Radical Civic Union

The historic Argentine middle class party, founded in 1891, which expanded the vote and later shared power.

Overview

The UCR formed in 1891 around Leandro Alem and young Hipolito Yrigoyen to fight electoral fraud by the landholding regime, with uprisings and abstention until the Saenz Pena law of 1912 brought the secret ballot. Yrigoyen became the first radical president 1916. Opposed to Peronism thereafter, the party alternated between confrontation and pacts with the PJ, its president Raul Alfonsin restoring democracy in 1983 and founding of the human rights trials. Fernando de la Rua presidency collapsed in 2001. The UCR survives as junior coalition partner, the historic vessel of Argentine civic republicanism.