Pedro Goyena

Who was Pedro Goyena?

Pedro Goyena was an Argentine jurist, politician and writer.

Pedro Goyena, along with other thinkers and politicians, followers of the Catholic Thinking, as José Manuel Estrada and Emilio Lamarca. He completed his studies at the Colegio Nacional Central, then to the University to get a Law Degree. He made a mark in Argentine politics with his strong opposition to Laïcité, which characterized the Generation of '80 that governed the country in the second half of the 19th century and the beginnings of the 20th. He served a term as a Provincial Representative for Buenos Aires.

He had a strong impact in the Pedagogical Congress of 1882 where he maintained the position that public education had to be Catholic having a strong argument with Leandro Alem. He opposed Publich Education Law #1420 of 1884, that established schooling for children being free, secular, and mandatory. He also opposed and represented the position of the Catholic thinkers against the Law of Civil matrimony of 1888, maintaining that the only type of marriage allowed should be the one performed and recognized by the Catholic Church. He was noted as a good orator.

Goyena taught Roman law at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and also worked as a journalist, writing among others for Revista Argentina and La Unión, which he also edited with Estrada and Tristán Achával Rodríguez, where he defended his opposition to the liberal reforms of the government of the time, whose principal exponent was President Julio A. Roca.