Leandro Nicéforo Alem (born with Buenos Aires, the March 11th 1842 - died with Buenos Aires, the July 10th 1896) is an Argentinian politician , founder of the Unión Cívica Radical. He was elected twice appointed provincial and twice national senator.

The wire of hung

His/her father Leandro Antonio Alen, was a grocer of the district of Balvanera, town of Buenos Aires, and one of the chiefs of the Sociedad Popular Restauradora or Mazorca, the force parapolicière of Juan Manuel of Rosas, reason for which it was hung on famous the Plaza of Mayo in the center of Buenos Aires. Leandro Alem , then changed the last letter of its name to attenuate the permanent discrimination from which he suffered because remembering it the sad end of his father: he was always the " wire of the pendu" .

With died of her father the family remained in misery and his/her mother had to start to work to provide for the family needs.

He is the uncle and the mentor of the large Argentinian president Hipólito Yrigoyen, wire of his Marcelina sister, born ten years after him and which became in 1916 the first president of the country elected by the vote for all and secret.

Very young person it entered the army like volunteer. It took part in the last battles of the Argentinas civil wars, Cepeda in 1859 and Pavón in 1861. It obtained the rank of captain in the war of the Triple Alliance (1865 - 1870) where it was wounded.

It obtained its lawyer title of the Université of Buenos Aires and installed its study with his friend Aristóbulo del Valle. It was also important directing masonry.

Autonomism

The Republican party

Revolution and Radical Civic Union

In 1890 Alem with the former president Bartolomé Miter founded the Unión Cívica and organized a rising armed against the known constitutional government like Revolution of the Park or Revolution of 1890 , which forced the president Miguel Juárez Celman to resign.

The following year, Unión Cívica presented the candidature of Bartolomé Miter to the presidential elections. But Miter entered into negotiations with Julio Argentino Roca, chief unquestioned of what is called the officialism and Unión Cívica was divided into two parties: Miter remained with the head of Unión Cívica Nacional and Alem with that of the Unión Cívica Radical . With him were its associate Aristóbulo del Valle, Bernardo de Irigoyen, Lisandro of Torre, and its nephew Hipólito Yrigoyen inter alia.

Previously with the legislative elections of the March 15th 1891, it had been elected national senator just as Aristóbulo del Valle.

The August 15th the 1891 national Convention of the Unión Cívica Radical proclaimed Bernardo de Irigoyen like candidate with the presidency. A few days before the elections, the April 2nd 1892, the president Carlos Pellegrini denounced a radical plot wrongfully to seize the power and to assassinate the principal civils servant. Immediately he issued the state of siege and made stop the radical main leaders, and among them Leandro Alem. Les elections of the April 10th was thus carried out under these conditions fraudulent and repressive and without the participation of the Unión Cívica Radical, which allowed the election of Luis Sáenz Peña, flexible instrument of Julio Argentino Roca.

Once the released radical leaders, and face obviously that the government with the pay of Roca would continue to prevent by all average its accession with the capacity by electoral means, the Unión Cívica Radical started to reorganize and prepare a new armed rising, the Revolution of 1893, where Leandro Alem was proclaimed by the insurrectionists President of the Nation, with Rosario. But this insurrection failed following serious errors of command. Of this fact its nephew Hipólito Yrigoyen, who had worked much to organize the UCR in the province of Buenos Aires, called in question his competences to direct the party.

Depressed by the defeats and the confrontation with Hipólito Yrigoyen, it committed suicide on July 1st 1896. Its ashes rest with the Cimetière of Recoleta, in the same Pantheon as Hipólito Yrigoyen and Arturo Umberto Illia.

It left a last written letter the day of its death and which is known like its political legacy; this sentence there is found:

" ¡ That rompa, pero that No doble! " (in French to break but not fold )