Roque Saenz Pena (19 March 1851-9 August 1914) was President of Argentina from 12 October 1910 to 9 August 1914, succeeding Jose Figueroa Alcorta and preceding Victorino de la Plaza. He was a leader of the National Autonomist Party.
Biography[]
Roque Saenz Pena was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on 19 March 1851, the son of Luis Saenz Pena. He became a lawyer in 1875 and joined the National Autonomist Party, and he left Argentina to join the Peruvian army during the War of the Pacific, as Argentina had secretly joined the alliance against Chile. He was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel, but he was captured by the Chileans and imprisoned for six months after the Battle of Arica. When he returned to Buenos Aires, he served in the Foreign Ministry, and he became ambassador to Uruguay in 1887 and embarked on a diplomatic career. In 1910, he was elected President of Argentina as a National Autonomist Party member, and he reformed the electoral system by introducing the secret ballot and making the vote universal and compulsory for males over the age of 18, ending the use of electoral fraud by the conservative oligarchy and paving the way for the rise of the Radical Civic Union. He died in office in 1914.