This effectively ended the rule by electoral fraud of the conservative Argentine oligarchy, the Generation of '80, and paved the way for the rise of the Radical Civic Union in the first free elections of the country.

He came from a family of supporters of Rosas: his paternal and maternal grandparents, Roque Julián Sáenz-Peña and Eduardo du Cos de La Hitte, had been deputies of the Legislature during his government.

After the defeat of Rosas in the Battle of Caseros, the federal tradition of the grandparents and the father, who did not change their convictions, kept them away from public service.

Opponent of Bartolomé Mitre, he was a member of the Autonomist Party headed by Adolfo Alsina and in 1876 he was elected to a Deputy seat in the Legislature of the Province of Buenos Aires.

In 1877 he founded the Republican Party, together with Leandro Alem, Aristóbulo del Valle, Hipólito Yrigoyen, Lucio Vicente López, Pedro Goyena, José Manuel Estrada and Francisco Uriburu.

In 1878, as a result of the dissidents produced within the autonomism due to the conciliation policy initiated by President Nicolás Avellaneda to which Sáenz-Peña was opposed, he resigned from his position and ended up temporarily abandoning politics.

His main motivation was not patriotic or to show solidarity, but rather to escape Buenos Aires due to an unrequited love affair.

Sáenz Peña held firm to his legal and political doctrines and definitively stated that Argentine was immune to any action taken by the assembly.

The two delegates made a 40-day journey to New York and then a four-day trip to Washington for the meeting that was taking placed in the State Department building.

During Sáenz Peña's tenure as foreign minister, he traveled the world and effectively argued for policies that benefited Argentina.

He worked with the Italian government to increase trade while providing them with official cables from Argentina telling of the economic developments within the country.

The electoral act that led Roque Sáenz Peña to the presidency of Argentina took place on 13 March 1910, with a large number of irregularities common at that time.

Yrigoyen requested the intervention of the provinces to prevent their governors from interfering with said process, Sáenz Peña refused but allowed radicalism to be part of the government.

Sáenz Peña was elected while tensions were high in 1910 while promising electoral reform to curb the power of the oligarchy and to prevent a revolution.

On 10 August 1912, he signed the decree for the creation of the Military Aviation School (EMA), together with G. Vélez, according to the official bulletin 692-2 part).

In June 1912 a great protest movement broke out among the tenant farmers against the worsening of the conditions of their contracts with the owners of the fields they worked, known as the Grito de Alcorta.

Given the history of pressure on the voters - who voted aloud - the only possibility of electoral freedom was secret suffrage, through ballots written in sealed envelopes.

After a month of discussion in the Chamber of Deputies and a week in the Senate, the Sáenz Peña Law was approved and promulgated on 13 February 1912.