Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear
Máximo Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear y Pacheco served as president of Argentina from 1922 to 1928.
His period of government coincided precisely with the end of the postwar world crisis, which allowed him to improve the economy and finances of the country without major setbacks. He also stood out in the development of the automotive industry and the successful oil exploitation, with which he achieved an economic prosperity unknown until then for Argentina, and that was demonstrated with the great increase achieved in the GDP per inhabitant. In 1928, it had reached the sixth position among the highest in the world. In the labor and social sphere, this period was characterized by a process of urban concentration in the Litoral and Greater Buenos Aires, in addition to the establishment of half a million immigrants; there was an increase in the middle class, a rise in real wages, and a decrease in strikes and similar conflicts.
When he left the presidency he settled in France. He returned to the country a few years later to reunify his party and try to become president for the second time in 1931, but his candidacy was prohibited by the military regime of José Félix Uriburu. Alvear, along with other radical coreligionists, was persecuted, imprisoned or had to go into exile on repeated occasions by the repressive regime of the infamous decade, for which he experienced the Martín García prison on the island.
On 23 March 1942 struck down by a heart attack, Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear died next to his wife Regina Pacini at their home in Don Torcuato.
Biography
Máximo Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear was born on 4 October 1868 in the city of Buenos Aires. son of Torcuato de Alvear and Elvira Pacheco y Reinoso, descended from the wealthy Alvear family, a patrician family of Basque origin.His great-grandfather Diego de Alvear y Ponce de León participated in the setting of boundaries with Brazil and became Brigadier General of the Royal Spanish Armada in 1770. His grandfather Carlos María de Alvear became supreme director of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata and commander of the national Army in the war in Brazil. His father Torcuato de Alvear was mayor of the city of Buenos Aires.
Alvear's youth was typical of that of a young man of the aristocracy. He frequented the different circuits of the Buenos Aires night, which ranged from the respectable theaters in the centre of the city of Buenos Aires to meeting places of dubious reputation.
He entered the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires in 1879. His studies were very irregular: he finished second and third years only in 1881; two years later, the fourth and fifth, concluding his studies in 1885; however, he had finished high school at the National School of Rosario. In February 1886, he asked Dr. Manuel Obarrio, dean of the Law School of the University of Buenos Aires, to enroll him as a regular student to study Law. In that same year he failed in Introduction to Law, but approved Public International Law. He was taking subjects regularly, without delays and with high marks, especially in the courses on civil law. Finally in 1891, just a year after the death of his father, he obtained his law degree.
The young Alvear, along with his fellow students and friends José Luis Cantilo, Fernando Saguier and Tomás Le Breton, formed a group with a certain reputation as public troublemakers. Some of those altercations even ended with some of the gang members in jail.
A man of fortune, he traveled widely in Europe and in 1906 he married the lyrical artist Regina Paccini in Lisbon; but his estrangement did not prevent him from following closely the events of the country and maintaining his interest in the efforts of radicalism in favor of the purity of suffrage and free vote.
Political career
Alvear had an outstanding performance by successfully organizing the meeting in the Florida Garden on 1 September 1889, a meeting that helped popularize Leandro N. Alem among the youth of Buenos Aires, who had been retired from political life since the 1880s. In this meeting the Revolution of the Park was also devised. Alvear was in charge of organizing the event, which was well attended. Immediately after the meeting at the Florida Garden, he began to work as Alem's secretary, and also accompanied him after the founding in 1890 of the Unión Cívica. In turn, he was a member and later president of the Socorro Club, member of the Directive Commission of the Civic Union and secretary of its National Committee. There are not many records of Alvear's performance in the Park Revolution, since he acted anonymously.In the middle of the year 1891 the division of the Civic Union took place, between the supporters of Leandro N. Alem and those of Bartolomé Mitre; Alvear – whose father had been an autonomist – chose to stay on Alem's side, and was one of the signatories of the manifesto of 2 July of that year, the founding act of the Unión Cívica Radical. That same year, Alvear accompanied the radical caudillo on a tour of the interior of the country to launch the Bernardo de Irigoyen-Juan M. Garro formula.
During the afternoon of 30 July 1893, an emissary informed the young Alvear, who was in the box of the Lyric Theater, that in half an hour he had to leave to participate in the radical revolution. He withdrew at night and, with the help of Aurelio Bagú as a guide along with other young people, they took over the Temperley police station. Three days later, Hipólito Yrigoyen arrived with 1500 men, after revolting the entire centre of the province of Buenos Aires. Yrigoyen, along with four thousand men, entered the city, where they were applauded by its inhabitants. On 4 August the head of the rebellion created several battalions to defend his settlement at Temperley.
File:Alvear - Leguizamon - Alem - Barruetavuena - Passe.jpg|left|thumb|198x198px|Alvear with Lenadro N. Alem, Francisco A. Barroetaveña and Juan Passe.
With the Sáenz Peña law of 1912, which established the secret and compulsory vote, the radicals abandoned the electoral abstention and Alvear was elected national deputy for the capital. Shortly afterwards he was taken to the presidency of the Jockey Club.
Regina and his years in France
In 1898, Alvear met the Portuguese soprano Regina Pacini, his future wife, when she was giving a season in Buenos Aires, at the General San Martín Municipal Theater. However, a first attempt to woo her was unsuccessful. Thus, Alvear left for Europe on the longest of the many trips he had made, determined to go after the Portuguese soprano, even going so far as to follow her throughout Europe, since the "persecution" would last eight years. At that time it was not well seen for an aristocrat to marry an artist.They finally got married at seven in the morning on Saturday, 29 April 1907, in the Lisbon church of Nuestra Señora de la Encarnación. After getting married, Alvear lived in Paris for several years.
Deputy and ambassador
When the Chamber of Deputies was renewed, he was elected deputy for the province of Buenos Aires; He was a hardworking parliamentarian and presented to Congress a bill related to civil servants of the State, which tended to base promotions in the hierarchical ladder by competition and antecedents.During his period as a deputy he presented projects for the regulation of the civil code, debated on the organization of the army, He also supported, together with the deputies Carlos Saavedra Lamas, Julio Argentino Pascual Roca and Lisandro de la Torre, a law to create a body of Gendarmerie to protect the Argentine borders, although the project would not ultimately succeed.
In 1916 the new president, Hipolito Yrigoyen, privately proposed the post of Minister of War, but Alvear rejected it. He then offered to be ambassador to France, a position he accepted and held until 1922. During the five years that the First World War lasted, Alvear carried out missions to help the allies in Paris, donating together with his wife Regina Pacini a war hospital and a blood bank, where Pacini was in charge of caring for the wounded. The funds for this were obtained thanks to the contacts that Alvear had. For example, when the French military officer Joseph Joffre suggested to the Argentine ambassador to install an Argentine pavilion in the university city of Paris, Alvear was able to pay for the work thanks to the contributions of Otto Bemberg. He also assisted in the negotiations for the sale of crops to the allies during the Great War. Here the first differences between Alvear and Yrigoyen appeared: when the latter argued that Argentina should maintain a neutral position, Alvear was in favor of the country declaring itself to the side of the Triple Entente.
1922 election
After the first radical government of Hipólito Yrigoyen, the problem of presidential succession arose. Faced with disputes within the party, in March 1922 the National Convention of the UCR, despite the episode of the commission in Geneva that aired the fact of ideological differences, Yrigoyen decided to support Alvear, at that time ambassador to France, and a member of the most conservative faction of the UCR, of patrician and landowning social origin, and with few ties to the popular base of the party.The National Convention elected him a candidate in March 1922 by 139 votes to 33. The Alvear-González formula triumphed over the Piñero-Núñez binomial in the elections of 2 April 1922, imposing itself in all districts except for Corrientes, Salta and San Juan.
Alvear acceded to the presidency winning with 47.5% of the votes, or 419,172 votes. On 12 June, 235 radical voters out of 88 opponents consecrated Alvear, who still resided in France, as the Nation's president.
The European governments saw with satisfaction the election of the new Argentine president, widely associated with the representative men of Western politics.
Presidency
Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear assumed the presidency of Argentina on 12 October 1922, but his cabinet caused a bad impression among many radicals, since almost none of the ministers was in favor of the former president, although it was, in most cases, of personalities of recognized intellectual capacity. For this reason, the distance between Alvear and Yrigoyen began. Certain appointments of ministers were surprising, as was the case of Admiral Manuel Domecq García, fervent repressor of the striking demonstrations during the Yrigoyen government, as well as the appointment of General Agustín Justo.The Argentine radio broadcast the ceremony of the transfer of command, and for the first time in the history of Argentina the voice of a president was heard on the radio. The Sunday following the inauguration, Alvear visited the Jockey Club. It had been six years since a president had not attended there, as Yrigoyen refused to do so. Alvear's cabinet fully attended an interpellation in the Chamber of Deputies, when the ministers had not attended at least since 1919. On 1 May 1923 Alvear read the presidential speech. At 8:00 p.m., Alvear took his car and drove to the Constitución neighborhood to Yrigoyen's house, who invited him to dinner.