30 As before, the militant anti-Yrigoyen minority in the army officer corps split into justista and uriburuista factions.
Members of the justista faction found in their leader a shrewd, flexible, and colorful politician, capable of using the established political interest groups for the sake of personal power. By 1928, Minister of War Justo’s office had become, in the words of Manuel Galvez, “a telephone center for anti-Radical politics.”31 It was the Radical personalists, the followers of Yrigoyen, against whom this justista conspiracy was directed. The Radical schism of 1924 had endured, and by 1928 the Radical anti-personalists were moving towards an alliance with Conservative politicians of the oligarchy. Himself a Radical anti-personalist, Justo was destined to emerge from the army to become the leader of this conservative alliance, later known as the Concordancia. But in 1928 his ambitions were temporarily thwarted by his political sponsor, President Alvear, who would brook no interference with the democratic processes. On February 21, 1928, Minister of War Justo, acting on the advice of Alvear, wrote a letter to the leading newspapers of Buenos Aires eschewing ambitions for the role of military dictator. Such rumors, he added, were either the work of sick souls or a political maneuver to discredit him.32
Events demonstrated that Alvear was an exception in refusing to use army factions as weapons against Radical personalism. In the years from 1928 to 1930 most conservative politicians proved quite willing to accept military leadership in wresting power from the Radical personalists. While Justo was seeking to convert his military prestige into political power, other conservatives beckoned him into the political arena. Their willingness to accept his leadership and military force indicates that Argentina had never achieved a real political consensus prior to 1930, for both the Radical personalists and the Conservative-Radical anti-personalist alliance were prepared to look to the army as an instrument of political conflict.
If Justo’s conspiracy was leagued with conservatism in Argentina, Uriburu’s plot told quite another story. In contrast to Justo, Uriburu was a stern, Prussianized army officer, who harbored a deep distaste for professional politicians. He dreamed of regenerating Argentina by extending the patriotism, honesty, and discipline of the army to society and polities. Such attitudes explain why the Uriburu conspiracy was linked to the rise of ultranationalism in the Argentine army. This Argentine trend was partly inspired by developments in Europe where fascists and ultranationalists were calling upon military strongmen to rescue the state from the parliamentarians and the democratic-republican system. Uriburu had been deeply influenced by the military dictatorship which General Miguel Primo de Rivera established in Spain during 1923, in a movement directed against the rampant corruption of the professional politicians. He also admired the fascist discipline imposed on Italy by Benito Mussolini. However, Uriburu was no mere imitator of foreign movements. He represented a new and native movement within the army which aimed at combining authoritarian military rule with economic nationalism and modern industrialization. This movement was directed against politicians of all stripes in Argentina. The uriburuistas attacked the free trading, conservative oligarchy for having used democratic institutions to deliver the nation to foreign interests. They were also opposed to the “demagogic” politicians of the Radical middle class, who, while avowedly nationalistic, manipulated the masses for the sake of power. The uriburuistas believed that only the army could redeem Argentina through social order and nationalism.
In 1928, however, neither the Uriburu nor the Justo faction represented the Argentine army as a whole. Modern Argentine militarism was not the creation of a politically monolithic army caste but of minority factions linked to a divided civilian elite. On the one hand the Justo faction was allied with the conservatives of Argentina. On the other hand Uriburu, who shunned professional politicians, did accept the advice of fascist elites and intellectuals drawn largely from the Argentine provinces. Both conspiracies developed simultaneously in a middle-class officer corps still predominantly pro-Radical personalist in sympathy.
Rebel army factions did not strike against Hipólito Yrigoyen after his election in 1928, for the new Argentine militarists were reluctant to move against a regime enjoying popular support. The Radical personalist ticket, headed by Yrigoyen, scored a resounding triumph over the Conservative-Radical anti-personalist alliance, the final tally being 838,583 to 414,026. When in early 1929 officers of the Justo clique urged their leader to action, the general replied that Yrigoyen’s election was too sweeping and that it would be an error to stage a revolution at this time.33 To Uriburu, well aware of the need for propaganda in the “conquest of the street,”34 as he called it, the Argentine people must also have seemed far from prepared to greet their savior.
Modern militarism emerged in 1930 after a complete collapse of popular presidentialism in the face of grave crisis. By 1929 economic depression was sweeping across Argentina and bringing to the surface all the long-suppressed weaknesses in its political system. Presidentialism depended on the abilities of the chief executive; yet Hipólito Yrigoyen, seventy-six years old, was senile and inept. Without presidential initiative, the Congress, divided into warring political cliques, proved barren of economic solutions. The Radical personalist-controlled Chamber of Deputies and the conservative-controlled Senate spent most of their time in debates on the credentials of newly elected rivals. Except for the rampant corruption of Yrigoyen’s aides, government had come to a standstill.35
While political stagnation and economic crisis eroded Yrigoyen’s popular support, discontent seethed within the army. In the years 1928 to 1930, Yrigoyen continued his assault on professionalism by using the army as a source of political patronage.36 As early as 1928, the new Minister of War Dellepiane carried out an investigation which brought to light the remnants of the Logia de San Martín.37 His warnings of disaffection in the army, however, did not deter Yrigoyen from resuming political manipulation of the military. Furthermore, he cancelled large orders of European military supplies made during the Alvear administration, a move deemed by many officers to be detrimental to the honor of the armed forces and the nation.38 Yrigoyen’s one move towards placating the military came in 1929, when he alloted 12,000,000 pesos to raise the salaries of the armed forces, the first such measure in nine years.39 Destined to become standard procedure in coping with military restiveness, this move did not still the talk of conspiracy in the army.
Against this backdrop of rising civilian and military discontent, the justista and uriburuista factions began in January 1930 to plot the overthrow of the Yrigoyen government. This alliance between conservative and ultranationalist factions was an uneasy one, however, ideological divisions having developed to reenforce the old professional and political rivalries between Uriburu and Justo. As the leader of the ultranationalists, Uriburu sought to make the revolution an exclusively military movement to be executed without the cooperation of professional politicians. He intended to direct the revolution not only against the Radical personalists but also against the institutions of republican democracy.
By executing the revolution without the aid of the Conservative-Anti-personalist politicians, Uriburu would have no post-revolutionary commitments to the old order and would be free to alter the Argentine system of government. After the revolution, he would become provisional president for an unstipulated period, during which he would assume virtually dictatorial powers. By methods which he did not make clear, the provisional government would enact basic legal reforms such as the revision of the Sáenz Peña Law—in effect instituting a qualified suffrage by opening the way for electoral fraud. The provisional government would also make constitutional changes, the most important being corporate representation as in Italy.40 Thus, Uriburu planned a radical revolution of the right aimed at implanting a fascist-like state in Argentina.
To the ultranationalist backers of Uriburu the conservative views of his rival, General Justo, represented the counterrevolution in the movement of 1930.41 The conservatives, military and civilian, wanted a revolution to restore republican-democratic institutions under their supervision. They sought to overthrow the Radical personalists, not to alter Argentine laws and institutions. Justistas believed that the revolution should be a civilian-military movement followed by a provisional government which would remain in power only long enough to establish conditions necessary for holding elections. Constitutional amendments, if deemed necessary by representatives of the people elected under the Sáenz Peña Law, should be made only through procedures set forth in the Constitution of 1853 (approval of two-thirds of each house and of a convention summoned for that purpose). The Sáenz Peña Law they regarded as an established and irreversible fact of Argentine life,42 and they sought only a limited revolution which would unseat the Radical personalists and restore their own power by exploiting Yrigoyen’s loss of public support.
Leadership of this uneasy revolutionary alliance fell to Uriburu, who had seized the initiative in organizing the conspiracy. In order not to endanger the movement by directly challenging its leader, Justo withdrew from the conspiracy and awaited the proper time to exert his influence. His views on the outcome of the revolution were destined to prevail, for the Uriburu conspiracy made little headway in the army officer corps. Though there were, to be sure, many discontented army officers, in 1930 Uriburu’s ultranationalism was too radical for most of them.
Indeed as late as August 12, 1930, successful execution of any revolution seemed a remote possibility, for the roll call of the revolution listed a mere 150 officers, most of them lieutenants. Not one of the crucial regiments of the capital and the powerful Campo de Mayo garrison could be counted upon to join. Not even the Colegio Militar, the force upon which Uriburu would ultimately rely for the execution of the revolution, was committed to it at this time.43
The weakness of Uriburu’s conspiracy rendered it vulnerable to a pre-revolutionary counter-movement of justista officers, led by Lieutenant Colonels José María Sarobe and Bartolomé Descalzo. With the support of officers from the Escuela Superior de Guerra, the justistas were able to impose their views on the Uriburu faction, altering revolutionary manifestoes to suit themselves and admitting conservative politicians as junior partners in the revolutionary planning.44
Although the inclusion of the justistas raised the number of officers sworn to the revolution from 150 to 30045 (out of an officer corps of 1600), the regiments of the capital and the Campo de Mayo garrison remained doubtful. According to the plan Uriburu would go to San Martín, put himself at the head of the cadets of the Colegio Militar, and rendezvous with 800 communications troops from El Palomar. While the revolutionary column marched to Buenos Aires, planes from El Palomar and Paraná would drop the revised manifestoes over the capital city, informing its residents that a democratic revolution had begun. The rest of the plan was compounded of audacity and confidence that a revolution in time of crisis must succeed.46
From the standpoint of military strength, the revolution was a gamble, but apathy and division within the Yrigoyen government assured its success. Because of Yrigoyen’s mental decline he failed to appreciate the danger of military conspiracy. His apathy was encouraged by conspirators within his own cabinet, who came to believe that only the president’s resignation could save Radical personalism. Each attempt by the loyal Minister of War Dellepiane to impress upon Yrigoyen the gravity of the situation met with resistance from Minister of the Interior Elipidio González, Minister of Justice Juan B. de la Campa, and Chief of Police Juan J. Graneros. Given secret assurances that the revolution aimed solely at forcing Yrigoyen’s resignation and bringing Vice President Enrique Martínez to power,47 these cabinet conspirators apparently tried to preserve their power in two ways. First, they awaited the proper time to ask for Yrigoyen’s resignation, after which they intended to clamp down upon the military conspiracy. Second, gambling to preserve their power should Yrigoyen be overthrown, they cooperated with the conspiracy by thwarting Dellepiane’s attempts to convince the president of impending revolt.
All efforts for effectively marshalling pro-Radical army support faded on September 3, 1930, when Minister of War Dellepiane, thwarted by the cabinet conspirators, resigned.48 His successor was the cabinet conspirator, Minister of the Interior González, and this appointment meant that a military vacuum was created within the government. Two days later, the ailing President Yrigoyen, acting on the advice of his personal physician and the cabinet conspirators, transferred his powers to Vice President Martínez.49 By September 5, 1930, the cabinet conspirators had achieved their objectives.
Their hold over a discredited government was to last only one day, however, for Vice President Martínez failed to play the role expected of him. Instead, on September 6, 1930, Lieutenant General Uriburu, leading a small force comprised mainly of the cadets from the Colegio Militar, conquered the Argentine government. Apart from a brief machine-gun flurry directed at the revolutionary column as it neared the Plaza del Congreso, Uriburu’s troops met no resistance during the triumphant eight-hour, fifteen-mile march from San Martín to the Casa Rosada. Neither the panic-stricken Martínez nor his new Minister of War, González, issued orders to resist the column. High-ranking loyalist officers, discouraged by the resignation of Dellepiane and responsive to popular demands for political change, did not direct their troops to defend a discredited government. From the top down, a complete collapse of command occurred in the demoralized army hierarchy, and not one serious military encounter marred Uriburu’s seizure of power.50 Thus was militarism born in Argentina.
After 1930 the army was sharply divided and knee-deep in politics. As provisional president, Uriburu made great efforts to gain the support of the army officer corps. But his fascist speeches and authoritarian rule alienated most of the army officers and cast the whole revolution into public disrepute. His rival, General Justo, gained control of the army by aligning his own faction with pro-Radical officers, known as the “legalists.”51 Confronted by rising military opposition, and mortally ill with cancer, Uriburu was forced to relinquish power. On November 8, 1931, General Justo was chosen president of Argentina in a contest which marked the return of electoral fraud to that country. Although counter to the prerevolutionary justista program, this use of fraud seemed necessary because Uriburu’s dictatorship had discredited all those associated with the revolution of 1930.
The new political alliance broke down soon after Justo took office in 1932. Dependent largely on the old conservative oligarchy for civilian support, the Justo regime soon alienated the “legalists.” In its so-called “infamous decade” of rule (1932-1943), it restored the control of the conservative oligarchy, increased electoral fraud and governmental corruption, and reopened Argentina to foreign investors. During this period, nationalistic army officers lost faith in politicians of every stripe. The nationalism of middle-class Radicalism, which had once held the allegiance of most army officers, proved sterile, divided, and inept. Furthermore, Justo purged many of the active legalists from the army because of unsuccessful uprisings between 1932 and 1934.52 Hence Radicalism lost its influence within the army. Given the choice between the justista faction, allied with the oligarchy, and the uriburuista brand of ultranationalist militarism, most army officers chose the latter. In the revolution of 1943 ultranationalism, now the dominant force in the army, toppled a discredited oligarchical regime.
That ex-Radical officers might some day turn to authoritarian military rule was foreseen by Alvear, friend of the professional army but enemy of militarism, who in the 1930s returned to the regular party organization. In 1937 he stated:53
The gravest error of General Uriburu was leading the army against Radicalism. The army reflects the people, and our people are 70% Radical. And it may follow that some day this 70% of Radicals in the army will rebel. Then they will be isolated, disavowed by the majority of the people which chastises it unjustly. Repudiated by the rest, they will deem themselves obligated by the circumstances to implant a dictatorship of the middle class, without support from within and outside the nation, incompetent and disoriented, despotic and anarchical.
The army ultranationalists who seized the state in 1943 honored the memory of Uriburu for having “led the liberating movement” of 1930.54 However, one among them, Colonel Juan D. Perón, was not prepared to repeat Uriburu’s error of basing a nationalistic military regime on quasi-fascist elites. A shrewd student of Argentine history, Perón recognized that ultranationalists in the army could not hold power for long without substantial civilian support. In the years from 1943 to 1946 Perón rose to power by harnessing the urban masses to an army regime and thus converting it from a military to a majoritarian dictatorship. In its inception, Peronism represented the adaptation of army ultranationalism to political and social realities in Argentina.
Roberto M. Ortiz, “El aspecto económico-social de la crisis de 1930,” Revista de historia (Buenos Aires), No. 3 (1958), 42-43.
Augusto G. Rodríguez, Sarmiento militar (Buenos Aires, 1950), 344-346; “Nuestro Colegio Militar,” Revista universitaria (Buenos Aires), VI, No. 61 (1935), 143.
A. Belín Sarmiento, Una república muerta (Buenos Aires, 1892), 19-21.
Ataúlfo Aznar Pérez, “Esquema de las fuerzas políticas actuantes hasta 1890,” Revista de historia, No. 1 (1957), 48-49; José Nicolás Matienzo, Nuevos temas políticos e históricos (Buenos Aires, 1928), 287-289.
Círculo Militar, Homenaje a la primera movilización, de conscriptos en su 40° aniversario, 1896-1936 (Buenos Aires, 1936), 4.
Círculo Militar, Monografía histórica del estado mayor (Buenos Aires, 1929), 60-62.
Círculo Militar, Teniente General D. Pablo Riccheri (Buenos Aires, 1936), 15-18.
“Escuela Superior de Guerra,” Revista universitaria, VI, No. 61 (1935), 135-138.
The operation of the obligatory military service act is described in detail in George Marvin, “Universal Military Service in Argentina,” World’s Work, XXXIII (1916-1917), 381-392.
Enrique Pavón Pereyra, Perón: preparación de una vida para el mando (1895-1942) (Buenos Aires, 1952), 43.
Augusto A. Maligne, “El ejército en octubre de 1910,” Revista de derecho, historia y letras (Buenos Aires), XXXVIII (March 1911), 408-409.
Ibid. (April 1911), 563.
Jorge Abelardo Ramos, Historia política del ejército argentino (Buenos Aires, 1959), 55-56.
Juan V Orona, “Una logia poco conocida y la Revolución del 6 de septiembre,” Revista de historia, No. 3 (1958), 73-74. An editorial, “ En el ejército,” La Nación, September 17, 1921, 4, declared that political influence in the Radical Party had become the “open sesame” for military advancement.
Text of “Bases de la Logia de San Martín,” in Orona, “Una logia poco conocida,” 92-94.
Ibid., 77-79.
Manuel Gálvez, Vida de Hipólito Yrigoyen . . . (Buenos Aires, 1939), 380.
Ernesto Palacio, Historia de la argentina, 1515-1938 (Buenos Aires 1954) 610-611.
Ismael Bucich Escobar, Historia de los présidentes argentinos (Buenos Aires, 1934), 548-553.
Emilio Kinkelín, “La personalidad militar del Teniente General Uriburu,” La Nación, May 3, 1932, 4.
Enrique J. Spangenberg Leguizamón, Los responsables: el ejército y la Unión Cívica Radical ante la democracia argentina (Buenos Aires, 1936), 65-66.
Bucich Escobar, Historia de los presidentes argentinos, 589-590.
Quién es quién en la Argentina: biografías contemporáneas (Buenos Aires, 1941), 203; Katherine S. Dreier, Five Months in the Argentine . . . (New York, 1920), 175-176.
Vicente de Pascal, “Argentina’s Man of Destiny?” Inter-American Monthly, I (November 1942), 16.
Spangenberg Leguizamón, Los responsables, 69.
Carlos Ibarguren, La historia que he vivido (Buenos Aires, 1955), 363.
Pascal, “Argentina’s Man of Destiny?” 16-17; Spangenberg Leguizamón, Los responsables, 75.
Exposé of the Lodge in última Hora (Buenos Aires), December 9, 1928, 5.
Orona, “Una logia poco conocida,” 87.
Félix Luna, Hipólito Yrigoyen, in Pueblo y Gobierno (12 vols., Buenos Aires, 1556), I, 459-461.
Gálvez, Vida de Hipólito Yrigoyen, 393.
Text of Junto’s letter in La Nación (February 21, 1928), 1.
Luna, Hipólito Yrigoyen, I, 461.
Juan E. Carulla, Genio de la Argentina . . . (Buenos Aires, 1943), 24-25.
Gálvez, Vida de Hipólito Yrigoyen, 401-405; Roberto Etchepareborda, Yrigoyen y el congreso (Buenos Aires, 1952), 38-39; Ramón Columba, El congreso que yo he visto (2 vols., Buenos Aires, 1948-1949), II, 94.
See the text of Dellepiane’s letter of resignation, September 3, 1930, in J. Beresford Crawkes, 533 días de historia argentina, 6 de septiembre de 1930, 20 de febrero de 1932 (Buenos Aires, 1932), 35-39. On the resumption of political manipulation of the military, see Luna, Hipólito Yrigoyen, I, 452; Gálvez, Vida de Hipólito Yrigoyen, 411; “Subversiones de valores en el ejército,” La Prensa, August 23, 1930, 13.
Atibo E. Cattáneo, “Entre rejas” (memorias) (Buenos Aires, 1939), 4-5.
Delfor del Valle, “La unión cívica radical y el ejército,” Hechos e Ideas (Buenos Aires), I (1935), 125.
Nicolás Repetto, Los socialistas y el ejército (Buenos Aires, 1936), 209-222.
José María Sarobe, Memorias sobre la revolución del 6 de septiembre de 1930 (Buenos Aires, 1957), 24-27; Diez periodistas porteños, Al margen de la conspiración (Buenos Aires, n.d.), 27-28.
Garulla, Genio de la Argentina, 25.
Sarobe, Memorias, 19-22, 50-52; Diez periodistas porteños, Al margen de la conspiración, 26-28.
Juan D. Perón, “Lo que yo ví, de la preparación y la realización de la revolución del 6 de septiembre de 1930. Contribución personal a la historia de la revolución,” in Sarobe, Memorias, 293-294.
Sarobe, Memorias, 102-137.
Perón, “Lo que yo ví,” 303.
Bartolomé Galíndez, Apuntes de tres revoluciones, 1930, 1943, 1955 (Buenos Aires, 1956), 10.
Luna, Hipólito Yrigoyen, I, 464.
Beresford Crawkes, 533 días, 35-39.
Diez periodistas porteños, Al margen de la conspiración, 135-139, describes in detail the efforts made by cabinet members to persuade Yrigoyen to resign.
The collapse of the army chain of command is described in Cattáneo, Entre rejas, 19-22 and Luna, Hipólito Yrigoyen, I, 474-475. Excellent chronicles of the day of the revolution are Roberto Etchepareborda, “Cronología nacional,” Revista de historia, No. 3 (19.58), 144-155 and Diez periodistas porteños, Al margen de la conspiración, 171-183.
Atilio Cattáneo, Plan 1932: las conspiraciones radicales contra el general Justo (Buenos Aires, 1959), 62-63.
Ibid., 67.
“Documentos para la historia,” La Vanguardia (Buenos Aires), July 17, 1945, 3.
Text of decree in Galíndez, Apuntes de tres revoluciones, 35.
Author notes
The author is Assistant Professor of History at The New York Institute of Technology.
