page_title: 1943 Argentine coup d'état
section_title: The coup of 4 June 1943
hierarchical_section_title: 1943 Argentine coup d'état / The coup of 4 June 1943
caption_attribution_description: Rawson y Pedro Pablo Ramírez saludan a la multitud en Plaza de Mayo el día del golpe de estado, 4 de junio de 1943.
context_page_description: The 1943 Argentine coup d'état, also known as the Revolution of '43, was a coup d'état on 4 June 1943 that ended the government of Ramón Castillo, who had been fraudulently elected to the office of vice-president before succeeding to the presidency in 1942 as part of the period known as the Infamous Decade. The military was opposed to Governor Robustiano Patrón Costas, Castillo's hand-picked successor, a major landowner in Salta Province and a primary stockholder in the sugar industry. The only serious resistance to the military coup came from the Argentine Navy, which confronted the advancing army columns at the Navy Petty-Officers School of Mechanics.
context_section_description: Although the Argentine military had been one of the pillars that sustained the successive governments of the Infamous Decade, its relationship with power had deteriorated over the last few years because of the change in its generational makeup and, above all, the progress of the industrialization process that began in that decade. The development of industry in Argentina (and in many parts of the world) was intimately related to the armed forces and the needs of national defense.
  President Ramón Castillo had faced several military conspiracies and failed coups, and at that time several civic-military conspiracies were taking place (such as the United Officers' Group, led by the radical Ernesto Sanmartino and General Arturo Rawson, and the operations carried out by the radical unionist Emilio Ravignani).
  Nevertheless, the coup of 4 June 1943 was not foreseen by anyone and was carried out with a great deal of improvisation and, unlike the other coups that had occurred in the country, almost without civil participation. According to historian José Romero, it was a "rescue maneuver of the group committed to the Nazi infiltration, complicated by its preventing Castillo from turning toward the United States.
  The concrete event that triggered the military coup was President Castillo's demand on 3 June that his minister of War, General Pedro Pablo Ramírez, resign for having met with a group of leaders from the Radical Civic Union, who offered to nominate him for president in the upcoming election. General Ramírez was to be the presidential candidate of the Democratic Union, an alliance that the moderate wing of the Radical Civic Union was trying to form with the Socialist Party and the Democratic Progressive Party, with the help of the Communist Party.
  The coup was decided the day before at a meeting in Campo de Mayo led by generals Rawson and Ramírez. Neither General Edelmiro Julián Farrell nor Colonel Juan Perón, both of whom would go on to lead the Revolution of '43, participated in the meeting: Farrell because he excused himself for personal reasons and Perón because he could not be found.
  At dawn on 4 June, a military force of 8,000 soldiers set out from Campo de Mayo, led by generals Rawson and Elbio Anaya, colonels Ramírez and Fortunato Giovannoni, and Lieutenant Colonel Tomás A. Ducó (famously the president of the sports club CA Huracán). Upon arriving at the Navy Petty-Officers School of Mechanics in the neighborhood of Núñez, the group was attacked by loyal forces who were entrenched there, resulting in 30 killed and 100 wounded. Having surrendered the School of Mechanics, President Castillo boarded a trawler with orders to head toward Uruguay, abandoning the Casa Rosada, where generals Ramírez, Farrell, and Juan Pistarini received the rebel army shortly after noon, and Rawson declared himself president.
  At first, the coup was supported by all political and social forces, with more or less enthusiasm, with the sole exception of the Communist Party. Britain and the United States supported it as well, welcoming the coup "with shouts of satisfaction", according to Sir David Kelly, the British ambassador to Argentina at the time. The German embassy, on the other hand, burned its files the previous day.
caption: Generals Arturo Rawson and Pedro Pablo Ramírez greet a crowd at Plaza de Mayo on the day of the coup.
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