Molinari, Diego Luís (1889–1966)
Molinari, Diego Luís (1889–1966)
Argentine politician and historian Diego Luís Molinari was a close associate of Argentine presidents Hipólito Irigoyen and Juan Domingo Perón. Molinari began his political career in the Unión Cívica Radical, becoming the undersecretary of foreign relations during the first Irigoyen administration (1916–1922). In this capacity Molinari defended Argentine neutrality during World War I and led several diplomatic and commercial missions to neighboring countries before leaving the post to assume the presidency of the National Labor Department in 1922. He was elected national deputy for the federal capital in 1924 and to the Senate in 1928. Molinari's Senate term was cut short by the September 1930 military coup that ousted Irigoyen.
As part of a dissident Radical faction that supported Juan Domingo Perón, Molinari regained his Senate seat in 1946. He became head of the Peronist majority in the Senate and played a key role in early attempts to fuse the pro-Perón political organizations into what would become the Partido Peronista. In addition, Molinari played an active role in defending Argentina's protectionist commercial policy at the 1947–1948 United Nations Conference on Trade and Employment in Havana. Molinari withdrew from electoral politics with the fall of Perón in 1955.
Molinari's historical scholarship contributed to an important nationalist reevaluation of nineteenth-century caudillo politics, and his work stands with that of Rómulo Carbia, Ricardo Levene and Emilio Ravignani as part of the "New Historical School." In 1938 Molinari became a vice dean of the Universided de Buenos Aires, and from 1947 to 1955 headed the University's Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas.
See alsoIrigoyen, Bernardo de; Perón, Juan Domingo.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Molinari, Diego Luís. Antecedentes de la Revolución de Mayo. Buenos Aires: Peuser, 1922.
Molinari, Diego Luís. "¡Viva Ramírez!" El Despotismo en las Provincias de la Unión Del Sur (1816–1820). Buenos Aires: Coni, 1938.
Molinari, Diego Luís. El nacimiento del Nuevo Mundo, 1492–1534: Historia y cartografía. Buenos Aires: Editorial Kapelusz, 1941.
Pagano, Nora. "Un intelectual entre la academia y la política: Diego Lúis Molinari." In Estudios de historiografía argentina. Vol. II, edited by Julio Stortini, Nora Pagano, and Pablo Buchbinder. Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos, 1999.
James Cane