Herminio Iglesias

Herminio Iglesias

Herminio Iglesias (Buenos Aires, October 20, 1929 – February 16, 2007) was an Argentine politician.

The son of Galician immigrants, at the age of 13, Iglesias began to work in a factory, where, at age 21, he was appointed as a union shop steward.

Henceforward a supporter of the Peronist Party, Iglesias was elected as the Mayor of Avellaneda in the Province of Buenos Aires upon Juan Domingo Perón's 1973 return from exile and subsequent election to his final turn at the Argentine Presidency. Aligning himself with Perón's most right-wing adviser, José López Rega, during the internal strife that followed Perón's 1974 passing, he was dismissed from this post following the 1976 military coup headed by General Jorge Videla.

In 1983, Iglesias was the Peronist candidate for Governor of the Province of Buenos Aires. However, at a "victory rally" towards the end of the election campaign, his followers burned a coffin that represented their main opposition, the centrist Radical Civic Union (UCR). For many observers, this act was decisive in the victory of the UCR in the general elections and in his own loss to UCR gubernatorial candidate Alejandro Armendáriz. After this incident, he significantly lost his political prestige.

Between 1985 and 1989, Iglesias occupied a seat in the Argentine Chamber of Deputies. In the 1990s, he was a Councillor in the Municipality of Avellaneda. The lived his final years largely in seclusion, partly because of his health problems.