Arturo Umberto Illia Biography

Arturo Umberto Illia

(Pergamino, 1900-Córdoba, 1983) Argentine politician, President of the Republic between 1963 and 1966.He completed his secondary studies at a Salesian institution and graduated as a doctor of medicine in the Faculty of Medical Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires.As a doctor for the State Railways, he settled in the city of Cruz del Eje, Córdoba province; but in 1930 he lost his job for political reasons.

Arturo Umberto Illia

Affiliated with the Radical Civic Union (UCR), in 1936 he was elected provincial senator and in 1940 vice-governor of the province of Córdoba.The coup of June 4, 1943, which overthrew the national authorities, also led to his dismissal as lieutenant governor.He was elected national deputy for the period 1948-1952.In March 1962, as a candidate for the UCR, he won the elections for governor of the province, but was unable to take office due to military pressure that forced President Arturo Frondizi to annul the elections, within the framework of a process that ended with the coup d'état that led to his overthrow.

He reached the first magistracy after having imposed with 21.15% of the votes the formula of the People's UCR (which he shared with Entre Ríos Carlos Perette) in the elections of July 7, 1963.The second place in the elections had been achieved by blank votes, with 19.72% of the votes, which were an expression of the resistance of the proscribed Peronism.Then followed the UCRI of Oscar Alende, with 16.40%; UDELPA, which responded to former de facto president Pedro Eugenio Aramburu, with 7.49%; and forty-five more parties.

The Illia government was born with an intrinsic weakness: abstention from Peronism constituted a serious obstacle due to the fact that the unions adhered to that political tendency.Another element of weakness was the lack of a proper majority in the Chamber of Deputies.Finally, it had to deal with an army whose leaders had come from overthrowing President Frondizi, manipulating his successor José María Guido with the aim of outlawing Peronism and dividing into two lines that led to the armed confrontation between September 1962 and April 1962.following year.

Peronism had organized a front that proposed Vicente Solano Lima as a candidate, but it had been banned by the Minister of the Interior, General Osiris Villegas.Seven days before the elections, Raúl Matera, a Peronist leader and a prestigious doctor, was elevated as a candidate for Christian democracy, a fact that led to his veto by the government, which argued the violation of the Statute of political parties.Immediately, the political and union branches of the justicialismo proposed the blank vote, and accused radicalism of manipulating the norms in their favor, since the aforementioned statute, which prohibited the existence of Peronist or communist parties, had been drawn up by Carlos Adrogué, Guido's Minister of the Interior and a man from the UCR.

Illia's cabinet was integrated with Juan Palmero in the Interior portfolio, Miguel Zavala Ortiz in Foreign Relations, Leopoldo Suárez in Defense, Eugenio Blanco and then Juan Carlos Pugliese in Economics, Carlos Alconada Aramburú in Education and Justice, Miguel Ferrando in Public Works and Services, Arturo Oñativia in Social Assistance and Public Health, and Fernando Solá in Labor and Social Security.

But Furthermore, the radical government was born from a party that Arturo Umberto Illia did not fully dominate.The president represented the so-called "Córdoba Line", a provincial tendency that enjoyed notorious independence at the national level.His candidacy was a compromise between the various sectors of radicalism, which actually expressed their misgivings about the national leadership faced by Ricardo Balbín, who had already been a candidate five years before and had been the loser.

One of the The first measures of the Illia government was to annul the oil contracts signed during the presidency of Arturo Frondizi, which, in the opinion of radicalism, seriously put national sovereignty at risk.The respective decree was later sent to the Chamber of Deputies, which formed a commission with the objective of investigating the validity of said contracts.After intense deliberations that prolonged for a year, the chamber ratified the decision of the Executive Power and accused the former president Frondizi and his minister Frigerio of "being responsible for the moral transgressions, the legal violations and the economic damages caused".

The conflict with Peronism had its first manifestation in a "Plan of struggle" proposed by the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) in January 1964, which consisted of days of progressive agitation until reaching the seizure of the establishments productive and conclude in twenty-four hours of simultaneous occupation throughout the country.The CGT's first step was to enlist the support of the opposition.Plant occupations began in the last days of May and lasted until July.Various union leaders were prosecuted for violating private property, but union mobilization continued.

In the early days of 1964, a drug bill was presented in Congress that regulated aspects of their production and marketing, with the aim of avoiding the excesses committed by laboratories, especially foreign ones.The sanction of this law was seen by many political analysts as the cause that led to the overthrow of President Illia.

During his government the first guerrilla movements took place, especially in the north of the country.Guerrilla cells were deactivated in the provinces of Salta, Jujuy, Formosa, Buenos Aires and others, while statements in repudiation of communism, Castroism or left-wing Peronism appeared in the newspapers.General Juan Carlos Onganía, commander-in-chief of the army, declared his deep anti-communist conviction, and around mid-1965 the concept of ideological frontier appeared, through which military associations of anti-communist countries were promoted to "combat the threat of communism."

On October 3, 1965, the president of France, Charles De Gaulle, visited Argentina.Previously, there had been agitations in university and political circles that tried to link the figure of the French with that of Juan Domingo Perón.During the public event in which De Gaulle spoke, Peronist slogans were heard in the aforementioned sense; The same happened in Córdoba, where there were shots and police repression.

From Madrid, former president Juan Domingo Perón threatened to return to the country, and in Buenos Aires his supporters assured that he would do so during 1964.He was formed then a pro-return commission led by the leader of the Metallurgical Workers Union, Augusto T.Vandor.The former president tried to travel to Buenos Aires, but when the plane made a stop in Rio de Janeiro, he was not allowed to stay in Brazil or continue the trip, for which he had to return to Madrid.The Argentine Foreign Ministry had moved quickly and had asked the Brazilian government to re-dispatch the plane.

On March 14, 1965 elections were held to partially renew the Chamber of Deputies with the intervention of Peronism, which was acting under the name of Unión Popular.The ballot was won by this group by 50,000 votes over the official party, while the group that responded to former President Frondizi was relegated to third place.In any case, the government managed to maintain the first minority in deputies and, which was ultimately more important for the system, incorporated a part of Peronism into the rules of democratic coexistence.

Another problem, This time in the external sphere, it was caused by a coup in the Dominican Republic that ended with an intervention by the United States, which asked the member countries of the Organization of American States (OAS) to validate the measure and send turn troops.It was a hot ember in the hands of the Argentine Foreign Minister to reconcile the non-interventionist position that public opinion sought with the commitments assumed with the OAS.The Chamber of Deputies demanded that a decision such as the dispatch of troops pass through their hands.The government delayed any decision, which helped to strengthen the anti-government propaganda that accused the government of being slow to resolve important issues.

By mid-1965, rumors of a military coup began to spread.There was a a struggle between the commander-in-chief of the army, Juan Carlos Onganía, and the secretary of war Avalos, which ended with the resignation of the latter, in a demonstration of the power concentrated in the former.However, Onganía requested his retirement in November 1965, in a gesture that seemed to show a loss of power but was actually aimed at preserving his figure.

At the beginning of 1966, union conflicts with strikes intensified, mobilizations and occupations of plants, to which student riots were added in May demanding an increase in the educational budget.On May 29, Army Day, the Commander-in-Chief, General Pistarini, affirmed in the presence of President Illia that the government's indecisions were encouraging the persistence of Peronism.This was the first public display of displeasure on the part of the military.Meanwhile, various media outlets spoke openly of the coup in office, and gave different versions about its drivers and participants.

On June 28 the prepared coup took place; the armed forces acted jointly and without misunderstanding among its components.Arturo Umberto Illia did not have any support among the military, and was evicted from the government house by a company of gas launchers.General Juan Carlos Onganía immediately assumed the presidency.

The government of President Illia fell due to its weaknesses from birth, in particular due to the limited electoral support, to which was added the gigantic agreement between the armed forces and certain sectors of journalism in complicity with an important part of Peronist unionism.These sectors postulated that the slowness and irresolution of the executive power constituted an obstacle in the race towards the modernization of society.Economically, the Illia government took advantage of the momentum of the exit from the economic crisis of 1962-63 and, with the right measures, achieved a reactivation.The gross domestic product and the industrial product grew, the trade balance obtained favorable balances and inflation fell.