Agustín Pedro Justo

In 1915, during the term of office of Victorino de la Plaza, he was appointed director of the Military College, a post where he would remain for the following seven years. The great influence of this position helped him to weave contacts in political circles, just as in the military. Pursuant to the radical anti-personalist political branch (those that opposed the party leadership of Hipólito Yrigoyen), he established good relations with Marcelo T. de Alvear. During his tenure he enlarged the curriculum of the college and promoted the formation of the faculty.

During Alvear's administration in 1922 he left the Military College to become the Minister of War. Promoted to the rank of brigadier general on 25 August 1923, Justo requested an increase of the defense budget to get equipment and improve the Army infrastructure. He also fomented the reorganization of the armed forces structure. At the end of 1924 he was sent as plenipotentiary to Peru, where they were celebrating the centennial of the Battle of Ayacucho. During the next few years he temporarily was the Minister of Agriculture and Public Works, besides holding the post at as Minister of War, which he would not abandon until the end of the term of office of Alvear. In 1927 he had received the promotion to General de División (Major General).

With his constant anti-personalist temperament, Justo supported the candidates Leopoldo Melo and Vicente Gallo, of the Alvear Line of the UCR. Before the triumph of the formula of Yrigoyen and Beiró, who began in 1928 their second term of office with massive support of the voters and the majority in the House of Representatives. Justo received invitations of the ever more organized right to join the shock program against the radical caudillo. Although close to the concepts of the publications La Nueva República (The New Republic) — managed by Ernesto Palacio and the brothers Rodolfo and Julio Irazusta — and La Fronda, under the direction of Francisco Uriburu, they stayed close to the need of "order, hierarchy and authority". He did not adhere closely to them, the program of suppression of a republican government and their substitution with a corporative system, similar to the fascists in Italy and Spain, went against his liberal vocation.

1931 ballot, Justo-Roca

Around Justo another faction assembled, not any less intent on taking arms against the constitutional government of Yrigoyen. Actively promoted by general José Luis Meglione, a Justo classmate, and by colonel Luis J. García, who soon would be one of the heads of the Grupo de Oficiales Unidos, he wrote for the newspapers La Nación and Crítica. Declarations made by Justo in July 1930 about the inconvenience of military intervention, which would put the constitutional rule of law in danger, testify to the opposition between the factions. By contrast with the more radicalized Argentine Navy, a significant part of the Army supported the ideas proposed by Justo, with the notable exception of the nationalist core that soon would converge at the Grupo de Oficiales Unidos. Before the promise of José Félix Uriburu, the head of an extremist group, to maintain institutional order, Justo gave his agreement to the coup, which he expressed on the early morning of 6 September, thus starting a military government in Argentina for the first time since the signing of the Constitution. He did not join the government's direction nor, in the first instance, the governing group, which was led by Uriburu with a cabinet that was composed largely of local lobbyists of the multinational oil companies.

Justo expressly sought to distance himself from Uriburu, who counted on a large group of supporters among the military officials but could not get the same support from the political parties, which quickly divided themselves after Yrigoyen's death, the focus of the antipathy against him. He rejected the vice-presidency that Uriburu offered him, and he only briefly accepted the command of the army, resigning soon after. In Buenos Aires Province, Uriburu did not manage to implement the corporate model with which he wished to replace the republican system, and this failure cost him the political career of his Interior Minister, Matías Sánchez Sorondo. Justo again rejected the offers of Uriburu to join the government and form a coalition. With the support of an alliance of the conservative National Democratic Party, the Independent Socialist Party, and the most anti-personalist faction of the Radical Party (then to be the Coalition of Parties for Democracy), he ran for president on the elections of 8 November 1931. With Yrigoyen's faction banned from the elections and its supporters using the strategy of "revolutionary abstention", Justo easily won against Lisandro de la Torre and Nicolás Repetto, although under suspicion of fraud. Julio Argentino Roca Jr., from the conservative faction, joined him as vice-president.[6]

The radical opposition was very significant. On 5 April 1931, the political ideology of the supporters of Yrigoyen had won the election for governor in the province of Buenos Aires against the hopes of Uriburu and Sánchez Sorondo; though the military government rings, cost the career of the Minister and forced Uriburu to give up his power. Before this, soldiers loyal to the constitutional government of Yrigoyen, with the support of armed civilians, organized insurrections to restore that earlier government. The first of these was directed by the Yrigoyenist general Severino Toranzo in February 1931. In June, in Curuzú Cuatiá in the province of Corrientes, they assassinated Colonel Regino Lescano, who was preparing a Yrigoyenist mobilization. In December, before an attempted coup led by Lieutenant Colonel Atilio Cattáneo, Justo decreed a state of siege, and again imprisoned the old Yrigoyen, and also arrested Alvear, Ricardo Rojas, Honorio Pueyrredón, and other leaders of the party.[8]

In 1933, the attempted coups continued. Buenos Aires, Corrientes, Entre Rios, and Misiones would be the stage of radical uprisings, which would not end before more than a thousand people being detained. Seriously ill, Yrigoyen was returned to Buenos Aires and kept under house arrest. He died on June 3, and his burial in La Recoleta Cemetery was an occasion of a mass demonstration. In December, during a meeting of the national convention of the UCR, a joint uprising of the military and politicians broke loose in Santa Fe, Rosario, and Paso de los Libres. José Benjamin Abalos, who was Yrigoyen's ex-Minister, and Colonel Roberto Bosch were arrested during the uprising and the organizers and leaders of the party were imprisoned at Martín García. Alvear, Justo's former patron, was exiled, while others were detained in the penitentiary in Ushuaia.

One of the most controversial events of Justo's presidency took place in 1933, when the measures of production protectionism that were adopted by the UK led Justo to send his vice-president at the head of a technology delegation, to deal with the adoption of a commercial agreement that might benefit Argentina. At the 1932 Ottawa Conference, the British had adopted measures that favored imports from its own colonies and dominions. The pressure from the Argentine landowners for whom the government restored trade with the main buyer of Argentine grain and meat had been very strong. Led by the president of the British Trade Council, Viscount Walter Runciman, they were intense and resulted in the signing on 27 April of the Roca-Runciman Treaty.

The treaty created a scandal because the UK allotted Argentina a quota less than any of its other dominions. In exchange for many concessions to British companies, 390,000 tons of meat per year were allotted to Argentina. British refrigerated shippers arranged 85% of exportation. The tariffs of the railways operated by the UK were not regulated. They had not established customs fees over coal. They had given special dispensation to the British companies with investments in Argentina. They had reduced the prices of their exports. As many problems resulted from the declarations of the vice-president Roca, who affirmed after the signing of the treaty that "by its economic importance, Argentina resembled just a large British dominion."

Lisandro de la Torre, one of his principal and most vociferous opponents, mocking the words of Roca in an editorial, wrote that "in these conditions we wouldn't be able to say that Argentina had been converted into a British dominion because England does not take the liberty to impose similar humiliations upon its dominions."

In the National Democratic Party, one of those who had supported the nomination of Justo for President, had split because of this controversy. Finally, the Senate rescinded the treaty on 28 July. Many workers strikes followed the deliberations, especially in Santa Fé Province, which ended with government intervention.