Background
Roque Sáenz Peña was born on 19 March 1851 in Buenos Aires. He was the son of President Luis Sáenz Peña.
Roque Sáenz Peña was born on 19 March 1851 in Buenos Aires. He was the son of President Luis Sáenz Peña.
He graduated from law school in 1875.
He briefly fought in Argentina’s civil wars, he later was wounded while fighting on the Peruvian side in the War of the Pacific. Upon his return to Argentina, he was one of the founders in 1885 of the journal Sud America in which he urged that Argentina should resist U.S. hemispheric domination and that the nation should engage in world, not just hemispheric, politics. He was a consistent spokesman for this position at the many international meetings he attended as Argentine delegate.
In 1890 Sáenz Peña became Argentina’s foreign minister, and the following year he was nominated by the “modernist” faction of the Autonomist Party as presidential candidate. More traditional elements in the party opposed this, however, and nominated his father. Sáenz Peña withdrew his candidacy and retired from public life during his father's 1892-1895 presidency. After 1895 he returned to politics and held a number of diplomatic posts before being elected president of Argentina in 1910.
A year after his electoral reforms were passed, Sáenz Peña retired from the presidency for health reasons. He died the following year.
Sáenz Peña’s major contributions to Argentine politics was reform of the electoral laws in 1912. Linder the previous unfair and corrupt election procedure, only about 10 percent of the population voted, and the Radicals abstained in protest of the system.
Sáenz Peña’s reforms ensured more complete and honest voter registration, a secret ballot, compulsory voting, and minority representation. As a result, the Radical party ended its electoral boycott, and elected its candidate, Hipólito Yrigoyen to the presidency in 1916.
