Arturo Frondizi - Early Life

Early Life

Frondizi was born in Paso de los Libres, Corrientes Province. Born to Isabel Ercoli and Giulio Frondizi, Italian Argentine immigrants from the Umbria Region, Arturo had ten brothers, including Silvio, who became a lawyer and was assassinated in 1974 by the Triple A, and Risieri, who became a philosopher and rector of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). The family relocated to Concepción del Uruguay in 1912, and in 1923 to Buenos Aires, where Frondizi enrolled in the UBA, in 1926.

Frondizi graduated from the UBA Law School with honors in 1930, and entered politics following the coup against President Hipólito Yrigoyen, the longtime leader of the centrist UCR, and the first Argentine President elected via universal (male) suffrage. Arrested in 1931, he emerged as an editor of a number of UCR-leaning journals, and formally joined the party the following year. He earned a juris doctor in 1932, and in July of that year, was among those who spoke in eulogy at Yrigoyen's funeral march. His first case as an attorney was representing 300 political prisoners detained in his native Paso de los Libres for their support of the banned UCR.

In the interim, Frondizi married the former Elena Faggionato in 1933, and in 1935, built a summer cottage in the then-secluded seaside resort town of Pinamar, which after the birth of their daughter, Elena (their only child), in 1937, the Frondizis christened Elenita. He led the Argentine League for the Rights of Man, the nation's first recorded human rights organization, upon its founding in 1936, and in December, narrowly escaped an assassination attempt while addressing a crowd.

Drafting a progressive platform alternative for the UCR ahead of the February 1946 elections (the 1945 Declaration of Avellaneda), he was elected to the Argentine Chamber of Deputies in 1946. He founded the Intransigence and Renewal Movement (MIR) faction of the UCR and stood for Vice President on Ricardo Balbín's UCR ticket for the 1951 elections, which they lost overwhelmingly to incumbent, President Juan Perón. Parting ways with Balbin, he formed an "intransigent" wing of the UCR, the UCRI, which parted with the more conservative and anti-Peronist Ricardo Balbín in the UCR's 1956 convention.

Enjoying support from Peronist Party voters (whose party had been banned by outgoing President Pedro Aramburu) after Frondizi's closest collaborator, businessman Rogelio Frigerio, obtained the exiled Perón's endorsement, the UCRI won the February 1958 elections.