Pension System (SIJP). History Development of pension funds Social security was first implemented in what today is Argentina in 1785, when the Viceroy of Río de la Plata, Nicolás del Campo, enacted bereavement benefits for widows and orphans of Navy personnel. These benefits would later be extended to veterans of the Argentine War of Independence and later conflicts. Mutual aid societies that provided disability and pension benefits to members were established throughout the nineteenth century by guilds, as well as by immigrant associations; these latter included Unione e Benevolenza and the Asociación Española de Socorros Mutuos. The first official social security system in Argentina was established by Law 4.349, signed by President Julio Roca in 1904. The act, one of the first of its kind in Latin America, provided retirement and disability benefits to government employees and created the Civil Retirement and Pension Fund, enrollment in which was voluntary. President Hipólito Yrigoyen, elected in 1916, pursued the extension of these benefits to workers in other sectors. Retirement funds were thus established for railroad employees in 1921; for those in public services in 1922; and for banking and insurance employees in 1923. He failed, however, to do likewise for retail workers, whose employers staged a lockout, and succeeded in scuttling the reform. The great depression seriously weakened these funds, and the Civil Service Fund alone suffered a deficit of over twenty times its reserve by 1931. The increase in deductions and subsequent economic recovery allowed further expansion of pension coverage, with funds established in 1939 for port and newspaper employees. The National Pension System An initiative by Juan Atilio Bramuglia, chief counsel for the Unión Ferroviaria (at the time the most important union in the CGT), and by Labor Secretary Juan Perón, promoted the Labor Department to a cabinet-level post and, in 1944, established the National Institute for Social Insurance (INPS). The INPS converted the voluntary pension funds, which covered 3% of the total population, into a compulsory system for all employees, effective January 1, 1945, and thus became the first universal social insurance system in Argentina. Perón, elected president in 1946, had retirement and disability benefits included in the Workers' Bill of Rights, enacted on February 24, 1947; this Bill of Rights was subsequently incorporated into the 1949 Constitution as Article 14-b. The self-employed, who account for a fourth of the nation's work force, were incorporated into the Independent Workers'