Alberto Teisseire

Alberto Teisaire (20 May 1891 – 11 September 1963) was an Argentine naval officer and Vice President of Argentina.

Life and times

Early life and Navy career Alberto Teisaire was born in 1891 to Clementina Cejas and Eduardo Teisaire, in Mendoza, Argentina. He enrolled in the Argentine Naval Academy in 1908 and, upon graduation in 1912, was accepted to the United States Naval Academy. There, he was commissioned as a submarine officer in the U.S. Navy, during World War I. Returning to Argentina, he married Duilia Fayo Lonne and was eventually named Commander of the Navy's flagship, the historic Sarmiento Frigate.

Teisaire later taught at the Argentine Naval Academy and held numerous policy-making posts in that service, including ones in the Naval Requisitions Department, the Argentine Naval delegations in the United States and Europe, as head of the Navy's River Fleet (1938), and as assistant director of the important Navy Mechanics' School, in 1940, where he specialized in the instruction of navigation and hydrology. He retired as Rear Admiral in 1945 to pursue a seat in the Argentine Senate, ahead of the February 1946 general elections.

Elected as Senator on Perón's Labor Party ticket, Teisaire represented the city of Buenos Aires, a district normally leaning towards Perón's chief opposition, the centrist UCR. He, however, did not enjoy support from the President's influential First Lady, Eva Perón, who refused his request to take part in her 1947 "Rainbow Tour" because (in her words): "I did not want that fruitcake creating a scandal in Paris, when for that I already have Paquito, who at least makes me laugh."

Teisaire did well in his career in the Senate, even so. He was named Provisional President of the Senate in 1947, and was reelected Senator in 1951. He was elected to the Constitutional Assembly of 1949, which drafted a replacement of the 1853 Constitution of Argentina (reinstated in 1957). He was named head of the Peronist Party's Superior Council in 1952, effectively making him the third-most powerful member of the administration (after Interior Minister Ángel Borlenghi and Perón, himself). His coerced 1956 statements remained controversial, perceived as a betrayal by many Peronists even after his death.

Teisaire kept a low profile in retirement. Despite some reports that he was assassinated at a restaurant on 12 October 1962 by left-wing Peronist militants while attending a lunch with his assistants, Tesaire actually died of natural causes on 11 September 1963, at age 72.