Julio Argentino Roca

Julio Argentino Roca as President

Alejo Julio Argentino Roca (born July 17, 1843 in Tucumán , † October 19, 1914 in Buenos Aires ) was an Argentine general and politician. He was President of Argentina from 1880 to 1886 and from 1898 to 1904 .

Life

Julio Roca was less than 15 years old when he joined the Army of the Argentine Confederation on March 19, 1858 . He took part in various battles and wars, including the war of the Triple Alliance against Paraguay . President Nicolás Avellaneda later named him general after defeating José M. Arredondo .

During the Presidency of Avellaneda he was Minister of War and his task was to prepare the desert campaign initiated by Adolfo Alsina . When he died in December 1877, Roca continued this campaign and ended it successfully in 1879. Since then he has been nicknamed Conquistador del Desierto (Conqueror of the Desert).

Because of his military successes and the huge land gain associated with it, he was proposed as the successor to President Avellaneda. In October 1879, he ended his military career to prepare for the election campaign. When Carlos Tejedor started a revolution in 1880, he was a key figure in the federalization of the country and the designation of Buenos Aires as the capital of Argentina.

After defeating Tejedor, Roca took over the presidency on October 12, 1880. Under his mandate, the so-called Laicist Laws ( Leyes Laicas ) were passed, which nationalized a number of functions that were previously in the hands of the Church. He also created the so-called Registro Civil , a register of all births, deaths and marriages, and made primary education free of charge by nationalizing church educational institutions. This led to a break in the relationship with the Vatican . Roca also transformed the Argentine economy into a state-run economy. In May 1886 he was the target of an assassination attempt, which he survived.

Julio A. Roca did not participate directly in the revolution of 1890, which was instigated by Leandro N. Alem and Bartolomé Miter (Unión Civica, later Unión Cívica Radical ), but he was pleased with the weakening of Miguel Juárez Celman . He himself had suggested Juárez Celman as his successor. Celman moved away from Roca and re-privatized large parts of the economy in a corrupt way.

After his first presidency he was a Senator and Minister of the Interior under Carlos Pellegrini . When President Luis Sáenz Peña resigned in January 1895, José Evaristo Uriburu took over the presidency. During this presidency Julio A. Roca was President of the Senate and therefore interim president again between October 28, 1895 and February 8, 1896, when Uriburu fell ill.

In mid-1897 he was put up again as a presidential candidate by the Partido Autonomista Nacional party and was able to take up a second regular term of office as president on October 12, 1898 without opposing candidates. During his second presidency, the so-called Ley de Residencia law was passed, which made it possible to expel union leaders from the country. In addition, military service was introduced in 1901. In 1902 the border conflict with Chile was resolved. His second presidency ended in 1904.

In 1912, Julio Roca was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary to Brazil by President Roque Sáenz Peña . There he initiated the Copa Roca , a soccer competition between Argentina and Brazil, named after him . In 1914 he returned to Argentina. He died on October 19, 1914.

Afterlife

Julio Argentino Roca is a representative figure in Argentine national history . This is not only reflected in the fact that a picture of him is depicted today on the 100 peso banknote of Argentina. He is also present differently, namely as a diverse namesake, for example in the name of the city of General Roca , or with an equestrian monument in a central location in Buenos Aires.
The confrontation with the national past has brought the " conqueror of the desert " into focus in the recent past. The debate revolves around whether the goal of the "desert campaign", namely to solve the Indian problem at the borders of European settlement with a determined will to destroy, should not be called genocide . The human rights activist and director of the Center for Genocide Studies at the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, Daniel Feierstein, for example, sees the border wars against the Indians as a genocide that is closely linked to the formation of the state (“genocidio constituyente”). Above all, Osvaldo Bayer aims to make Julio A. Roca disappear from national memory as a memorable figure. The French polar explorer Jean-Baptiste Charcot named the Roca Islands off the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula after him. The Scottish polar explorer William Speirs Bruce did the same with Cape Roca on Laurie Island in the archipelago of the South Orkney Islands.

literature

• Juan Carlos Coria: Julio Argentino Roca. De soldado a presidente . Círculo Militar, Buenos Aires 2004.
• Osvaldo Bayer, Daniel Campione, Horacio López: Historia de la crueldad argentina . Volume 1: Julio Argentino Roca . Ediciones del Centro Cultural del la Cooperación Floreal Gorini (CCC), Buenos Aires 2006. ISBN 978-950-860-184-1 .
• Osvaldo Bayer (ed.): Historia de la crueldad argentina. Julio Argentino Roca y el genocidio de los Pueblos Originarios . Red de Investigadores en Genocidio y Política Indígena en Argentina, Buenos Aires 2010.
• Viviana Isolá: Semblanza de un hombre de Estado: Julio Argentino Roca, 1880–1914 . In: Horacio Vázquez-Rial: Buenos Aires 1880-1913. La capital de un Imperio Imaginario . Alianza Editoral, Madrid 1996, ISBN 84-206-9472-X , pp. 110-127.

Web links

Commons : Julio Argentino Roca  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Biography of Julio A. Roca (Spanish)
• Biography of Julio A. Roca (Spanish)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Informe oficial de la Comision científica agregada al estado mayor general de la expedicion al Rio Negro <Patagonia> realizada en los meses de Abril, Mayo y Junio ​​de 1879, bajo las órdenes del General D. Julio A. Roca . Ostwald & Martinez, Buenos Aires 1881.
2. ↑ Law project for the fall of the Roca monument in Buenos Aires. (PDF; 532 kB)

predecessor	Office	successor
Nicolás Avellaneda	President of Argentina 1880 - 1886	Miguel Juarez Celman
José Evaristo Uriburu	President of Argentina 1898 - 1904	Manuel Quintana