The Split of the Unión Cívica Radical

Abstract

General Aramburu is reported to have said, a decade after handing over power to Frondizi on 1 May 1958, that he ‘should never have taken the nails off the coffin in which Perón had buried the political parties’.¹ Notwithstanding, throughout the thirty-nine months of his provisional presidency he endeavoured, and to a limited extent succeeded in establishing political (as opposed to military) rule. If political rule is a consequence of acknowledging the problem of diversity in society and of the belief that conciliation is the most desirable way of tackling such diversity (which reflects the existence of differing interests) by definition it does not, and cannot reduce all things to a single unity. This last attitude must, on the contrary, be attributed to those who oppose politics — the believers in ‘fundamentals’ on which everybody must of necessity agree.