Tragic Week
Argentina 1919
Synopsis
La Semana Trágica ("The Tragic Week") witnessed the deaths of more than 100 protesters in Buenos Aires, Argentina, after a general strike was quashed with machine guns by the army and by employers' private vigilante groups. The event dealt a blow to the moderate labor policies of the Radical Party administration under Hipólito Yrigoyen, who had previously refrained from using state force to end strikes. Under pressure from right-wing nationalist groups, Yrigoyen was unable to carry out his party's program of political and economic reform and instead resorted to massive spending schemes to gain popular support. Yrigoyen was later ousted during his second term in office by a military coup, which ended an era of constitutionally elected presidents dating back to 1862. La Semana Trágicawas thus a decisive event that turned Argentina back from its path toward democratization and economic modernization and paved the way for the military-populist government of Juan Domingo Perón in 1946.
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