This Friday, June 7, within the framework of Journalist’s Day, the Ministry of Government, through the Press Directorate and the General Archive of the Province, highlighted three important events in Argentine history and their treatment in provincial media.
Women’s Vote – Election of Emar Acosta
On September 9, women’s suffrage is commemorated at the national level, which has been in force since 1947. However, our province knew how to be a pioneer in this sense, and here women exercised their right to vote in 1928.
A very important milestone appears in a decree from 1934, when Emar Acosta from San Juan was appointed as a representative for the then House of Representatives. Emar was an Argentine lawyer and politician, who served as a provincial judge and legislator, and was the first female person to be elected to an elective position in Latin America.
Earthquake of 1944 and 1977
On a summer night in San Juan, more precisely on a Saturday at 8:49 p.m., the province suffered the greatest tragedy the country remembers. Due to the material losses and especially the lives that were taken; approximately more than 10 thousand souls.
The consequences of the earthquake are characterized by having been disproportionate compared to its intensity, rescuing the solidarity and empathy that was transcendental. The epicenter was located 20 kilometers north of the city of San Juan, near the town of La Laja, in the Albardón department. The same was also received in the provinces of Córdoba, La Rioja, Mendoza and San Luis.
Thirty-three years after the 1944 earthquake, on November 23, 1977, a modern San Juan in building matters was again punished by nature with an earthquake of magnitude 7.4, according to the Richter scale.
Technically there were two earthquakes, one recorded at 6:26 with a magnitude of 6.6 with an epicenter in the northeastern sector of the Pie de Palo mountain range; which acted as the trigger for a second movement that occurred 20 seconds later, with a magnitude of 7 and intensity IX according to the Modified Mercalli scale. The epicenter was located in the southeastern end of the same mountain range at a depth of 25 kilometers. Unlike the 1944 earthquake, the fatalities caused by the so-called “Caucete Earthquake” totaled 65 and more than 300 injured.
Return to democracy in 1983
On December 10, 1983, Ricardo Raúl Alfonsín took office, the first president elected by popular vote after more than seven years of civil-military dictatorship. The choice of the inauguration day was not random, although the dictatorship did not want to hand over control until May 25, 1984, Alfonsín managed to impose that the inauguration be on December 10, a date that since 1948 has been commemorated in the world on the Day International Human Rights, for the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which proclaimed the inalienable rights that correspond to every person as a human being. In Argentina, in addition to commemorating International Human Rights Day, the Day of the Restoration of Democracy has been celebrated since 2007.
