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1930-46 - Conservative Restoration

General Jose F. Uriburu overthrew the civilian government in 1930. After several more military uprisings during that same year, the military finally returned the government to civilian authorities. From 1930 to 1943, a conservative coalition called the Concordancia dominated Argentinean politics. This group of conservative professional politicians was known for its fraudulent elections, corrupt practices and repressive tendencies.

The Great Depression had a profound political effect in Argentina because it highlighted the weakness of the political and economic arrangements of the liberal period and gave strength to political aspirations within the military. The country suffered the consequences of its dependent economic role as a producer of primary products for the international market and an importer of capital, finished goods, and labor. After 1930 the economic system was modified through greater state participation in the organization and direction of the economy.

The fall in export earnings provoked a flow of Argentine gold reserves abroad to pay for imports, which was followed by a government decision to suspend the conversion of paper money into gold in mid-December 1929. This generated a feeling of despair that soon found political expression in the electroal defeat of the UCR in Buenos Aires and in popular protests against the federal government. Yrigoyen's leadership was challenged by right-wing organizations, which held street demonstrations to demand the president's resignation.

On September 5, 1930, Yrigoyen resigned from the presidency and was replaced by Vice President Enrique Martinez. The next day General José F. Uriburu, commander of the Buenos Aires garrison, revolted, deposed Martinez, and declared martial law. The liberal constitutional process that had been established in 1862 was put to an end.

Uriburu was an aristocratic officer from Salta, the son of the former Conservative president, and a member of the "new professional army" of soldiers in Argentina. Military professionalization had begun in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centurie. It was characterized by the modernization of military training and equipment (provided largely by Germany), the establishment of the Superior War College in 1900, and the passage of a law of obligatory military service in 1901. The new professional army of mostly middle-class sons of immigrants welcomed the Radical government in 1916, but by 1921 a group of discontented officers had organized the San Martin's Lodge, a secret society that was to play an important role in the conspiracies leading up to the 1930 coup d'etat.

Although supported by a coalition of Conservatives, antipersonalists, and moderate socialists, Uriburu was against popular democracy and dreamed of delivering Argentina from the professional politicians. Uriburu had great admiration for Miguel Primo de Rivera and Benito Mussolini, who had imposed fascist dictatorships in Spain and Italy to rid their countries of corruption and anarchy. Thus, the rise of Uriburu marked a new phase of ultranationalism in Argentine politics and the replacement of the old bourgeois political regime by a new corporate state in the contemporary European tradition.

Uriburu's seizure of power was handicapped by the lack of full support from his military colleagues. General Agustin P. Justo, who defended the oligarchical interests and the restoration of the old order, led a liberal faction within the army. Uriburu's style of authoritarian rule and ultranationalistic speeches alienated most of the army officers and prompted a widespread challenge to his authority. In certain matters, however, he was careful to avoid antagonizing the military establishment.He carried out major cuts in government spending but spared the military budget; its share of government spending increased from 18.6 percent in 1930 to 20 percent in 1931.

Military opposition and ill health led to Uriburu's resignation. The Radicals abstained from participation in the fraudu- lent presidential elections of 1931, and Justo ascended to the presidency. Justo's victory resulted from a united political front of various Conservative factions, called the Concordancia, which controlled the Argentine political process from 1931 until 1943. Justo's presidency (1932-38) was characterized by a restoration of the export-oriented economic model, greater electoral fraud, government corruption, and favorable conditions for foreign investors.

Justo intended to discourage military involvement in politics. The economy was weak as a result of the worldwide depression and years of government financial mismanagement. The administration took unpopular steps to control the production and marketing of exports, including the establishment of a series of bilateral commercial agreements and foreign exchange controls. It centralized the collection of taxes, introduced an income tax, and created the Central Bank of the Argentine Republic to regulate all banking and fiscal activities in the country. These measures were criticized because they protected the agricultural and commercial interests and provided increasing concessions to foreign interests. The Roca- Runciman Trade 'Agreement of 1933 ensured British markets for Argentina's meat and agricultural products, and it protected British-manufactured imports from foreign and domestic competition in Argentina.

The British-owned utility and transportation companies were also protected from nationalization and further competition by railroads and streetcar lines. To bypass the 1933 agreement, the government began to build a road network that linked those areas not served by the railroads. The banking reorganization of 1935 also opened the doors to foreign interests, even though the new Central Bank remained in charge of national monetary policies. Justo's reforms went unchallenged as the result of the Radical strategy of electoral abstention between 1931 and 1935, while military skepticism of Justo's capacity to lead the' country through the difficult times of economic recovery increased.

Despite limitations on his performance, Justo was successful in reorienting the Argentine economy toward a diversification of exports and the development of import-substitution industries, which prompted the emergence of new industrial classes not directly dependent upon the export sector. The former elite resented the newcomers and entrenched itself in old-fashioned social and religious values, while corruption increased at all levels. In early 1938 the new administration of President Roberto M. Ortiz and Vice President Ramon S. Castub was inaugurated under the auspices of the Concordancia.

Ortiz was a lawyer and the son of immigrants. His career underlined the opportunities open to bright young people in early twentieth-century Argentina. He believed in the moralization of the political process through the application of the Sáenz Peña Law, despite having climbed to the presidency through a rigged election manipulated by Justo's followers. The administration was the object of public scrutiny, and in 1939 Ortiz was personally charged with having received a substantial payoff in a land-purchase deal for the construction of an airport. To make matters worse, Ortiz was in frail health and was forced to relinquish power to his vice president in 1940. He died in 1941.

The Ortiz-Castillo administration coincided with major changes in the world balance of power marked by the early Allied losses in Europe and the occupation of France by Hitler's troops. To preempt demonstrations from the different pro-Allied and pro-Axis factions in Argentina, a state of siege was declared after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Argentina had declared its neutrality in 1939 and during the war was economically dependent on European, especially British, markets and militarily dependent on German materiel and training missions.

Pro-Axis sentiments were widespread within the military and other nationalistic groups, and Argentina defied United States pressures to join the Allied cause in 1942. The death of Ortiz and Castillo's determination to rule without keeping the old compromises embodied in the Concordancia — including the neutrality of the armed forces in political matters — prompted its dissolution and unleashed military opposition to the government.

The 1930 coup was a logical conclusion to decades of emphasis on nationalism and militarism in Argentine public schools. In order to integrate the millions of immigrants and to preserve Argentine culture, the elites promoted nationalism and militarism in the public school system, based on the German and Japanese models. Children were taught that the ideal Argentine leaders were the soldier that died poor and the gauchos.