Between Revolution and the Ballot Box: The Origins of the Argentine Radical Party in the 1890s (review)

Between Revolution and the Ballot Box: The Origins of the Argentine Radical Party in the 1890s. By PAULA ALONSO. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Tables. Figures. Appendixes. Bibliography. Index. xiii, 242 pp. Cloth, $52.95.

Alonso examines Argentine political history from the decline and fall of the government of Miguel Juárez Celman around 1887 to the restoration of political stability around 1895. Brief references occur in her book to the earlier 1880s and the later 1890s, although the analysis mainly dwells on the formation and initial consolidation of the Radical Party, founded in 1891. Alonso surveys the failure of the economic policies of Juárez Celman in the late 1880s, and the struggle for control over the Partido Autonomista Nacional (PAN) between Juárez Celman and his predecessor, Julio A. Roca. She reviews the formation of the Unión Cívica (UC), the parent body of the Unión Cívica Radical (UCR), in 1889 and the insurrection of July 1890 led by the UC. She details the factional struggles of 1891 leading to the division of the UC and the creation of the UCR. She continues with the election of Luis Sáenz Peña as president in 1892, and the Radical revolts of 1893 headed by the movements in Buenos Aires and Santa Fe. The book includes a discussion of the political leaders of the period, such as Julio A. Roca, Bartolomé Mitre, Leandro N. Alem, Carlos Pellegrini, and Hipólito Yrigoyen. The substantive part of the book ends with the elections of 1894. A brief review follows of the decline of Radicalism toward 1897.

Alonso endorses recent research on the so-called oligarchy by Hilda Sábato. The latter illustrated the prevalence of political competition under the PAN against a traditional view stressing authoritarian control and the absence of such competition. Alonso emphasizes correctly that political competition remained confined to Buenos Aires; in most provinces, oligarchic rule survived uncontested. She makes an interesting comparison between the ideologies of the PAN and the UCR. Both parties were liberal, but the PAN belonged to the conservative strand of liberalism originally expounded in France by Benjamin Constant. The UCR represented an activist brand of liberalism reminiscent of the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Alonso also writes interestingly about the notions of revolution propounded by the Radicals, who understood the term in the literal sense of the word--a return to the point of origin. For the Radicals, (as Timothy Duncan originally stated), revolution indicated nostalgia for the politics of the 1860s and 1870s, which the rise of the PAN in 1880 destroyed. Alonso endorses earlier studies (originating with Ezequiel Gallo) emphasizing the ties between the Radicals and upper class groups. She provides an enlightening description of the elections of 1894 in the Federal Capital and the Province of Buenos Aires. Her brief discussion of friction between Roca and Pellegrini in 1897 presents new data on a conflict that played a central role in the collapse of the oligarchy.

The shortcomings of the study stem from the author's failure to place the work in the full context of Argentine political history during the nineteenth century. In the 1890s, the country betrayed many features of the long-standing regional division between the thirteen provinces on one side and Buenos Aires on the other. Roca (and briefly Juárez Celman) dominated the provinces through patronage ties with the governors; others such as Mitre, Pellegrini, and later the Radicals competed for control over Buenos Aires. Roca temporarily repressed the interregional division by the conquest of Buenos Aires in 1880, forming the shaky alliance known as the PAN. However, interregional tension revived and became critical following the policies of Juárez Celman from 1886. Alonso interprets Juárez's Law of Guaranteed Banks of 1887 as favoring economic and political centralization. On the contrary...