Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
and populism. Instead, the Great Depression came first and exposed all
the shortcomings of the age of liberalism.
The Depression and a Military Coup
The depression affected Argentina deeply. The industrial nations suf-
fered a severe fall in investment and production beginning in 1929.
They sent less capital abroad and purchased fewer imports from South
America. Export prices collapsed in Argentina, and the foreign busi-
nesses responded by laying off thousands of workers. The oligarchy
had to curb its conspicuous consumption. Even the middle class
was sullen and discontented when it became increasingly difficult to
pay home mortgages in the suburbs and support sons at university.
Those who worked for the government bureaucracy were no better
off. Yrigoyen could not sign their pay vouchers for lack of customs
revenues.
Everyone blamed the Radicals for the depression. A man who once
was perceived as mystical and powerful, Hipólito Yrigoyen suddenly
seemed old and remote. His Radical sycophants in power were now
seen as corrupt and subservient to the foreign interests, just as the
conservatives had been. What was to be done? Yrigoyen had four more
years to go in his presidential term, and his popularity and ability to
rule had plummeted to impossibly low levels. In moments such as these
in the 19th century, invariably a military caudillo had stepped forward
to capture the popular imagination and “save the nation.” But the army
had not been involved in a political transition since the 1880s when it
helped launch the liberal age under General Roca and the Generation of
Eighty. Now, in 1930, the national army would be involved in undoing
liberal rule. Some of the conspiring army officers said they were saving
the constitution.
The conspiracy to oust Yrigoyen from power had its origins in 1929
but required a year and a half to collect sufficient support inside and
outside the military. General José F. Uriburu represented the hard-liners
within the military who resented Yrigoyen's interference in promotions
and his use of the army to intervene in provincial politics to the benefit
of Radical Party interests. General Agustín Justo led the more moderate
and larger faction of officers, whose penchant for caution dissolved as
Yrigoyen grew increasingly senile, autocratic, and obscurantist. This
moderate faction of the military proposed “to take by arms the road
of the Constitution and from this base to return as soon as possible to
