Sáenz Peña, Roque (1851–1914)

Roque Sáenz Peña (b. 19 March 1851; d. 9 August 1914), president of Argentina (1910–1914) who in 1912 initiated an electoral reform law that made voting compulsory and provided for the secret ballot and minority political representation in Congress. The law is known as the Sáenz Peña Law. Sáenz Peña belonged to the Argentine upper class. His father, Luis, was president of Argentina (1892–1895). Roque Sáenz Peña studied law at the University of Buenos Aires, but in 1874 he discontinued his studies for a brief period to join the forces that were suppressing a rebellion led by former President Bartolomé Mitre. He graduated in 1875 and a year later was elected to the Buenos Aires legislature representing the Partido Autonomista Nacional. When the War of the Pacific broke out in 1879, Sáenz Peña moved to Lima and joined the alliance of Peru and Bolivia against Chile. He became known for his bravery and participated in the battles of San Francisco and Tarapacá and also in the heroic defense of Arica, where he was taken prisoner in 1880.

After his return to Argentina, he was named undersecretary of the Ministry of Foreign Relations. In August 1887 he was appointed special envoy and minister plenipotentiary to Uruguay. In 1888 he served as a member of the delegation representing Argentina at the South American Conference of Private International Law held in Montevideo. A year later, he participated in the Pan-American Conference in Washington, D.C. In 1890, he served briefly as minister of foreign relations, having to resign as a consequence of the revolution of 26 July 1890. In 1891, Sáenz Peña became a presidential candidate but withdrew when Julio A. Roca and Bartolomé Mitre engineered his own father's candidacy. He resigned from the Senate in December 1892 to avoid a confrontation with his father and retired for three years to an estancia in the province of Entre Ríos. He returned to Buenos Aires in 1895 after his father's resignation. From that moment on he began attacking the corrupt, personalistic political system. The Reformista faction of the Partido Autonomista Nacional, headed by Carlos Pellegrini until his death in 1906, supported Sáenz Peña in the congressional elections of 1906 and 1908. In 1910, he was elected president.

See alsoSáenz Peña Law .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fermín Vicente Arenas Luque, Roque Sáenz Peña: El presidente del sufragio libre (1951).

Felipe Barreda y Laos, Roque Sáenz Peña (1954).

Miguel Angel Cárcano, Sáenz Peña: La revolución por los comicios, 2d ed. (1977).

Additional Bibliography

López, Mario Justo. De la república oligárquica a la república democrática: Estudio sobre la reforma política de Roque Sáenz Peña. Argentina: Lumiere, 2005.

Rock, David. State Building and Political Movements in Argentina, 1860–1916. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002.

Zimmermann, Eduardo A. Los liberales reformistas: La cuestión social en la Argentina, 1890–1916. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana: Universidad de San Andrés, 1995.

                                  Juan Manuel PÉrez