Yrigoyen was the product of a lonely and unfortunate childhood. His illiterate father had been a stable hand for Rosas. His mother had both Indian and Oriental blood and was given to tears, as was his grandmother, for Yrigoyen's grandfather had been shot in the triumph of the anti-Rosas forces. Yrigoyen's maternal aunt was forced to leave both home and family because of an unpardonable illicit liaison with a priest that produced two children. Surviving these desolate experiences, the future leader became a comisario of the local police in Buenos Aires Province, a position somewhat like that of a precinct captain in American politics, a splendid introduction to intrigue and real life. A modest inheritance in the form of an estancia freed him from want, but his requirements in any case were as simple as those of a monk. He never married, but a daughter, the issue of an affair with an Indian woman, devoted her life to him.
For a brief time, Yrigoyen taught philosophy and history in a provincial school, and there he was exposed to the thought, then in vogue, of the German philosopher, Karl Christian Friedrich Krause. Krause preached a rather vague metaphysical doctrine in which God was the universe, with man forming an integral part of the divine organism; the inner self, in contact with God, is the source of all knowledge. These dogmas deeply affected Yrigoyen. Adopting the Krausian preference for somber clothes and turning his life inward, he embarked upon the career for which he was ideally fitted, that of a political conspirator and organizer.
As a man of intrigue, Yrigoyen developed a secretive, molelike style for which no precedent seems available. He was soon known as "The Peludo," after a burrowing species of armadillo whose underground life resembled Yrigoyen's. He gave no speeches. His entire history before he became president in 1916 reveales only one public talk, and that was a very short one given at a very early stage of his career. For many years no pictures of him were available. He talked with many followers, but always with one at a time, meeting the solitary coworker in a small darkened office and consulting with him in hushed tones. Even at a political convention he would not make an appearance, but would direct events from a tiny, hidden office nearby, sending his instructions by one courier at a time. He lived in Spartan obscurity in a small house as badly in need of refurbishing as was his meager wardrobe of rumpled clothing, it being his habit to give away the suits he was not wearing, which in any case had been tailored in the style of twenty years before.
To this furtive manner was joined the mystical element derived from his obscure religious dogmas. He viewed the Radical Party as a moral movement, a state of mind of spirit. He viewed his own role in terms of apostleship. Visitors admitted to his darkened chamber would hear from him, as from an oracle, metaphysical utterances so impressive and so incomprehensible that they left with the sure conviction of his sainthood. Amid the fascination and the soaring spiritual ideals that were thus communicated in the softest of tones and in the most unintelligible of rhetoric and syntax, something akin to a cult began to grow. Soon Yrigoyen was the undisputed political caudillo of Buenos Aires Province, and the Radical Party was beginning to take on a national dimension. His particular crusade was electoral honesty. For the rest, he favored equality and social programs in general and whatever else could be done for the middle classes and the downtrodden; but in no sense did these woolly aspirations every coalesce into programs fleshed out with details. For decades, the Radical Party, in fact, never lost its character as a movement, as a gigantic spiritual exercise in a mundane, dangerous, and dirty world, and it never stooped to a platform.
Yrigoyen had little education and a mediocre intellect. He cared nothing for the arts, the theater, and literature. He read one novel in all his life. Honest, naive in important respects despite the skill of his intrigues, and devoid of ideas beyond his murmured philosophical abstractions, he knew little of the larger aspects of affairs and nothing at all about the world beyond Argentina. His extraordinary success and the almost mad devotion he aroused were a tribute solely to the one quality in which he was supreme: moral force, moral prestige. . . .
Yrigoyen's conduct in victory was consistent with what had gone before. He appeared for the oath of office and for what was assumed would be a statement of his plans, since he had remained in seclusion after his election, saying nothing of any program. But at the moment of triumph he placed his hand on the Bible and the crucifix, repeated the oath of office, made a half turn, stepped through the heavy curtains behind the rostrum, and disappeared. When he was found, and directed to the horse-drawn coach that was to take him to the Casa Rosada, he saw that men in the street had unhitched the horses and were fighting with one another for the honor of pulling his coach themselves. Appalled, he asked the captain of the guards why they allowed such a display of inequality. "Sir," came the answer, "we could avoid it only by using our swords." Half a million people were in the streets that day. Mass psychology as an element in politics and public life had come to Argentina.
