Abstract

LOSADA, Leandro. Republic, Democracy, Liberty. Marcelo T. de Alvear and the Argentine Politic Culture in the 1920s and 1930s. Prismas [online]. 2016, vol.20, n.1, pp.63-84. ISSN 1852-0499.

This article offers a contribution to the study of Argentine political ideas, and more specifically, of the Argentine liberalism in the 1920s and 1930s. For this purpose, the paper focuses on the political vocabulary of Marcelo T. de Alvear, who was President of Argentina and leader of the most important political party of the period, the Union Cívica Radical (UCR). The main argument is the following: for Alvear, the consolidation of the republic such as it had designed by the Constitution of 1853, was the most relevant problem of Argentine politics. From this point of view, Alvear justified some of his most polemic actions at first glance, as his endorsement to the overthrow of HipólitoYrigoyen in 1930. That problem can be defined as liberal. However, it was formulated through notions closer to republicanism than to liberalism, and with increasingly democratic accents along his public life. It is argued, then, that Alvear says less about the liberal objections to democracy, than about the proximity between republicanism and liberalism in Argentine political ideas between 1920 and 1940.

Keywords : Liberalism; Republicanism; Argentina; Unión Cívica Radical; Marcelo T. de Alvear.

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