Lonardi, Eduardo (1896–1956)

A member of the Argentine military, Eduardo Lonardi served as de facto president of the nation from September 23 to November 13, 1955, after having led the Revolución Libertadora (Liberating Revolution), the military coup that overthrew President Juan Domingo Perón on September 16.

Lonardi studied at the Military School and at the Higher School of War. In 1951 he took part in an unsuccessful military coup against Perón, and then went into retirement. In that same year Perón was reelected president, but in the middle of his second term he lost the backing of the Catholic Church, with whom he was having increasingly serious conflicts, as well as the backing of important military and business sectors, in the midst of growing economic difficulties. Relations between the government and the opposition, already tense, became even more strained. In September 1955 General Lonardi led a new coup d'état; its success was not assured until it was joined by the navy under the command of Isaac Rojas and by army divisions led by Pedro Aramburu.

Lonardi assumed the de facto presidency on September 23, established an advisory board composed of non-Peronist politicians, and dissolved the congress. Representing the nationalist Catholic sector of the armed forces under the slogan "neither victorious nor vanquished," he attempted to implement a policy of reconciliation toward the Peronists. He did not take over control of the unions and did not ban the Peronist Party (though the party was stripped of its leader). The liberal military sector and the political forces that had supported the uprising were not happy with his conciliatory approach, and in November Lonardi was deposed by General Aramburu, who gave a hard-line, anti-Peronist orientation to the Liberating Revolution. Lonardi died of cancer in 1956.

See alsoAramburu, Pedro Eugenio; Argentina: The Twentieth Century; Argentina, Political Parties: Justicialist Party; Perón, Juan Domingo; Rojas, Isaac.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Caimari, Lila. Perón y la Iglesia católica: Religión, estado y sociedad en Argentina (1943–1955). Buenos Aires: Ariel, 1995.

Novaro, Marcos. Historia de la Argentina contemporánea: De Perón a Kirchner. Buenos Aires: Edhasa, 2006.

Potash, Robert A. El ejército y la política en la Argentina: 1945–1962, de Perón a Frondizi. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1984.

Torre, Juan Carlos. La vieja guardia sindical y Perón. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1990.

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