Let it break, but don’t bend it

Historian Loris Zanatta emphasizes that Argentine history seems to be intersected by the conflict between two competing political-cultural traditions, the first liberal and the second nationalist.

Throughout its history, within the century-old Radical Civic League, there has been a conflictual coexistence between different expressions of these political traditions—often with very diffuse lines of distinction between different internal divisions.

Thus, during the leadership of Hipólito Irigoyen, the conflict took place between the “individualist” faction, which supported the image of a radical leader, and the “anti-individualist” faction represented by Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear; in the 1940s, a split emerged between the “unificationists” and the “diehards”, the former in favor of incorporating the Radical Civic Union into the anti-fascist electoral front, and the latter, supporters of preserving the essence from which the old party arose and of reconciliation with the sectors. Emerging Peronism; In the late 1950s, the party pitted the so-called “Popular Radicals”, led by its historical leader Ricardo Balbín, against the “Hard Radicals”, led by Arturo Frondizi and Oscar Alende, who had different ideas about how to relate to Peronism, the former being more reluctant to establish any kind of reconciliation with the party of General Perón, whose leaders were in exile, while the latter were more inclined to form some kind of alliance with sectors of the movement banned since 1955.

In the early 1990s, the conflict between “pacifists” and “anti-pacifists” revolved around the different visions associated with the 1993 agreement between Raúl Alfonsín and then-President Carlos Menem, which resulted in the Constitutional Charter ratified in 1993. In 1994, the latter of the territorial leaders, such as Fernando de la Rúa and Federico Storani, explicitly opposed the reforms agreed to by the ruling party, while the former President Alfonsín himself was the first, the main promoter of the “reforms”. The Treaty of Olivos and the constitutional reform proposals condensed into what is called a “core of fundamental coincidence”.

Different positions within the party on how to establish relations with Peronism during the “Kirchnerism” phase of 2003 led to internal rifts between the “radical K” led by the likes of Julio Cobos, the vice-president of the Kirchner party during his first term (2007-2011), or Gerardo Zamora, the governor of the province of Santiago del Estero, and the “anti-K radicals” who stood out among them, Ernesto Sanz or Gerardo Morales.

These divisions currently span the Centennial Party’s relationship with the Javier Millay government, being able to distinguish between critics of the “Rose Party” with a vision close to social democracy, as is the case with its president, Martin Loustow, who has a non-partisan origin, and the “Violets”, which are closer to the “liberal” vision of the national government, combining this principled proximity with a pragmatic orientation, its governors belonging to the latter.

The motto of Leandro N. Alem, founder of the Radical Civic Union, is “Break it, but don’t break it.”

*Political scientist at the University of Budapest.