Roque Sáenz Peña

For his father, see Luis Sáenz Peña.

Roque Sáenz Peña
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President of the Argentine Nation
In office October 12, 1910 – August 9, 1914
Preceded by	José Figueroa Alcorta
Succeeded by	Victorino de la Plaza
National Deputy of Argentina
In office May 3, 1906 – 1907
Constituency	Federal Capital
Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Argentine Nation
In office June 30, 1890 – August 4, 1890
President	Miguel Juárez Celman
Preceded by	Amancio Alcorta
Succeeded by	Eduardo Costa
Personal details
Party	Autonomist Party (1862–1874) National Autonomist Party (1874–1892) Republican Party National Autonomist Party (1874–1891) Modernist Party (1891–1892) National Autonomist Party (modernist line) (1892–1914) National Union
Spouse	Rosa González
Parent	Luis Sáenz Peña
Signature

Roque Sáenz Peña (Buenos Aires, March 19, 1851 – ibid., August 9, 1914) was an Argentine lawyer and politician, and a volunteer combatant in the army of Peru in the War of the Pacific.

He was elected President of the Argentine Nation as the candidate of the modernist sector of the National Autonomist Party, holding the office from 1910 to 1914, when he died with a little more than two years of his term still remaining.

His most notable work was the drafting and enactment of the Sáenz Peña Law, or Law 8,871, which established in Argentina universal male, secret and compulsory suffrage.

His father, Luis Sáenz Peña, was also President of the Nation, holding the office from 1892 to 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 grandfathers, Roque Julián Sáenz Peña and Eduardo Lahitte, had been deputies of the Legislature during Rosas's government. After the defeat of Rosas at the Battle of Caseros, the federal tradition of his grandfathers and father, who did not change their convictions, kept them away from public office. 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 "Condición jurídica de los expósitos" (The legal status of foundlings).1912

During the Revolution of 1874 he defended the authorities of the nation 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 National Guards, but asked to be released from the ranks. An opponent of Bartolomé Mitre, he was active in the Autonomist Party led by Adolfo Alsina, and in 1876 he was elected to a Deputy's seat in the Legislature of the Province of Buenos Aires. He came to serve as presiding officer of the body at the age of 26, thus being one of the youngest presidents of the Chamber.

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Roque Sáenz Peña in his youth

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 dissensions within autonomism caused by the policy of conciliation initiated by President Nicolás Avellaneda, which Sáenz Peña opposed, he resigned his post and ended up temporarily abandoning politics.

On February 4, 1887, he married Rosa Isidora González Delgado in the Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar (Buenos Aires); she was the daughter of the Mendoza politician Lucas González and of Rosa Delgado ibarbaltz.

War of the Pacific

When the War of the Pacific broke out between Chile on one side and Peru and Bolivia on the other, in 1879 Roque Sáenz Peña quietly left his country and traveled to Lima. He offered his services to Peru, which granted him the rank of lieutenant colonel (Commander). At the Battle of Tarapacá he served under the command of Colonel Andrés Avelino Cáceres, where his side won a temporary victory over Chile. At the Battle of Arica he was in command of the Iquique battalion; after being wounded in the right arm and helplessly witnessing the death of many of his Peruvian comrades, he was taken prisoner by the Captain of the 4th Line Regiment of the Chilean army, Ricardo Silva Arriagada.

Don Roque Sáenz Peña remains calm, impassive; someone tells me he is Argentine; I then look at him more closely; he is tall, wears a mustache and a little pointed beard; his bearing is not very martial, because he is somewhat hunched; he looks about 32 years old; he wears a blue-black frock coat, like a sailor's; the belt and the sword slings, though he has no sword, over the frock coat; loose trousers, of a somewhat gray color; grenadier boots and a cap, which he wears in military fashion. At first sight one notices a cultured man, a man of the world. Later I hand over my prisoners to the Military Command, which places them first in the Customs House, and then they are embarked on the Itata.

— Ricardo Silva Arriagada

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Roque Sáenz Peña (first from right to left) together with the officers of Colonel Francisco Bolognesi of the Peruvian army, before the Battle of the Morro de Arica.

Roque Sáenz Peña was brought before a Court Martial and was confined near the Chilean capital. Released after six months, at the urging of his family and the Argentine government, he returned to Buenos Aires in September 1880. The Congress of the Argentine Nation, by unanimous vote, restored to him the Argentine citizenship that he had lost ipso iure upon joining the Peruvian army.

The years as an official

The country was then governed by General Julio Argentino Roca, and his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bernardo de Irigoyen, appointed him Undersecretary in 1880. A year later he resigned the post of Undersecretary and moved to Europe for two years.

Roque Sáenz Peña was initiated as a Freemason on March 14, 1882, in the Logia Docente.

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 that publication he confronted 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 plenipotentiary ambassador to 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 at the Washington Conference. There he defended the principle of the inviolability of states and ardently opposed the American project to create a continental customs union and a single currency for the continent. To the Monroe Doctrine, which upheld the slogan "America for the Americans", he opposed the slogan "America for humanity". The prestige he acquired through his diplomatic performance in Washington, and the political and financial crisis of the Juárez 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, Sáenz Peña was appointed President of the Banco Nacional.

The task of restoring the banks to health was not simple. The financial crisis of 1889, due to the continuous rise in the price of gold, and the enormous laxity of the loan system of the unicato, intended to finance the purchase of land and investments on the Stock Exchange, made it impossible for the official banking institutions, among which were the Banco Nacional and the Banco de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, to meet their obligations. In that context, the subscription of an internal loan through the Stock Exchange, at the initiative of President Pellegrini, failed and led to the suspension of the operations of the official banks on April 7, 1891. The Banco Nacional never managed to recover and finally ceased to exist in 1893.

The Modernist Party

In the midst of the serious political and economic crisis shaking the country, the figure of the young Roque Sáenz Peña emerged as the favorite for the presidential election of 1892, 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 carried out by the conservative sectors since 1880, and it had strong political backing: the Juárez-supporting youth; the governors of Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Santa Fe, Entre Ríos, Corrientes and Santiago del Estero; and important anti-Roca figures such as Manuel D. Pizarro of Córdoba.

However, the candidacy of the young Buenos Aires lawyer had important enemies, since it threatened to take control away from the National Autonomist Party of former president Julio Argentino Roca, who was politically at odds with the young Juárez supporters and whom Sáenz Peña called the "Napoleon of blond sugar". To hinder his candidacy, Bartolomé Mitre, leader of the National Civic Union, in collusion with Roca, promoted that of Roque's own father, the Supreme Court justice Luis Sáenz Peña.

The father's politically dull and inconsequential figure—Luis, a former legislator and former vice-governor of Buenos Aires—was enough to deal a fatal blow to the candidacy of the son, "the boy Roque", and to that of his close friend Bernardo de Irigoyen, backed by the revolutionary Radical Civic Union. El Mosquito mocked the high court magistrate by portraying him as an aged and senile William Tell, reluctant to shoot at his son's head the arrow handed to him by Roca and Mitre.

Rather than confront his father, Roque preferred to withdraw his candidacy and put an end to the Modernist Party, after which he declared:

"I regret that circumstances beyond my will, but not foreign to my heart, prevent me from accepting the high honor."

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Full-length photograph of Roque Sáenz Peña.

The elections gave the victory to Luis Sáenz Peña, who appointed Roque chief of the Regiment of National Guards. In June 1892 he joined the Senate of the Province of Buenos Aires, but shortly afterward he resigned both posts to withdraw from public life.

Modernism would continue as an internal current of the PAN, led by Roque Sáenz Peña himself.

Leadership of the anti-Roca movement

The political alliance between Pellegrini and Roca weakened in July 1901, though it did not yet disappear completely, over differences concerning a financial project. In that context, Roque Sáenz Peña headed the Pellegrinista list of national deputies in the Federal Capital, which was defeated in the elections of March 9, 1902. Since the complete-list system of Law 140 was still in force, the former foreign minister was unable to enter the national Congress.

Beginning in July 1902, a formal and definitive split occurred in the National Autonomist Party in the Argentine Republic over the succession of two-time President Julio A. Roca. The "convention of notables", established from 1903 as an informal body for selecting the presidential candidate of the dominant party, fractured over the failure to honor the commitment to nominate former president Carlos Pellegrini and Roca's decision to promote the lawyer Manuel Quintana in the election of 1904.

There two political expressions arose within the conservative ideology: the "national autonomists" or Roquistas, with their intransigent policy of maintaining electoral fraud, and the "autonomists" or Pellegrinistas, sectors split from the P.A.N. that were influenced by the Radical revolutions, the anarchist attacks and the workers' strikes. One of the Pellegrinistas' greatest concerns was to transfer the protests from the streets to parliament by giving political room to the new social actors. For that 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 that way, the three great emerging social forces of the time would be weakened: the labor movement, socialism and anarchism.

When the rupture of the P.A.N. took place and Quintana's candidacy was confirmed on October 12, 1903, Sáenz Peña organized a banquet of amends for Pellegrini two days later at the Café de París. There, the former president announced the reasons for the new anti-Roca political movement: "The political party to which we belonged has disappeared, being replaced by a single head that thinks, a will that decides, a voice that commands, one elector who elects".

Amid the institutional ups and downs of Manuel Quintana's presidential policy and the Radical revolution of 1905, the enemies of Julio A. Roca outnumbered his friends and allies. Thus, in the election of March 11, 1906, again under the complete-list system, the "Concentración Popular" (Popular Concentration) coalition defeated the government list amid scandals and protests over vote buying. It was a political front of former modernists, Mitristas, the conservative Benito Villanueva and Bernardista Radicals, which put forward Carlos Pellegrini, Emilio Mitre, Roque Sáenz Peña and Ernesto Tornquist in the top places.

The year 1906 was the time of the decline of the personalist system and of institutional fraud in Argentina, marked by the death of some of its principal political figures and the birth of new leaderships. On January 9 Bartolomé Mitre died; although he had announced his retirement from politics upon reaching the age of 80, he still enjoyed some influence, at least in the Capital and the Province of Buenos Aires; on March 12, less than 24 hours after the defeat of the governing party in the Capital, President Manuel Quintana died; on July 17, Carlos Pellegrini died; and on December 27, Bernardo de Irigoyen died.

In that fateful setting, Roque Sáenz Peña became Pellegrini's political heir and the "natural" candidate of the reformist conservatives for the presidency in 1910, owing to his international prestige and his political closeness to the new President of the Republic, José Figueroa Alcorta.

The greatest international recognition, though not free of criticism in the political circles of Buenos Aires, came from Peru for his military service. In 1879, he enlisted to fight for Peru in keeping with his convictions, during the bloody war it was waging against Chile. Incorporated with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, he took part in the Battle of Tarapacá, where he commanded the Iquique battalion, later moving to Arica. On June 5, 1880, the Chileans bombarded that stronghold from sea and land and began the assault on the 7th. The combat ended at the Morro and its outcome was favorable to Chile. Lieutenant Colonel Sáenz Peña fought with courage in that action, seeing other Peruvian commanders fall at his side, 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 the Peruvian President José Pardo Barreda, the Parliament granted him the rank of "Brigadier General", and on October 5, 1905, authorization was given by law of the Argentine Congress for Roque Sáenz Peña to accept the rank of "General of the Army of Peru".

On November 6, at the inauguration ceremony of the monument to Colonel Bolognesi, command of the Army of Peru was given to General Roque Sáenz Peña for the duration of the ceremony. The call of honor was sounded and the commanders of each of the units handed them over to Sáenz Peña. The aide to the Minister of War, Lieutenant Colonel Dupont, handed over command, pronouncing the following words: "By Supreme Order, I hand over command of the Army of Peru to General Roque Sáenz Peña, who shall be obeyed and respected". Peru honored Sáenz Peña with the following awards and recognitions: the Silver Medal of Tarapacá, honors by declaring him Benemérito del Perú (Distinguished Servant of Peru) and giving him Command of the Peruvian Army for the Ceremony of the Monument to General Bolognesi, and the Gold Medal of that Ceremony.

In 1906 the government of José Figueroa Alcorta appointed him special representative to attend the wedding ceremonies of King Alfonso XIII of Spain. There he was named envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to Spain, Portugal, Italy and Switzerland. Back in Argentina, in 1907 he was appointed to head the diplomatic missions in Switzerland and Italy. Upon arriving in Rome, he received instructions from his government to represent the country at the Second Hague Peace Conference together with Luis María Drago; there they upheld a position favorable to the creation of an international court of arbitration. In 1909 he was part of the arbitral tribunal that ruled on 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 his official proclamation as candidate for President of the Republic.

President of the Nation

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Sáenz Peña and his wife leaving the Palacio Sarmiento, 1911.

In the first months of 1909 the presidential candidacy of Roque Saenz Peña began to take shape, and his personal friend Paul Groussac published an article titled Saenz Peña praising his qualities and supporting that candidacy. On September 4, 1909, when his nomination was already consolidated and accepted, Saenz Peña left for Europe without it being settled who would accompany him as vice-presidential candidate. Those mentioned for it 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 their reaching an agreement, and Saenz Peña, who until then had let his supporters choose the vice-presidential candidate, became alarmed, considering that if it appeared to be an appointment at Figueroa Alcorta's indication his standing would be diminished, 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 de la Plaza's candidacy. The election that brought Roque Sáenz Peña to the presidency of Argentina was held on March 13, 1910, with a large number of the irregularities customary at that time. The new president had not even taken part in the electoral campaign: he was the Argentine ambassador in Italy. Only a single list of candidates for electors took part in the elections, of whom ten—out of 273—did not vote for Sáenz Peña.

Days before taking office, Sáenz Peña met with President Figueroa Alcorta and with the leader of the opposition, Hipólito Yrigoyen. In this last interview the Radical leader committed himself to abandoning the revolutionary path, and Sáenz Peña to enacting an electoral law that would modernize elections and prevent electoral fraud. Yrigoyen asked for federal intervention in the provinces to prevent their governors from interfering with that process; Sáenz Peña refused but allowed Radicalism to form part of the government.

Administration

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Sáenz Peña visits the Governor of Buenos Aires José Arias, in 1912.

From the moment he took charge of the government—on October 12, 1910—Roque Sáenz Peña changed the appearance of the Casa Rosada, adding ostentatious luxury to its ceremonial.

His term was marked by the debate over the electoral reform and its immediate results, and a good part of the political events of those years were eclipsed by that dispute. For example, the first subway in Buenos Aires was inaugurated, and the monumental Retiro Station was completed.

In 1912—at the initiative of the Minister of Agriculture, Ezequiel Ramos Mexía—Law 5,599 on the Development of the National Territories was enacted. Most of the national territories had the vast majority of their population concentrated on their sea or river coasts; for that reason, the law provided for—and to a large extent achieved—the construction of a large number of railway branch lines, which would allow the settlement of their population toward the interior. Branch lines were built in the national territories of Chaco, Formosa, Río Negro, Chubut and Santa Cruz; and a railway branch line even reached Posadas, capital of Misiones.

In June 1912 a great protest movement broke out among tenant farmers against the worsening conditions of their contracts with the owners of the fields they worked, known as the Grito de Alcorta. It spread throughout the entire Pampas region and ended with a massive reduction in rents. It marked the emergence of a portion of the rural middle class, made up of the tenant farmers, into the national politics of the 20th century. But at the same time it began a gradual trend toward the owners managing their own fields, as they 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, as recorded in the official bulletin 692-2nd part). It established that, as long as there was no military personnel trained in Aerostation and Aviation, the Technical Direction would be in the charge of the Aeroclub Argentino and the Military Direction in the charge of a 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

Main article: Sáenz Peña Law

Commemorative medals, on display at the Bicentennial Museum.

Sáenz Peña was a convinced democrat; he believed that, free of the professional politicians, the people would choose the best for their government. He was also concerned about the social question, that is, about the possibility that—kept away from politics—the workers might adhere to anarchism or socialism. Finally, he feared that the enormous proportion of foreign population, which did not take part in politics in any way, might fall into maximalist positions or remain a foreign body in society. For all these reasons he supported political reform based on universal and free suffrage.

Given the history of pressure on voters—who voted out loud—the only possibility of electoral freedom was the secret ballot, by means of ballots placed in sealed envelopes. And to ensure that no one was prevented from going to vote, he also made it universal and compulsory. The military register would be used as the electoral roll. Moreover, the population's participation in elections was extremely low, barely exceeding 20% of potential voters.

Sáenz Peña presented the bill to Congress with these words:

"I have told my country all my thoughts, my convictions and my hopes. May my country listen to the word and the counsel of its first magistrate; may the people vote."

The person in charge of designing the bill and defending it in Congress was the Minister of the Interior, the Catholic Indalecio Gómez. He had to face the stiff resistance of the conservative deputies, whose privileges were clearly threatened by the reform and who knew no other way of doing politics. Thus, many legislators from the conservative sectors, while not openly opposing it, obstructed the reform. After a month of debate 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 for its time, since it allowed large masses of the population to take part in elections, although it was still far from being completely universal: women and foreigners—who at the time were a large part of society—still had no right to vote. Although they did not vote, they were nevertheless taken into account when determining the population of the districts and the number of deputies each could elect.

The first test of the Law in operation was in a provincial election: the Province of Santa Fe was placed under federal intervention by the government, which ordered the gubernatorial elections to be held in accordance with the Sáenz Peña Law; the UCR abandoned abstentionism and took part, winning the victory. Shortly afterward it won another victory in the elections for deputies in the City of Buenos Aires, in an election in which popular participation rose to 62.85% of the electoral roll; in the same election the Socialist Party also achieved notable growth.

The Grito de Alcorta

During 1912 there took place the agrarian rebellion of small and medium rural tenants known as the Grito de Alcorta, which shook the south of the province of Santa Fe (Argentina) and spread throughout the entire Pampas region, centered on the town of Alcorta, and which marked the emergence of the chacareros (mostly descended from European immigrants, especially Italians and Spaniards) into the national politics of the 20th century, also giving rise to their representative trade organization, the Argentine Agrarian Federation.

Cabinet

Note: The ministers appointed on February 12, 1914, who took office on the 16th, were appointed by Vice President De la Plaza, while Sáenz Peña remained on leave due to the illness that would lead to his death, without having resumed office.

Death

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Sáenz Peña's funeral procession advancing along Avenida Callao.

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Monument to Roque Sáenz Peña in Lima, Peru

From the moment Roque Sáenz Peña took office as President, his health was not good, but it worsened considerably from the year 1913. The version circulating at the time was that the President suffered the neurological consequences of syphilis that he had supposedly contracted during the War of the Pacific. Several times he had to request leave. Sáenz Peña was the only president who lived in the Casa Rosada, because of his delicate health, which prevented him from traveling by carriage from his home. He adopted one section as his residence and had heating, carpets, rocking chairs and stained glass installed.

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 much remembered in Peru, where many cities of that 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 stands on Avenida Javier Prado, in the district of San Isidro. One of the main avenues of the Constitutional Province of Callao bears his name.

In Argentina, mainly in Buenos Aires, he is also widely honored, with streets, avenues and towns bearing his name. The second city of the province of Chaco honors his presidency.

In Rio de Janeiro, his name is remembered in Sáenz Peña Square and the subway station of the same name.

See also

• History of Argentina
• Right to vote
• Universal suffrage
• Law 140
• Women's suffrage
• Radical Civic Union
• Law 8,871
• Hipólito Yrigoyen

Bibliography

• Pigna, Felipe (October 2006). "Roque Sáenz Peña, un conservador de Ley". Los mitos de la historia argentina (in español) (1st ed.). Buenos Aires: Grupo Editorial Planeta. ISBN 950-49-1544-2.

External links

• La presidencia de Roque Sáenz Peña 1910-1914. (in Spanish)
• Accident of Roque Sáenz Peña in 1905 (Lima). (in Spanish)
• Speech by Dr. Roque Sáenz Peña (1898), on Wikilivres. (in Spanish)