Arturo Frondizi - Later Life

Later Life

Following Frondizi's release from detention in July 1963, and Frigerio's return from exile, they founded the Integration and Development Movement (MID) on a developmentalist platform. Unable to field candidates in the 1963 elections due to military and conservative opposition, the MID and Perón agreed on a "National Popular Front." The alliance was again scuttled by military pressure, and the MID endorsed a "blank vote" option. Those among Frondizi's former allies who objected to this move backed the progressive former Buenos Aires Province Governor, Oscar Alende, an erstwhile Frondizi ally who ran on the UCRI ticket (its last) and finished second.

Following the pragmatic Arturo Illia's election, the MID was allowed to participate in the 1965 legislative elections, sending 16 members to the Argentine Chamber of Deputies. Policy differences over Frondizi-era oil contracts, which Illia rescinded, led the MID to actively oppose him, however, and he initially welcomed the 1966 coup against Illia. Frigerio became a significant shareholder in Argentina's largest newsdaily, Clarín, following a 1971 deal made with the newsdaily's owner, Ernestina Herrera de Noble, whose late husband (Clarín founder Roberto Noble), had supported Frondizi.

Perón's return from exile imminent, Frondizi opted to endorse the aging leader's ticket for the 1973 elections, and following seven years of military rule, the reopened Argentine Congress included 12 MID Deputies. The return of peronism to power exacerbated political tensions in Argentina, however, and among the hundreds of victims of the growing wave of violence was his own brother, Law Professor Silvio Frondizi, who served as chief counsel to the Trotskyite ERP, and who lost his life in a 1974 attack by the fascist Triple A. Given little say by the new Peronist government, which, instead saw its policy shift from populism to erratic crisis management measures, Frondizi initially supported the 1976 coup against Perón's successor (his hapless widow, Isabel Perón). He dropped his early support for the regime in response to their ultra-conservative Economy Minister, José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz, leading to death threats against numerous MID figures.

Allowing elections in 1983, the dictatorship left an insolvent Argentina, its business and consumer confidence almost shattered and its international prestige damaged following the 1982 Falklands War, an invasion Frondizi opposed. Suffering from the early stages of Parkinson's Disease, Frondizi named his friend, Frigerio, the MID nominee for President. Refusing to condemn the regime's human rights atrocities, something which deprived their longshot candidacy of needed support, the MID fared poorly on election night, garnering 4 place (1.5%) and electing no congressmen.

Elected by an ample margin, UCR leader Raúl Alfonsín left Frondizi out of the economic policy discussions he held before taking office, and Frigerio succeeded the ailing Frondizi as President of the MID in 1986, though the latter remained influential in the party. The MID maintained a considerable following in a number of the less developed Argentine provinces, where voters had fond memories of the Frondizi administration's development projects, and helped elect allies within the Justicialist Party (Peronists), in Formosa and Misiones Provinces, as well as Mayoral candidate Néstor Kirchner in Río Gallegos, Santa Cruz Province; Kirchner went on become governor and, in 2003, President of Argentina. Frondizi supported Peronist candidate Carlos Menem in the May 1989 elections, though his support soured when Menem turned to neo-liberal and free trade policies.

Frondizi lost his daughter in 1976, and his wife in 1990. Living in seclusion in his Beruti Street apartment (in Buenos Aires' northside), Frondizi occasionally received political figures seeking advice, as was the case for former Formula One driver Carlos Reutemann, who as a supporter of his, sought his opinion on a 1991 bid for governor of Santa Fe Province (to which Reutemann was elected).

Frondizi died on April 18, 1995, at age 86.