Amadeo Sabattini

Who was Amadeo Sabattini?

Amadeo Tomás Sabattini was an Argentine politician. He served as Governor of Córdoba from May 17, 1936, to May 17, 1940.

Born in Buenos Aires and the son of Italian immigrants from the Piedmont region, Sabattini enrolled at the National University of Córdoba and graduated with a Medical Degree in 1919, becoming affiliated to the centrist Radical Civic Union – the party in power in Argentina at the time. A staunch opponent of the 1930 coup d'état that unseated populist UCR President Hipólito Yrigoyen, Sabattini went underground and participated in numerous potests, some violent, before an agreement between Conservative President Agustín Justo and the leader of the UCR, former President Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear, resulted in the lifting of a UCR electoral boycott in effect since the fraud-ridden 1931 elections. In this framework, Sabattini was elected Governor of the important Province of Córdoba in 1936.

A supporter of much of President Yrigoyen's 1916 platform, including liberalization of the universities and the establishment of State enterprises, Sabattini initiated several hydroelectric dams and supported the creation of numerous industrial zones in his then-agrarian province. He extended assistance to his province's needy and to small business, while prosecuting hitherto rampant graft and limiting the Catholic Church's input in school curricula, earning him the enmity of that influential institution.