Guido, José María (1903–1975)

José María Guido, born on August 29, 1903, was an Argentine politician who became interim president of Argentina when the armed forces deposed Arturo Frondizi in 1962. In 1954 Guido was named secretary of the national committee of the Radical Civic Union (Unión Cívica Radical, or UCR). In 1956 the UCR, incapable of coming up with a unified position on the restoration of Peronism to the political system, split into two factions: the Intransigent UCR (UCR Intransigente, or UCRI), led by Frondizi, and the People's UCR (UCR del Pueblo), led by Ricardo Balbín. Guido followed Frondizi, and in 1957 he was elected president of the UCRI. In the 1958 national elections, the UCRI came to power thanks to a semi-secret electoral alliance with the Peronists, who at the time were banned from political activities. Frondizi was elected president, and Guido became senator for the province of Río Negro. When Vice President Alejandro Gómez resigned because of internal struggles, Guido became interim president of the senate.

Frondizi allowed the Peronists to run in the 1962 elections, and they won ten of the fourteen provincial governorships. The military, already fed up with Frondizi and alarmed at the Peronist victory, removed the president from office. In accordance with the Vacancy Law (Ley de Acefalía), Guido moved up to the presidency. Backed into a corner by armed confrontations between the two opposing groups within the army, the "blues" (azules) and the "reds" (colorados), he oversaw passage during his term of a new law on political parties that explicitly outlawed Peronism. He also set a date for new elections in October 1963. He died on June 13, 1975.

See alsoArgentina: The Twentieth Century; Argentina, Political Parties: Radical Party (UCR); Balbín, Ricardo; Frondizi, Arturo; Perón, Juan Domingo.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Potash, Robert A. El ejército y la política en Argentina, 1962–1973: De la caída de Frondizi a la restauración peronista, Vol. 1. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1994.

Smulovitz, Catalina. Oposición y gobierno: Los años de Frondizi, 2. vols. Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1988.

                                          Vicente Palermo