Raúl Alfonsín

Raúl Alfonsín, 2003

Autograph by Alfonsín

Raúl Ricardo Alfonsín Foulkes (born March 12, 1927 in Chascomús , Province of Buenos Aires , † March 31, 2009 in Buenos Aires ) was an Argentine politician . In 1983, after the end of the last military dictatorship in Argentina, he became the first democratic president and held this office until 1989, which he then handed over to Carlos Menem .

Life

Political development

Alfonsín's father was a shop owner who emigrated from Spain to Argentina and who , as an opponent of Franco in the Spanish civil war, sympathized with the republican side . Raúl Alfonsín studied at a military academy and graduated with a BA with the rank of lieutenant . Then he had enough of military life ("became fed up with the military") and studied law at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP). There he was involved in the centrist Unión Cívica Radical .

In 1963, Raúl Alfonsín became a national MP for the first time. In 1973 he tried for the first time to be run as a presidential candidate by his party, but he did not succeed.

After the Argentine military dictators had lost the Malvinas War ( Falklands War ) against Great Britain , democratic presidential elections were scheduled for October 30, 1983. This won Alfonsín as the first candidate of the Unión Cívica Radical (UCR) against Ítalo Argentino Lúder , the candidate of the Peronist Party (PJ). He won with 51.74% against 40.15% of the Peronists. Alfonsín managed to gather between 800,000 and a million people on Avenida 9 de Julio around the Obelisco at the last rally of his election campaign . His words became famous: “Con la democracia con la que no solo se vota, pero con la que se educa, con la que se cura, con la que se come.” (Translation: “With democracy, people not only vote, but it is used to educate, it is used to heal, it is used to nourish. "

Presidency

Coming to terms with the crimes of the dictatorship

Alfonsín as the new President of Argentina (1983)

In 1983, after only a few days in office, Alfonsín tackled the project to come to terms with the past. This happened at a time when Argentina was still surrounded by military dictatorships that had not only cooperated in Operation Condor in the " dirty " 1970s and 1980s . In addition to the legal appraisal, Alfonsin commissioned the investigation into the " forced disappearance " of tens of thousands of people (the Desaparecidos ) during the dictatorship. For this purpose, the “National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons” ( Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas - CONADEP) was founded. As chairman of this commission, the writer Ernesto Sabato handed him the famous document « Nunca más » in 1984 , which documented in detail the atrocities of the regime and the names of around 9,000 people who disappeared (Desaparecidos). Human rights groups now assume that the actual number of victims was up to 30,000.

Controversial amnesty laws

As Alfonsín confessed in a later interview, the plan for the amnesty laws “ Punto Final ” (final point) and “ Obedencia debida ” ( duty of obedience) for the crimes of the military had already matured before the first attempted coup in the Easter days of 1987 . For many years, Alfonsin was accused of passing these laws, as they led to a temporary end to the trials of the torturers and junta members. He asserted, however, that he was not only interested in the realization of human rights with regard to the past. He felt responsible to take care of the future of human rights in his country. The uprising of Easter 1987 ended with an address by Alfonsín from the balcony of Casa Rosada with the closing words: “¡Feliz pascua! ¡La casa está en orden! “. (Translation: "Happy Easter! The house is in order.")

Difficult overall situation

Alfonsín was confronted with a high level of foreign debt, dissatisfied military , strikes and hyperinflation . A first draft law provided for the reform of the trade unions. However, since these represented the power base of the Peronists , this first bill by the Alfonsin government was boycotted by the Peronist opposition. As a result, his government faced a total of 4,000 strikes and 15 general strikes. The attempt to make the country governable beyond Peronism failed for the time being. Alfonsin tried to get hyperinflation under control with the Austral plan , at least with temporary success, albeit boycotted by his own party .

After Carlos Menem had already been elected as his successor and rebellions and looting broke out in large parts of the country, Alfonsín tried in a final effort with the Peronists to set up a joint economic program for the last months of his term in office. This failed due to the Peronists' unwillingness to cooperate. Therefore, in 1989, he gave up the office of president five months before the end of the constitutional term to the winner of the presidential election, the Peronist Carlos Menem .

Late years

Alfonsín's tomb in Recoleta (2011)

However, Raul Alfonsín did not turn his back on politics. He remained committed to his country and his party and was Senator of the Republic to the end. Alfonsín died on the evening of March 31, 2009 in his apartment on Avenida Santa Fe of complications from lung cancer. Hundreds of citizens spontaneously gathered outside his home to pay their final respects. In the following two days of national mourning, around 70,000 Argentines paid their last respects to their ex-president in the congress building. Thousands followed the funeral procession through Avenida Callao and Calle Guido to the Recoleta cemetery , demonstrating for democracy in their country.

literature

• Raúl Alfonsín: Memoria Política. Fondo de Cultura Económica, Buenos Aires 2004, ISBN 978-950-557-617-3 , autobiography

Web links

Commons : Raúl Alfonsín  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Raul Alfonsin in the nndb (English)
• Detailed biography (Spanish)
• "Raul Alfonsin, 82, former Argentine Leader, Dies" , New York Times , March 31, 2009, (English)
• "Raúl Alfonsín" , Associated Press , April 1, 2009

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Clifford Krauss: "Raul Alfonsin, 82, former Argentine Leader, Dies" , NYT , 31. March 2009
2. ↑ Website of the organization Presentes! , accessed March 17, 2012

predecessor	Office	successor
Reynaldo Bignone (leader of the military regime)	President of Argentina 1983 - 1989	Carlos Saúl Menem