13 Facts About Lorenzo Miguel

Lorenzo Miguel was a prominent Argentine labor leader closely associated with the steelworkers' union.

Lorenzo Marcelo Miguel was born and raised in the working-class borough of Villa Lugano in Buenos Aires.

Lorenzo Miguel married a CAMEA coworker, Elena Ramos, with whom he has two children, in 1958, though the violent 1955 overthrow of the populist President Juan Peron led to official harassment of many in the labor movement, including Lorenzo Miguel.

The pragmatic Lorenzo Miguel thus turned a rival into an ally, while impeding the more combative Light and Power workers' leader, Agustin Tosco, from rising to the powerful post.

The UOM's presumptive role, though minor, forced Lorenzo Miguel attend a summit with his archenemies, the violently leftist Montoneros, in which he denied complicity and arrived at a mutual understanding.

The UOM then took part in a February 1974 police coup that led to the violent exit of leftist Cordoba Province Governor Ricardo Obregon Cano, elected in 1973 as a Peronist candidate, and Lorenzo Miguel helped persuade the aging Peron to promote a right-wing Admiral and personal friend, Emilio Massera, as Head of the Navy, as well as to break with leftist Peronists shortly before his July 1974 passing.

The unwanted attention this brought on Lorenzo Miguel was compounded by the discovery of the murder of Hugo Dubchek - Lorenzo Miguel's bodyguard - reportedly during a large movement of arms through the building, in whose furnace his remains were found.

The November 1974 election of leftist shop steward Alberto Piccinini at ACINDAR's important Villa Constitucion steel mill prompted Lorenzo Miguel to help the company lobby President Isabel Peron for an armed intervention, which took place in a March 1975 police assault on the facility.

Lorenzo Miguel's call for loyalty, a stance he described as "verticalist", lost its little support following a new, sharp devaluation of the shredded peso in February 1976 and a violent March 24 coup resulted in Miguel's arrest, along with the President and thousands of others.

Lorenzo Miguel counted on his former alliance with Acindar CEO Jose Alfredo Martinez de Hoz and on his friendship with Admiral Massera who, as Head of the Navy became the second-highest ranking public official in Argentina.

Lorenzo Miguel retook the reins of an UOM hobbled by the massive industrial layoffs brought about by Martinez de Hoz's policies.

Lorenzo Miguel, who led a decimated UOM with a membership less than half of its 1970s level, became increasingly marginal to the national discourse; by 1990, he was relegated to helping mediate conflicts between Ubaldini and Alfonsin's successor, President Carlos Menem.

The now compliant Lorenzo Miguel was compelled to call off a strike even after Menem's 1991 sell-off of SOMISA, then Argentina's largest steelmaker, and to support Menem's 1995 reelection bid.