Jose Felix Uriburu Biography

José Félix Uriburu

(Salta, 1868-Paris, 1932) Argentine military and politician who held the highest leadership of the Republic from 1930 to 1932, after overthrowing President Hipólito Yrigoyen.From an aristocratic family, he was the nephew of President José Evaristo Uriburu.He was educated in a military college in Argentina, where he obtained a certain reputation as an enthusiastic soldier and a firm defender of the rights and privileges of his class.

José Félix Uriburu

In 1890, when he was only thirty-two years old and a young officer, he was the co-founder of a secret military society in Argentina dedicated to preserving the political significance of the military oligarchy in his country; That same year he intervened in the so-called Park Revolution, which would lead to the resignation of President Miguel Juárez Celman.

In 1896 he was part of the commission that resolved the serious (and long-term) border problem that it existed between Argentina and Chile.He soon demonstrated an energetic character and leadership skills.In 1907 he was appointed director of the Superior War College; then during a stay in Germany (1907-1910) he had the opportunity to come into contact with the Kaiser's imperial guard and became a staunch defender of Prussian militarism.

Between 1913 and 1914 he held the military attachés in Madrid, London and Berlin.Upon his return to Argentina and in the 1920s he developed his ideas on how a nation should be governed, imbued with the militaristic plans of the German regime and in the conception of the corporate state imposed by Benito Mussolini in fascist Italy.Since 1923 he was inspector general of the Argentine Navy, a position he held until his departure from the army in 1929.

In 1930, as a lieutenant general in the reserve, José Félix Uriburu led the uprising against President Hipólito Yrigoyen and took over the provisional power.In December of that same year, he made a public complaint against Yrigoyen's liberal-radical policy and postulated that a select elite should replace the liberal-democratic oligarchy that had held power in the country since 1916.After this speech he alienated the leaders radicals of the power of the national and local administrations and dissolved the courts, made a reform of the constitution and the electoral law and refused to allow the former radical leaders to participate in the work of government, and even in politics in general.

In 1931 he planned a strategy through which, with elections supposedly boycotted by the Radical Party of Yrigoyen, he got General Agustín Pedro Justo elected, who ensured the continuity in power of the military oligarchy, since it enjoyed the favor of the high command of the army.