Argentina’s Radical Party and Popular Mobilization, 1916–1930 (review)

From the passage of an electoral reform law in 1912 to the military coup of 1930, Argentina conducted an experiment in democracy. Relatively free and fair elections make the period a significant outlier within the country’s history of extreme political instability and recurring authoritarianism. Just as important, these years saw the emergence of the Unión Cívica Radical, arguably the first political party in Latin America to succeed at modern mass politics. Yet despite its obvious significance, the Radical era has resisted historical reassessment; David Rock’s Politics in Argentina, 1890–1930 (1975), published more than three decades ago, remains the classic touchstone. With his new book, Joel Horowitz aims to fill this void by offering new interpretations of the Radical presidencies of Hipólito Yrigoyen and Marcelo T. de Alvear, of the party’s use of clientelist tactics, and of its relationship to the labor movement.

Horowitz challenges the received wisdom on the Radicals in several ways. Rock and others have argued that the key to the party’s electoral success was its distribution of political patronage, particularly in the form of government jobs. Horowitz agrees that clientelism was extensive during the period, and he provides the most nuanced account we have of its operation on both the municipal and national levels. But he argues that these tactics cannot account for the party’s appeal. In fact, other political factions distributed jobs to their followers, yet they never approached the Radicals’ popularity. After the party split in the mid-1920s, Alvear’s Anti-Personalist faction was just as committed to the use of patronage as Yrigoyen’s, yet the Anti-Personalists fell far short at the polls. Instead, Horowitz attributes much of the Radicals’ success to Yrigoyen’s powerful personal appeal. Treating the Radical leader as a precursor to Juan and Eva Perón, Horowitz argues that Yrigoyen’s austerity and his image as a generous, almost saintly figure who sincerely cared about the less fortunate attracted many Argentine voters.

Yrigoyen’s most effective political technique, according to Horowitz, was his use of obrerismo, the notion that he had a special bond with the working class. The Radical president cultivated personal relationships with key syndicalist union leaders, and in the years between 1916 and 1921, he pursued an ad hoc policy of support for certain strikes. This insight is not new; Rock also interpreted the Radicals’ pro-labor interventions as a strategy aimed at attracting votes. Yet Horowitz, an accomplished labor historian, provides a more detailed picture of the various ideological tendencies that competed for control of the unions. Focusing particular attention on the railroad, port, and municipal workers, he illuminates the evolving relationship between labor and the Radical government. He shows that Yrigoyen’s obrerista policy lasted longer than previously thought. More importantly, he questions the standard image of Alvear’s Anti-Personalists as an elite, conservative branch of the party. Horowitz reveals that Alvear also tried to forge a bond with labor, supporting the development of disciplined, centralized unions modeled on the railroad workers’ Unión Ferroviaria, but these efforts were undermined by internal divisions within his own administration.

Given the poor state of the archives for this period, Horowitz’s research is impressive. He has read extremely widely in the mainstream and, especially, the labor press, and he draws on a wide variety of official documents and memoirs. While this research enables Horowitz to correct Rock’s analysis in several important ways, his approach to the period is fundamentally shaped by Rock’s work. Horowitz is still asking the same questions as Rock, even if his answers are somewhat different. This indebtedness to the earlier work limits the potential impact of the book, as Horowitz misses several opportunities to push the study of the Radical era in new directions. While he mentions the extensive scholarship on the popular culture of the barrios, he does not explore in any...