Benjamin Keen - A Short History of Latin America pp.

307-313

P-1

THE PERON ERA: 1943-1955

Perns Rise to Power
The military coup that overthrew Castillo in 1943 had deep and tangled roots. The fraud and corruption that tainted
both Conservative and Radical politics in the Infamous Decade no doubt offended military sensibilities, and
Castillos choice of the Pro-Ally Patron Costas as his successor also angered some of the military, who were
divided in their attitude toward the belligerents in World War II. But the coup of 1943 had deeper causes. During
the 1930s, the officer corps of the Argentine armed forces, predominantly middle class in its social origins,
developed an ardent nationalism that saw the solution for Argentinas problems in industrialization and all-around
technical modernization. The interest of the military in industrialization was closely linked to its desire to create a
powerful war machine capable of creating a Greater Argentina that could exercise hegemony in a new South
American bloc. To industrialize it was necessary to end Argentinas neocolonial was necessary to end Argentinas
neocolonial status, to free it from dependence on foreign markets. The pro-German attitude of many officers
stemmed in part from the German military instruction that they had received and from their admiration for the
supposed successes of the Nazi New Order, but even more, perhaps, from the conviction that England and the
United States had conspired to keep Argentina a rural economic colony. Their pro-German attitude was not
translated into a desire to enter the war on Germanys side but rather into the wish to keep Argentina neutral in the
great conflict.
As concerned domestic policy, the military proposed a massive speedup of industrialization and technical
modernization, even though it feared the social changes and forces that such transformations might unleash. In
particular, it feared the revolutionary potential of the working class. In effect, the military proposed to build
Argentine industrial capitalism with a thoroughly cowed, docile working class. As a result, one of the first acts of the
military regime was to launch an offensive against organized labor. The government took over the unions,
suppressed newspapers, and jailed opposition leaders. This policy of direct confrontation and collision with labor
had disastrous results and threatened to wreck the industrialization program. The military was saved from itself by
an astute young colonel, Juan Domingo Peron, who took over the Department of Labor in October, 1943 and
promptly raised it to the status of the Ministry of Labor and Welfare.
Born in 1895, the son of immigrant and Creole parents of somewhat marginal economic status (his father
was a farmer); Peron ended the military college at sixteen and very slowly rose in rank to captain in 1930. He
played a minor role in the coup of that year. During the next decade, he spent several years in Europe, where he
was much impressed by the German and Italian dictatorships. In 1941, Peron joined the Group of United Officers,
although only a junior colonel, and quickly rose to its leadership ranks. He was prominent in the colonels clique
that replaced the GOU in power in 1944. Beginning with a subcabinet post as secretary labor and welfare, Peron
became the indispensable man in the Ramirez government. He subsequently became vice president and minister
of war, in addition to secretary of labor and welfare.
Perns genius lay in his recognition of the potential of the organized and unorganized working class and
the need to broaden the social base of the nationalist revolution. He became the patron of the urban proletariat.
Workers were not only encouraged to organize but favored in bargaining negotiations, in which his department
participated. As a result, workers wages not only rose in absolute terms but their share of the national income
grew. This, of course, increased mass purchasing power and hereby promoted the process of industrialization.
Peron also created a state system of pensions and health benefits, with the result that employers contributions for
pensions, insurance, and other benefits raised steadily until the year of Perns fall (1955). In return for these real
gains, however, the unions lost their independence and became part of a state-controlled apparatus in Perns
hands. Meanwhile, Peron was strengthening his position within the military. In February 1944, he led a group of
officers in forcing the resignation of President Ramirez, who, as noted previously, was replaced by General Farrell.
Not all of the military was happy with Perns prolabor policies or with his meteoric rise to power. The end
of the war in 1945 also provoked civilian demands for an end to military rule and the restoration of the constitution.
In October 1945, Perns military and civilian foes staged a coup that resulted in his ouster and imprisonment. But

the organizers of the coup were divided and unclear about their objectives, and Perns followers mobilized rapidly.
Loyal labor leaders organized the Buenos Aires working class for massive street demonstrations to protest Perns
jailing. The workers virtually took over the city, without opposition from the armed forces. The bewildered
conspirators released Peron from prison. Thereupon, he resigned from his various government posts, retired from
the army, and began his campaign for the presidency in the 1946 elections.
In preparation for the election of 1946, Peron taking due account of the defeat of fascism in Europe, cast
himself in the role of a democrat ready to abide by the result of a free election. He created a Labor party to
mobilize the working class, the principal component in a class alliance whose other major elements were the
national industrial bourgeoisie and the army. Perns chief opponent was Jose Tamborini, candidate of the Union
Democratica (Democratic Union), a heterogeneous coalition of conservative landed elite, the bureaucratic and
professional middle class that traditionally supported the Radical party, and even the Socialist and Communists
parties. Peron defeated Tamborini, by 300,000 votes out of 2.7 million. He was helped in the election by the
blundering foreign policy of the United States whose State Department issued a Blue Book blasting Peron for his
fascist ties. Peron countered by circulating a Blue and White Book (blue and white were Argentinas national
colors) that stressed the theme of Yankee imperialism.
Postwar Economics
The postwar boom enabled Peron to keep his coalition together. The export sector produced large surpluses in the
balance of payments, making available funds for industrialization, mainly in labor-intensive manufactures. Between
1945 and 1948, real wages for industrial workers rose 20 percent. Personal consumption also rose. Since there
was only a slight decline in the share of the national income that went to profits, the redistribution of income to the
working class did not come at the expense of any other segment of the alliance. Industrialists kept profits up and
benefited from increased domestic consumption, which provided a growing market for their products. The only
sector of the economy that was slighted was agriculture.
Peron managed to win over a considerable sector of the dependent middle class through his use of
government patronage, just as Yrigoyen had done before. He kept the military happy by his commitment to
industrialization, an important aspect of his desire for national self-sufficiency and by providing it with generous
salaries and the latest equipment for modern warfare.
One of Perns greatest assets was his beautiful and stylish wife Eva Duarte de Peron, known
affectionately by Argentines as Evita, who acted as his liaison to the working class. Evita, a former dance hall girl
and radio and movie star, headed a huge charitable network that dispensed tremendous amounts of money and
patronage. So beloved was she that when she dies in 1952 at the age of thirty-two, Peron led a movement to get
the Catholic Church to canonize her. The presidents popularity with the working class suffered after her death.
Evita strongly advocated womens suffrage, which was granted in 1947. Consequently, women supported Peron in
large numbers.
After 1948, however, the economic picture changed drastically. With the exception of a short-lived
recovery during the Korean War (1950-1951), Argentina entered a period of severe recession, which included
several drought-induced bad harvests. The late 1940s brought the first signs that Argentina would face serious
long-term economic difficulties. Its export commodities began to confront increased competition from the United
States and from revitalized Western European agriculture. Later, the advent of the Common Market worsened
Argentinas position. Balance of payments deficits replace the large surpluses that had financed the nations
import-substitution industrialization. Industrial production fell, as did per capita income. Real wages dropped 20
percent from the 1949 level in 1952-1953. It was in this decline that Perns political failure was rooted.
There are two schools of opinion regarding Perns economic policy. The first, typified by the English
scholar H.S. Ferns, is highly critical. According to this analysis, Perns policies were disastrous in the long run. In
the first place, he drained the export agricultural sector to the point where farmers had no incentive to expand
acreage or modernize production. Farm production dropped precipitously (although this was in part due to bad
weather during the early 1950s). Furthermore, higher real wages increased internal consumption of Argentine
foodstuffs, thus lessening the amount of food commodities available for export.
In addition, the critics hold that the major portion of government expenditures was ill-advised. Perns

economic policy revolved around two essential points: government intervention in the economy on a large scale
and reestablishment of Argentine control of its own economy. The president nationalized the Central Bank, the
railroads, the gas industry, much of the electric power industry, the merchant marine, and the air transport,
insurance, and communications industries. The government controlled prices on consumer goods and rents.
Mismanagement and corruption permeated these state enterprises, and this siphoned much of the utility and profits
of these operations. The critics also claim that Peron paid inflated prices for these nationalized enterprises, leaving
no money for capital improvements. The problem was especially acute with the state railroads, which desperately
needed new equipment and repairs. But Peron had paid the British an enormous sum for the railroads and nothing
left for improvements. In some cases, the Argentine government paid off bonds at par years ahead of maturity,
although the bonds were selling on the stock exchanges for 60 to 70 percent of par, and they paid low interest.
Paying off such debts, it is claimed, was financial madness.
A second school of opinion, led by Jorge Fodor, defends Peron. This analysis maintains that the dictators
maneuvering room was severely limited by world financial and market conditions, especially in Britain and the
United States. Argentinas alternatives were governed by four crucial factors. First, much of the nations export
surplus was tied up in Great Britain and virtually unavailable, because Britain was in the midst of an economic
crisis. Peron paid a high price for the railroads and perhaps some bonds because the British used the enormous
sum of Argentine money locked in their country as a bargaining device.
Second, the amount of Argentinas gains during the world was vastly exaggerated. It was true that
Argentina received high prices for its farm commodities during and after the war, but theses prices were deceiving,
for Argentina, through its trading monopoly, the Argentine Institute for Trade Promotion (IAPI), had to extend credit
to enable Europe to buy its products. This meant that Peron did not have as much capital to spend as his critics
have maintained. His money was tied up in England or on the Continent in credit.
Third, even if Peron had possessed these huge sums, he had no place to spend them. He has been
attacked for not sinking money into much needed public works, especially railroads and roads, and into heavy
industry. The fact is, however, that neither England nor the Continent could supply these products, and the
United States were unable and unwilling to supply them. Argentine neutrality during the war meant that the United
States would not export capital goods and other industrial commodities to Argentina.
Fourth, and finally, Argentinas own economic forecasts predicted that its future as an exporter of
foodstuffs was bleak, given the economic condition of Europe and the specter of growing competition. Peron,
therefore, acted rationally when he shortchanged agriculture in favor of industry. When the market conditions for
agricultural exports improved, Peron put money into this sector.
The critics appear to be on solid ground when they point to the enormous sums spent on the military and
on impractical military schemes for industrial self-sufficiency, such as nuclear energy projects. Perns defenders
would underline that he had a very limited area for maneuver and did the best he could.
Furthermore, many of Perns moves were made to counteract or eliminate undue foreign influence in
Argentinas economy. He nationalized the Central Bank, not only because he wanted to extend government control
over fiscal policy, but because the Central Bank was controlled by foreign banks. The establishment of the IAPI
was also designed to counteract foreign influence. During the war, the Allies established a joint purchasing agency;
this meant that Argentina, in effect, had only one market for its products. The IAPI, the sole seller of the nations
commodities, had more bargaining power than individual producers could have had. It played an important role in
the rise of Argentine industry through its monopoly on export cereals. Buying the cereals at low prices and selling
them on the world market at high prices it channeled the surplus into industrial development. But in the early
1950s, with world prices, the IAPI gradually lost its capacity for financing industry.
Whatever one may think of Perns economics, the fact remains that he solved none of the countrys major
economic problems. The main roadblocks remained. Transportation continued to be inadequate and obsolete, and
a scarcity of electric power stood in the way of industrial modernization. Argentina did not produce enough fuel to
meet domestic needs, and this created an enormous drain on the balance of payments. The nations industry
remained limited for the most part to import-substitution light industry. Despite his anti-imperialist rhetoric, Peron
did not nationalize such key foreign-owned industries as meat packing and sugar refining. Most serious of all,
Peron did nothing to break the hold of the latifundio on the land. As a result, agriculture was marked by inefficient
land use, which impeded long range development.

Perns Downfall
After his reelection in 1952 and in response to the economic crisis of the early 1950s, Peron formulated a new plan
(the Second Five-Year Plan, 1953-1957) that, to a great extent, reversed his previous strategy. He tried to expand
agricultural production by paying higher prices to farmers for their produce and by buying capital equipment for this
sector (tractors and reapers). He sought to increase the agricultural production available for export by means of a
wage freeze, which he hoped would restrict domestic consumption. Although real wages declined, workers did not
suffer proportionately more than other groups. But the industrial bourgeoisie was unhappy, for labor productivity
declined while the regimes pro labor policies propped up wages. The industrialists, supported by a considerable
portion of the army, wanted deregulation of the economy so they could push down wages. But the major problem
of the industrial sector was lack of capital, since the agricultural sector no longer generated a large surplus.
In order to solve the capital shortage, Peron abandoned his previously ultra nationalistic stand and actively
solicited foreign investment. In 1953 the government reached an agreement with a North American company, the
Standard Oil Company of California, for exploration, drilling, refining, and distribution rights in Argentina. Peron
hoped thereby to reduce the adverse effect oil purchases abroad had on the balance of payments. The following
year, the government entered into a partnership with H.J. Kaiser, an American businessman, to produce
automobiles. Argentinas aviation industry, a pet project of the military, was converted to auto production. Foreign
capital used the most modern technology and machines, which required fewer workers and, therefore, tended to
create unemployment in the affected industrial sectors.
In order to maintain government expenditures and a bloated bureaucracy in the face of declining revenues,
Peron printed more money. The amount in circulation increased from 6 to 45 billion pesos during his two terms. By
1954 he had had some success in stabilizing the economy; he achieved a balance of payments surplus, and capital
accumulation showed an upward curve. But his new economic strategy had alienated key elements of his coalition
of workers, industrialists, and the armed forces. Peron then sought to divert attention from economic issues with
disastrous results.
Peron adopted two new strategies. First, he attempted to enhance his moral and ideological appeal.
Second, he began to employ greater coercion to suppress a growing opposition. The vehicle for his ideological and
moral appeal was justcialismo, Peron ideal of justice for all--a third route to development that was neither
communist nor capitalist.
Perns strategy included attacking the church. Starting in 1951, the new regime grew more repressive.
The government suppressed and took over Argentinas most famous newspaper, La Prensa (1951). Further, Peron
used his National Liberating Alliance, a private army of thugs, and the thirty-five-thousand-man federal police force
to intimidate the political opposition. Torture, imprisonment, censorship, purges, and exile became the order of the
day. After 1954, even the General Confederation of Labor became a coercive force, whose prime function seemed
to be to suppress opposition within the labor movement.
Perns reluctance to go along with the industrialists desire to push down wages and increase productivity
alienated that group; the industrial bourgeoisie then joined forces with the agrarian interests, which had long and
bitterly opposed Peron. This desertion ended Perns once highly successful coalition. Inevitably, Perns hold on
the working class loosened as the wage freeze and inflation reduced the value of their wages. The death of Eva
Peron in 1952 contributed to the deterioration in the relations between Peron and the working class. She had
served as her husbands ambassador to the workers. With Evita (little Eva) no longer at the head of the Social Aid
Foundation, a vast philanthropic organization that distributed food, clothing, and money to the needy, Perns
relations with labor did not go so smoothly.
Despite economic adversity, Peon could not have been overthrown had not the military abandoned him.
For the better part of a decade, he had masterfully balanced, divided, and bribed the military. Most of the senior
officers owed his both their rank and their prosperity. The army was heavily involved in industrial production, and
this provided an excellent means to become rich. In addition, to win its allegiance, Peron had showered the military
with expensive military hardware and excellent wages. However, his relations with the armed forces began to
disintegrate when he altered his economic policy to lessen emphasis on industrialization and self-sufficiency. On
this score, his concession to Standard Oil in 1953 was the last straw for the nationalist military. The military was

also affronted by the dictators personal behavior (he had an affair with a teenage girl), and it objected to his virulent
attacks on the Catholic Church, a pillar of traditionalism, during 1954 and 1955. It also resented Perns efforts to
indoctrinate the military in the tenets of justicialismo.
Thus, in struggling to extricate the nation from an economic quagmire, Peron undermined the multi-class
coalition that had brought him to power and sustained him there. When the final successful revolt took place in
September 1955, after a failure in June, enough of the working class was alienated to assure the militarys success.
Peron briefly threatened to arm his working class supporters, the descamisados (the shirtless ones), but instead
fled into exile.
James Cockcroft - Neighbors in Turmoil: Latin America pp. 502-507

P-2

Peronist Revolution, 1943-1955: Populism and Corporativism

Rising labor unrest and political protests against the domination of the oligarchy set the stage for another military
intervention to restore order and save the nation. On June 4, 1943, General Arturo Rawson and 13 colonels of the
GOU (Group of United Officers, founded in 1941) threw out the Conservatives and set up a new Revolutionary
military government. Much of the leadership was Fascist. It proscribed political parties, jailed its opponents,
banned Jewish and leftist newspapers, outlawed organized labors Marxist-dominated CGT, and packed labor
leaders into concentration camps. It restricted strikes, cutting their number to a paltry 27 in all of 1944. In light of
this, the powerful Union Industrial Argentina, a confederation of big industry, expressed its backing of the new
regime.
But the militarys iron-handed rule could not conceal internal factionalism. After three days Rawson was
replaced by General Pedro Ramirez, who vowed to keep Argentina neutral during World War II--thus bucking the
Latin American trend of siding with the Western democracies and the Soviet Union. Washington responded by
freezing Argentine gold reserves in the United States, recalling the American ambassador, and restricting shipping
to Argentine ports. By early 1944 the U.S. pressure worked. Argentina broke relations with the Axis powers
(Germany, Italy, and Japan) and Ramirez resigned.
On March 2, 1944, Vice-President General Edelmiro J. Farrell was sworn in as Acting President. By then
the original 1943 coup leaders were in disarray and a shrewd 48-year-old 6-footer of the GOU, Colonel Juan
Domingo Peron, the Minister of Labor and Welfare and newly appointed Interim War Minister, was emerging as the
regimes strong man.
Like many other officers, Peron came from a humble middle class background. He was the farm-family
son of immigrant, Creole parents. He had entered military college at age 16 and had gradually risen through the
ranks. He had lived in Europe and admired the Orderly successes of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Peron and
other colonels in his clique aspired to free the nation from the control of British and U.S. economic interests. They
had little patience for either the old-guard oligarchy that had dominated the nation for most of the last 80 years or
the quarreling pro-middle-class politicians of the Radicals and other parties.
Major civilian groups were too weak to counter Peron. The oligarchs were more unpopular than ever; the
new industrialists and middle classes could not unite. Peron recognized what recent events had made obvious: a
new social group, the working class, many of them recent arrivals to the factory and frigorifico zones of Buenos
Aires, was ready to enter the political arena. In September 1943 the Communist-dominated, outlawed meat
workers union led a general strike that was lifted in October only after Peron negotiated with its leaders.
Argentinas unions sought government recognition, collective bargaining, higher wages, and a better deal for labor.
Communist labor leaders agreed to lift the September strike in part because they welcomed the renewal of meat
shipments to the Allies fighting fascism in Europe.
Peron was deeply anti-Marxist. In late November 1943 the government upgraded the labor department to
create the Labor and Welfare Ministry under Perns leadership. It renewed arrests of leftist labor leaders,
including Communists. Peron began forming an alliance with strike militants and independent unionists who had
opposed the Communists agreement to lift the general strike. He drew his initial mass labor support from the
railroad unions, headed up by his personal friend Colonel Domingo A. Mercante. The railroads were British-owned

and unpopular, so granting their workers benefits did not particularly worry domestic industrialists.
Anxious not to alienate big business, Peron was at first slow to grant many of labors economic demands.
By April of 1944, however, many unions, independents, and leftists were preparing for a huge antigovernment May
Day rally to protest its anti-labor policies. This forced Peron to step up his wooing of labor. By granting unions loyal
to him official government recognition and delivering wage hikes and social welfare, Peron was able to forge a
mass bases among Argentinas descomisados or Shirtless ones as he and his companion Eva Duarte liked to call
them.
The May Day rally was called off, and the government began enforcing labor laws and collective
bargaining, leading to a huge rise in the number of contracts signed. Real wages among unskilled workers jumped
by 17 percent between 1943 and 1945. Perns tilt to labor alienated big business Union Industrial Argentina,
which by the end of 1944 joined sides with the landed elites Sociedad Rural.
Also in late 1944 Nelson Rockefeller became U.S. Assistant Secretary of State in charge of Latin American
affairs. He advocated a more conciliatory posture toward Argentina, since it had finally declared war against the
Axis powers and the United States would need friends in Argentina to counter Perns further radicalization.
Rockefeller helped to bring about Argentinas inclusion in the United Nations at sessions held in San Francisco in
1945.
By mid-1945 Argentine society was polarized on the issues of Perns concessions to labor, his attempts
to change rural tenancy regulations and help the downtrodden, his nationalist and independent foreign policy, and
continued military rule. The United States shifted its policy once more--to a position of hostility toward Perns
government symbolized by the appointment of Spruille Braden as ambassador. Son of copper magnate William
Braden (whose interests later became part of Kennecott Copper); Braden was a veteran troubleshooter for U.S.
corporations in Latin America, including Rockefellers Standard Oil (see Chapters 15 and 16).
On October 9, 1945, Perns rivals in the military and his civilian opponents, including Socialists, Radicals,
and oligarchs, mounted a coup, arrested Peron, and jailed him in a military hospital. During the next week tens of
thousands of the descamisados took over Buenos Aires, facing down police and defying soldiers. Judging from
recent scholarship, their spontaneous protest had little coordinated leadership from Peronist leaders.
By the end of October Perns followers had organized the Labor party and Peron had made up his mind
to run for the presidency in February 1946. Ambassador Braden was recalled to become Assistant Secretary of
State for Latin American Affairs and to direct the anti-Peron campaign from Washington. Bradens outspoken
denunciations of Peron contributed to a nationalist swell of support for Peron.
On the eve of 1946 elections the U.S. State Department published a Blue Book charging Peron with proNazi activities. Peron countered with a Blue and White Book (Argentinas national colors) critical of Yankee
imperialisms his campaign slogan was Braden or Peron? Argentines answered by electing Peron president by the
commanding margin of 300,000 votes. Braden went on to serve as United Fruits public relations director and point
man for attacking the democratically elected reformist government of Arbenz in Guatemala. He also became a
founder of the ultra rightist John Birch Society in the United States.
As a popularly elected president, Peron was able to practice a broad-based corporativist populism,
appealing to both big business and organized labor. He had a rare opportunity granted him by Argentinas large
foreign currency and gold reserves accumulated during World War II. From 1945 to 1948 real wages rose another
20 percent. Industrialists profits multiplied, as industrial production increased by one-third and domestic
consumption expanded because of the wage hikes. Despite subsequent signs of an economic decline, Peron was
easily reelected president in 1951.
Perns operative style was consistent with his corporativist and personist ideology of bringing conflicting
groups under the tutelage of a strong state and his ultimate individual leadership. His anticommunism pleased big
business, even though it initially opposed him in 1945-1946. While controversy rages bout what Perns ideology
and intents were--he said many conflicting things in the course of his life (1895-1974)--his practices were clearly
anti-Communist, procapitalist, corporativist, populist, and often nationalist. He gained the backing of the Catholic
Church by promising to block legal divorce and to protect church schools and by marrying his companion Eva
Duarte.
Peron nationalized many leading foreign firms, including the railroads, urban transport, ports, and utilities
companies. He established state enterprises in steel, shipping, insurance, and banking. He set up rent controls

and worker pension funds. He brought nationalized German companies into a state manufacturing complex and
also expanded the military-industrial conglomerate Military Factories. He created a state trading board to control
foreign trade and an industrial credit bank to support the growing group of Argentine industrialists, large and small.
Foreign exchange from agricultural exports helped fund the importation of equipment needed for
industrialization. Throughout the 1940s the lot of many Argentine businesspeople and workers improved notably.
But when the costs of capital goods imports rose and severs draughts and drops in world prices for wheat and other
grains occurred in 1950s, the initial successes of Peronist populism and nationalism were undermined by economic
hardship. Workers continued their militant demands for economic hardship, trusting that Peron would aid them
again.
Perns immense popularity with Argentine workers was based on his having brought them into the
political arena and advanced their living standards. Between 1943 and 1949 labors share of national income rose
from 45 to 59 percent. The workers own mobilizations and militancy kept the heat of Peron in case he wavered.
From 1946 to 1948 the meat-packing unions continued to disrupt production to demand compliance with earlier
agreements and recognition of many leaders who were independent and not Peronists. Peron jailed his opponents
in labor and consolidated a bureaucratic ruling bloc inside the rapidly expanding unions, whose membership
quintupled to 2.5 million. Even after the bulk of workers gains had been made rank-and-file union militants had to
pressure the Peronist bureaucratic leadership to maintain their benefits.
Many workers looked to Perns flamboyant actress-wife, Eva Duarte de Peron, for help. Evita as they
affectionately called her oversaw charity projects that provided benefits to the working poor. She herself had been
raised in poverty, an illegitimate child scorned by society. The ranks of the poor were expanded by a new influx of
immigrants--160,000 a year from 1948 to 1950--needed to staff Argentinas expanding industries and services.
Evita gained a reputation in worker circles as an Untiring defender of our union interests. She advocated womens
suffrage, and in 1947 women got the vote. Together, Evita and Juan Peron could rally huge buoyant crowds.
When Evita died of cancer in 1952 the nation mourned. She remained a symbol for the working poor.
In reality, President Perns concessions to labor could not be sustained in the face of obstacles presented
by declining export prices in the 1950s and a deepening recession combined with inflation (stagflation). To combat
the economic crisis, Peron encouraged foreign investment, took out a big U.S. loan, and struck a deal with
Standard Oil of California. He offered price incentives for rural landowners and coddled big business. He had the
CGT order workers to restrain their wage demands and to increase their productivity. An entrenched bureaucratic
caste in the trade unions increasingly cast its lot with big industrialists, domestic and foreign. As labor historian
Charles Bergquist later notes, Wages fell behind the rise in living costs for long periods of time and leaders of both
the independent and pro-Peronist unions tended to become Passive instruments obedient to the dictates of Peron.
They substituted Mystical loyalty to Peron For the radical reformism of a class-conscious proletariat.
By 1955 most Argentine industrialists had turned against Peron. Like Peron, they looked to foreign capital
for help, even if it meant making them junior partners of better-off U.S. and European investors. Other former allies
also turned against Peron, including the Church and many people from the middle classes. Students were fed up
with Peronist Goons sent their campuses to control their political life. The moment was opportune for the most
reactionary forces of the landed oligarchy to ally themselves with other dissidents and turn the clock back.
George Pendle - A History of Latin America pp. 206-209

P-3

One officer, Colonel Juan D. Peron-who had experience of Mussolinis Italy, where he served as a military
attach- realized more clearly than anyone else that a new type of caudillo was now required. He must be a
caudillo of the trade unions, of industrialization, nationalization, and Five-Year economic plans. To obtain the votes
of the neglected masses, the new caudillo would really have to improve their living conditions. (In the military
regime of 1943 Peron chose himself for the post of head of the then unimportant Secretariat of Labor, a job which
no one else wanted). Also, of course, even the newest caudillo still need to be a man endowed with the traditional
caudillo qualities, masculine charm, dash, and eloquence (all of which Peron abundantly possessed). Peron was
up to date even in his public relations technique. Friendly with a glamorous radio actress, Eva Duarte, he
appreciated the enormous prestige enjoyed by entertainment stars and sporting aces. He bestowed his patronage

on Argentine boxers, racing motorists, swimmers, and footballers, thereby sharing, in some measure, the acclaim
that they received.
Under Perns direction at the Secretariat of Labor, many long-overdue reforms were affected. Peron
encouraged the development of trade unions in the meat-packing plants and other industries where the employers
had not allowed them. He contrived that his Secretariat should supervise collective bargaining between workers
and employers; that the bargaining should usually result in substantial concessions to the workers; and that the new
wage agreements should be given the widest possible publicity, as evidence of his success in defending workingclass interests. He also kept a close hold on the trade union movement by ruling that collective contracts would
only be recognized as valid if the unions signing them had been officially approved by the Secretariat. During this
preparatory period in his rise to power, Peron secured the appropriation of a large sum for the construction of
working-class flats. Compulsory holidays with pay were decreed for all wage-earners. it was not surprising,
therefore, that when in 1945, jealous of Perns growing political influence, a military clique arrested him, the trade
union leaders-feverishly assisted by Eva Duarte- organized mass demonstrations to demand that he be set free.
Men in shirt-sleeved- henceforth to be known as descomisados- poured into Buenos Aries from the working-class
suburbs. On the famous day of 17 October these descomisados were virtually in control of the capital. To appease
them, Peron was released. A few days later he and Eva Duarte were married.
After the triumph of the 17 October, Peron placed his friends on key positions in the government but did
not himself take off: instead, he devoted his energies to preparing for the elections which were to be held in
February 1946. His supporters formed a new party, the Partido Laborista, which nominated him as its candidate for
the presidency. The party pledged itself to work for the nationalization of the public services (notably the railways);
the building of hospitals and homes for the workers, the aged, and the infirm, and the defense of the social gains
made while Peron was Secretary of Labor The hierarchy of the Catholic Church supported Peron. Because he had
sympathized with the Germans and the Italians during the Second World War, the United States government did
their utmost to discredit him. The elections took place under the supervision of the army, and were, by common
consent, the cleanest that had ever been held in Argentina. Peron won the presidency for himself, almost two
thirds of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies, and all but two of the seats in the Senate. With the rank of
brigadier-general, he was inaugurated president of the republic.
The rule of Peron and Evita in the space of a few years brought Argentina right out of the era of the
estanciero and of the upper-class charity for the poor, into an era of urban industry and social security. But while
they badgered the landowning oligarchy politically and financially, the Perns never attempted to nationalize the
great estates: they knew that the disruption of the social pattern in the rural areas would have disastrous effects on
production.
When Evita died in 1952, still a young woman, the Peron regime had already served its purpose. The
Perns had broken the landowners monopoly on power, without ruining that class (indeed, the value of land was
always rising). For the mass of the population, Pernism had lifted the horizon of expectation.
After Evitas death the regime disintegrated, and its excesses multiplied. The rising cost of living caused
widespread discontent. Perns high-handed methods had always infuriated the upper classes, and they
increasingly gave offence to the Church. Corruption in government circles and in the state-owned industries and
agencies now exceeded anything that Argentina had endured even under Rosas or Irigoyen. Nationalist-minded
military officers were indignant when Peron, with the purpose of reducing the huge cost of importing petroleum,
decided to grant concessions in the Patagonian oilfields to a United States company. The situation became more
and more troubled, until in September 1955 it was rumored that Peron intended to distribute arms to the trade
unions, with instructions to suppress his enemies. Thereupon the officers commanding the chief provincial
garrisons led their troops against Buenos Aires, while the navy, joining the rebellion, blockaded the Plata estuary.
Peron sought refuge on a Paraguayan gunboat which was in Buenos Aires harbor. In accordance with Latin
American practice, he was granted political asylum, and a fortnight later he was allowed to travel into exile.
So the military right wing were again in charge of the country, and as usual they were confident that they
alone what was good for the people. They dismissed all Peronistas from the senior ranks of the armed forces, from
the federal and provincial administrations, and from the judiciary and the universities; military interventores were
placed in charge of the trade unions; and when presidential and congressional elections were at last held in 1958,

the Peronistas (who comprised at least one third of the electorate) were not allowed to nominate their own
candidates.
John Fagg - Latin America-A General History pp. 704-720

P-4

The Rise of Juan Domingo Peron

Perns conspicuous activities from the first days of the Farrell administration caused him to be regarded,
correctly from the most part, as the real power of that regime. Born in 1895 in the southern part of Buenos Aires
provinces, he was of mixed Spanish and Italian ancestry and of the middle class. After spending his childhood in
ranch country, he moved to Buenos Aires with his parents. His academic and athletic abilities won him entrance
into the national military college, where he prepared for a career in the army. An intelligent and industrious officer,
respected as a fencing champion, a mans man, and something of a scholar, he nonetheless crept up slowly in a
service where considerations of pedigree favored the landed aristocracy. In 1930, when he participated in Uriburu's
rebellion against President Yrigoyen, Peron was a captain. During the following six years he moved up two grades.
He taught at the war college for some time, becoming a respectable historian and author. Then he served two
years in Chile as a military attach, his tour of duty being cut short, or so it has been said, by accusations on the
part of his hosts that he was engaging in espionage. In 1939 he went on a mission to Italy to train with the
magnificent army that Mussolini claimed would soon astonish the world. During the next two years Peron traveled
over several countries in Europe, read, observed, and pondered. He became conscious of a historic destiny
reserved for him, a Napoleonic star. He was vain enough to believe that he could copy the successful methods of
the great dictators--Mussolinis perfidy, Hitlers technique with threats, and Francos feline relentlessness--without
making their mistakes. A tour of Spain soon after the end of the civil war filled him with a determination that such a
struggle must be avoided at all cost in his own country.
In only three years he rose to the top. His personality had much to do with his success. Peron was an
extrovert with extraordinary magnetism; he was very persuasive--or frightening. Athletic, masculine, and
handsome, he conformed to the Argentine ideal of a hero. A hypnotic speaker like Hitler, he could inspire, console,
and enrage vast crowds as he pleased. In one speech he could personify tenderness and seem a sincere
humanitarian; in another a few minutes after, he would be a bloodthirsty terror. In short, he was a marvelous actor,
as so many successful politicians have to be. Peron was no ignoramus. He was thoughtful and very well-read;
when he cared to, he could impress a discriminating audience. Yet he fraternized casually with enlisted men,
rustics, and unlettered workers as a good fellow who shared their attitudes and understood their problems.
Apparently he had no moral sense whatever.
This close student of Mussolini had understood far better than his associated how important it was to
complement naked military power with popular support. This meant, in fact, organizing the poor and ignorant
through blatant appeals to envy and class hatred, through demagoguery and vulgarity. Peron had no hesitancy
whatever in exploiting these means, and while he was certainly not the first demagogue to appear in Argentina, he
gauged the aspirations of the masses better than any other. His real opportunity came during the eight-month
administration of President Ramirez. Peron won two positions, neither of first importance; he was undersecretary of
war and head of the department of labor. The former enabled him to learn what he needed to know about the
officer hood and to manipulate appointments and promotions so as to strengthen his position as the nerve center of
the GOU. The second post, which might have been an honorific affair, a mere sinecure, he elevated to cabinet
rank within a few months. Despite his scanty experience with labor unions or industrial affairs, Peron learned
quickly. Labor unions, which had been intimidated so long by the government and were still belittled by Ramirez,
learned that the new minister was likely to obtain excellent terms in disputes with employers. A rash of
unionization, long overdue in Argentina, garnered hundreds of thousands of workingmen into organizations
controlled by Perns creatures. The minister himself seldom failed to exploit an opportunity to associate his name
with a settlement favorable to labor or with new benefits.
The installation of General Farrell as president early in 1944 placed Peron near the front of the
government. As vice-president, minister of war, and minister of labor and social security, he enjoyed even more

advantages than before. Although his power over the top army commanders was by no means total--in fact, this
was never to be, even at his height--it was sufficient to assure him immense importance. A story much in
circulation that might have been true, and was certainly in character, was there Peron would not assign or promote
an officer until he wrote out in his own hand a letter of resignation--which Peron could date and publish at his
pleasure. Another technique, which he may have copied from Cardenas of Mexico, was to stimulate the loyalty of
junior officers and enlisted men to himself by paying them personal attention and providing them with better pay
and conditions. In a showdown between the war minister and their immediate commanders they might well side
with Peron or at least inhibit ambitious generals.
Even more revolutionary than Perns attachment of the army were his efforts to win working class
support. Within a few years he raised the proportion of unionized labor from one-tenth to two-thirds of the working
force. The leaders of these unions were seldom the original organizers of years past, for Peron made a clean
sweep of the old hierarchy. Usually they were men he chose and felt he could manage through office and bribery,
even blackmail. They professed fervent loyalty to him if they wished to remain in their posts, which tended to be
very lucrative. Social security benefits were extended to almost every type of workingman, white-collared or
overalled. Even the forgotten rural proletariat fell into Perns power by means of agricultural unions which he
sponsored. It was both a slow and a difficult process to unionize certain regions, where the company store and
private police discouraged organizers, but it made considerable headway. Copying the Brown Shirts of Hitler and
the Black Shirts of Mussolini, those extralegal policemen and militiamen who served the official parties, Peron
developed an organization of the descamisados (shirtless), who really had upper garments but not the white shirts
worn by men of affairs. Thousands of young men, many of them rowdies from the poorer districts, notably La Boca
in Buenos Aires, were trained into experts at beating up opponents, looting shops or factories, and otherwise
terrifying gentlefolk. Reminiscent of Rosas mazorca gangs of a century before, the descamisados well knew the
signals by which Peron could fill the Plaza de Mayo in front of the Casa Rosada within a few minutes with shouting
enthusiasts or set armed mobs surging through the fashionable sections of Buenos Aires. Even regular army
troops feared them. Finally, Peron used his position to grant holidays, wage increases, and bonuses to labor
simply by announcing these benefits whenever he thought he needed the publicity. Employers had to pay or see
their businesses smashed, in many cases literally. The Argentine workingman was no longer an orphan. He had a
friend and leader who had delivered material benefits and endowed him with status and power. Who cared if his
methods were arbitrary?
While Peron scoffed at the idea of running for president, saying it was Impossible that he would ever seek
the office, every indication pointed to this ambition. Conditions seemed ripe, though the army gave him some
cause for uneasiness at this time. Labor fairly idolized him and apparently had forgotten the older politicians. The
rural masses seemed to be deserting the Radical and Democratic Progressive parties which had held their
allegiance so long. And as a defiant champion of Argentine nationalism, Peron appealed to miscellaneous groups
everywhere who yearned for new values. Still, the outcome of World War II suggested that Argentinas foreign
policy for the past five years had been madness. Ambassador Bradens encouragement to the opposition had done
something to revive the old parties. In most of the world the mood of 1945 was restlessly democratic, as was
natural at the close a long war, and Argentina shared some of this attitude. During September and early October a
number of demonstrations in Buenos Aires showed the popular temper to be nervous and critical. Misled into
believing that Peron was going out of fashion like the other fascists, a group of army and navy officers concocted a
plot to remove him. On October 9 a garrison near the capital pronounced and compelled him to resign. Then he
was taken to penitentiary on Martin Garcia Island. It seemed a ridiculous end for so promising a career.
The conspirators allowed General Eldemiro Farrell to remain as president, for he was a pliable nonentity.
A false spring of revival swept through the country, heartening to liberals and democrats who rejoiced over
Argentinas narrow escape from totalitarianism. As in previous coups of this type in 1930 and 1943, the new ruling
clique was not exactly sure what was to be done next. None of its members was an outstanding figure. While they
hesitate, others acted. Perns most loyal lieutenants accurately assessed the situation as not lost beyond
recovery. Summoning the descamisados, they found these street fighters still obedient and capable of arousing the
rest of the working class. For several days huge mobs stalked through the splendid avenues of Buenos Aires, all
the more ominous because they were subdued in manner. Gradually they began to assert themselves more
forcefully, chanting slogans and roughing up opulent or intellectual persons. An important contribution to their

morale came for Peron's mistress, a minor actress and radio singer named Eva Duarte. This strident beauty
proved herself as effective a demagogue as her lover. As isolated acts of violence took on a pattern suggesting
proletarian revolution, the generals nervously calculated the chances of pitting the troops against the grim popular
mass. Soon they decided it was too risky. On October 17 the movement reached a crescendo of wrath when
untold thousands gathered in the Plaza de Mayo shouting give us our leader back. A reign of terror seemed
imminent. For once, the only time, President Farrell asserted himself and dismissed the new government. Peron
returned to the balcony of the Casa Rosada to thank his followers, a hero restored to his people by popular
demand. From that fateful evening on October 17, 1945 to the summer of 1955 no one could doubt that Juan
Peron was the ruler of Argentina.
It was now in order for him to become president of the republic. Elections were called for February 1946
with the army, which was still independent of Peron, pledging its honor to see that they would be conducted
properly. Peron collected his various blocs of supporters in an organization he named the Labor Party. The
Radicals attempted to rally their scattered members and to put together a massive coalition including the
Progressive Democrats, Socialists, and Communists. They named as their candidate Jose Tamborini, as estimable
man who was greatly handicapped by the unfamiliarity of his name and a colorless personality, from neither of
which Peron suffered. Peron enjoyed every advantage in fame, political appeal, and dynamism. He particularly
exploited the fervent patriotism which second-generation Argentines were now displaying. Britain, the historic
embodiment of imperialism, he defied with a passion that appealed to many Argentines. The United States, which
had so long been an object of envy and dislike, was an even more convenient bugbear. Although Braden had gone
home some months before, Peron shouted up and down the country that the voters choose between Braden o
Peron, a slogan chalked on many walls. Hoping to discredit Peron, the United States issued a Blue Book which
was designed to prove beyond doubt that recent Argentine governments had shamelessly cooperated with the Axis.
Instead, it offended more Argentines than it converted, turning more voters to Peron as a patriot. The most
influential clergymen favored Peron; a pastoral letter read in every church instructed the faithful to vote against his
opponent. The campaign was open and the election was free, as every qualified observer, foreign and domestic,
agreed. Peron won a huge electoral majority and it carried his followers into control of both houses of congress and
into most of the provincial posts. His popular plurality was less impressive, 1,500,000 to 1,200,000, but quite
substantial.
Juan Domingo Peron as President-Dictator
Nothing in Perns previous career suggested that his electoral victory might induce him to govern
constitutionality, as well he might have. His regime, officially inaugurated on June 4, 1946, therefore contained few
surprises. From the outset it was clear that the president was everything, the other branches of the national
government and the local organisms having no independent power whatsoever. Congress remained obedient
because most of its members were Peronists and could be disciplined through his political machine. This
organization, after considering several jaw-breaking names, sensibly decided to call itself the Peronista Party.
Congressmen who were not Peronistas were intimidated, expelled, and frequently imprisoned under a law
punishing desacato (disrespect), which could be interpreted to include sharp questioning or any type of criticism
even on the floor of the legislative body. Peron also crushed the judiciary, which had enjoyed considerable prestige
for its probity and independence unique in Latin America he had four of the five Supreme Court justices impeached
and ousted on spurious grounds. Other federal judges were simply turned out wholesale by the device of having
congress refuse to confirm their positions. Finally, all officialdom was purified; state or local rulers were dislodged
by means of the familiar right of intervention unless they were ardent Peronistas.
Re-staffing the administration from top to bottom was a conventional practice, even in democratic
countries. To control the officers of government through a party dictatorship was less customary, though Yrigoyen
and the Radicals had gone almost as far as Peron in earlier days. However, Peron utilized many refinements which
almost extinguished the republican spirit and the democratic tradition. His informal militia, the descamisados, were
most useful in breaking the heads and shattering the offices and ships of men suspected of being opponents. A
critic of Peron might at any time lose his health, dignity, livelihood, or freedom at the hands of these hoodlums,
whom the police never chastised. The secret police conducted searches, pilfered the mails, and made arrests

without regard for the niceties of civil liberties. Torture was a common practice in police stations. Argentines
learned to look over their shoulders before they spoke, to expect invasions of their homes and offices, and to inform
foreign visitors in a special language of the doings of some character known as John Sunday (Juan DomingoPeron). Argentinas excellent press and her great publishing establishment, in both cases the finest in Latin
America, had learned something of censorship since 1930. Now they acquired much more familiarity with this
practice. An impertinent editorial or an inconvenient news story might be followed by a strike, a sharp rise in the tax
rate, the arrest or beating of the offending writer, a curious unobtainability of paper or ink, or one of the dreaded
Spontaneous incursions of descamisado gangs who would wreck the premises. Managers of publishing houses
learned what not to print, and book dealers what not to display, if they wished to remain in business.
Among the most stubborn of Perns critics were university faculty members and students. Already they
had suffered considerably under President Castillo and he colonels prior to 1946. Now they were thoroughly
beaten down. Nine-tenths of the faculty in the six universities lost their positions. Students were expelled by the
hundreds, their limited rights to self-government under the reform of 1918 being flouted with contempt. Peron
showed no mercy in denying outspoken students their degrees, which often meant they could never enter the
professions for which they had trained. Students also learned that hoodlum mobs were available to break their
bodies and time a public meeting or demonstration took on an anti-Peron character. Meanwhile, Peron spoke
glowingly about destroying the aristocratic university system and replacing it with one - more democratic, where
vocational training would supplant the historic disciplines and there would be no fees. Fortunately, he never gave
matter persistent attention. It was easier to revamp the public school system so that textbooks and courses would
glorify the regime. Although Peron cripples and debauched Argentinas fine educational establishment, it was
sturdy enough to survive him.
Peron was probably sincere in maintaining that his system was original, eclectic, and truly adapted to Latin
American conditions in a way no other had ever been. The name he attempted to affix to this system was
Justicialism, which perhaps mercifully, was never made very specific or even coherent as a doctrine. After much
fanfare he assembled a constituent congress in 1948. Its product, the constitution of 1949, outwardly had much in
common with the instrument of 1853, though Argentina was now a very different country from the truncated
Confederation of the days of Urquiza and Alberdi. Nominally, it maintained the federal system, along with the
separation of powers and civil liberties. Women were allowed to vote for the first time in Argentinas history.
Presidents were to be chosen by direct election and could succeed themselves (Peron laughingly let this provision
slip through; he affected o have no interest in the matter). A list of Rights for the aged indicated the warm
humanitarianism that supposedly suffused the working classes could think of except the right to strike. There were
kind words for children. Also, wide and vaguely defined powers were entrusted to the national government in
matters of economic affairs, foreign trade, and ownership of minerals and public services. As a document the
constitution of 1949 did not depart radically from the windy and misleading charters of other Latin American
countries.
Perns economic program deserves a variety of contradictory judgments: insane, patriotic, unrealistic,
pragmatic, magnificently conceived, sinister, disastrous, amazingly successful, and so on. No epigrammatic
assessment really fits, for Justicialism was all of those things in the economic area, and more. Experts abroad
became convinced that Peron was bent on destroying his countrys prosperity as though he were a captive of a
suicidal mania. Yet he repeatedly surmounted crises and confounded his critics. His policies were so daring s to
be irresponsible, and they were carried out amid extreme corruption and degrading misrepresentation. They came
close to running agriculture and the stock-raising industry. Yet when Pernism was a thing of the past, it could be
fairly said that Argentina had strengthened and diversified much of economy, that standards of living had improved,
ad that her people were devoted might have progressed much faster under a less erratic government.
Some glimmer of consistency emerges from Pernism when Argentina is seen as undergoing a rampage
of nationalism like that of Mexico during the 1930s, or belatedly participating in a world-wide revulsion against
imperialism. Basically, the Argentines wanted to terminate their material dependence on Britain without substituting
for it new semi colonialism under the United States, West Germany, or the Soviet Union. Peron understood this
longing and turned it to his own advantage. British markets and good will had cast away with a frivolity that appalled
sober students but delighted the masses. Americans were defied and insulted, always a popular activity for an
Argentine public figure, but Britain was the initial enemy. Just before World War II it was known that alien investors

held more than two billion dollars worth of Argentine property, in railroads, public utilities, street railways, packing
plants, and land. British owners accounted for about three-fourths of this total. For the time being, during the years
of austerity following the war, the British still urgently needed Argentine meat, wheat, and wool. Therefore, Peron
seemed it safe to strike at this long-time partner who now seemed an exploiter. In doing so he was also hurting the
landed aristocracy, the Hierarchy he abused with such vulgarity in his speeches, the fashionable and cultured
classes who despised him as an upstart or madman.
On July 9, 1947, the anniversary of Argentinas declaration of independence from Spain in 1816, Juan
Peron stood in the very room in the city of Tucuman where this announcement had been made and proclaimed the
economic independence of the republic. An agreement with Britain in 1948 resulted in the exchange of most of
Argentinas railways for about $600 million in credits and food products. It was a proud moment for the Argentines
when their government took possession of the transportation system, and they looked forward to enjoying better
service and equipment. As for the British, they had not survived and prospered over the centuries for nothing.
They were really pleased to be rid of this huge investment. It later developed that they had obtained a much more
equitable bargain than contemporaries thought, perhaps had even gotten the better of Perns negotiators! By
1948 the national government owned practically all the banks, insurance companies, means of communication and
transportation, ports and elevators, and public service installations. Whether it operated them well or ill, most
Argentines felt a gratification difficult for foreigners to appreciate. Their country was no longer in any sense a
colony.
Peron exhibited a certain degree of statesmanship in making a mammoth effort to industrialize Argentina,
something that had been going on for some years without much official encouragement or even understanding. His
underlying design was for the republic to convert her economy so as to favor capitalists and labor and to strengthen
the middle classes by building up the domestic market. If his program succeeded, Argentina would have a much
higher standard of living and would be dependent on no outsider. The decline of the cattle barons and wheat lords
he accept with satisfaction. The creation of a large industrial establishment necessarily involved importing capital
goods abroad, mainly heavy equipment from the United States. For several years an enormous volume of theses
imports could be financed with the credit and gold reserves accumulated during the war and just after. The
reserves were huge, for Argentina had charged unmercifully for her products during the war and the period of
hardship following. It is Perns credit that he expended these funds wisely.
It was also important to acquire means of fueling the industrial plant he was constructing. Coal from
Wales, Chile and the Ruhr, and petroleum from Venezuela or the Middle East cost heavily in foreign exchange and
would become more expensive as Argentinas requirements grew. For the first time scientific surveys were made of
the Andes, whose resources had long been neglected, and enough coal and minerals were found to reduce
Argentine dependence on outsiders. Oil had long refused to appear in the republic, but the national monopoly,
YPF, increased its efforts and discovered substantial pools in Chubut, the wind-swept southern province, Salta in
the extreme northwest, and the tropical Argentine Chico (renamed President Peron). With reference to electric
power, all that was needed was to supply the nation was effort, and this was forthcoming on a heroic scale. A very
expensive but well-planned program accomplished wonders in harnessing power from the streams that sprang out
of the Andes. The mighty Iguazu Falls in the northeast awaited utilization, which the government began to project.
To be sure, Buenos Aires grew so fast she periodically outran her electrical power resources. Streets were often
dark, factories were hampered, and apartment dwellers had to walk up the stairs when elevators balked for lack of
current.
Since all of these projects were expensive, the administration developed an agency to handle the export of
raw materials and the importation of capital goods and other finished products. A mammoth monopoly known as
IAPI, Instituto Argentino para la promocion del intercambio (Argentine Institute for the Promotion of Exchange)
bought up beef, wheat, and other raw materials, stored them, and exchanged them for such foreign goods or
credits as the authorities could arrange. This nationalization of exports failed to function as efficiently as Peron
promised. IAPI often paid lower prices to ranchers and farmers, who were orphans under the regime in any event,
than foreign concerns once had; yet sold their products abroad at exceedingly high rates. The explanation of the
discrepancy was the venality of the officials who managed IAPI. In the long run IAPI defeated the purpose for
which it was supposedly created. Argentine agriculture and stock raising suffered and declined, while foreign
customers stopped buying from IAPI as soon as other suppliers made themselves available.

By 1949 Perns program was in deep trouble. Europe was no longer compelled to but Argentinas
products at blackmail prices. And nature frowned on the southern republic at this time by inflicting a terrible drought
on the pampas, causing the failure of crops and diminution of herds. With her exports falling off disastrously and
her wartime credits almost exhausted, Argentina was hard-pressed to finance her industrialization program. Peron
professed to be unworried. Credit, he said, was only a state of mind. He boasted that Argentina would never again
accept a loan from abroad. In 1950, however, he was greatly relieved when the United States saw to it that the
Export-Import bank granted a loan (though it was not called this, in view of Perns sensitivities) of $125 million.
This advance and the sharp rise in prices occasioned by the Korean War staved off a financial collapse, and
Argentina creaked along miraculously for several more years. Bankruptcy was ever close, however, and inflation,
which plagued almost the entire globe, refused to obey the presidents orders to cease and desist. The cost of
living overtook the enormous wage increases Peron had decreed, leaving the working classes little better off. He
made desperate efforts to halt the rise in prices and to enlist the publics cooperation in several imaginative
campaigns for this end. It was doubtful whether the factors being constructed everywhere, the dams, power plants,
and public works would be finished before the nations economy went to pieces.
Nothing whatever had been done about dividing the great ranches and farmlands except in a few cases
when Peron nationalized the estates of his personal enemies. This was not because he wished to favor the
hierarchy, but because he experience of Mexico and other countries had indicated a certain economic unwisdom
in breaking up large rural units. Peron could point to many achievements in other directions. Nearly every section
of the republic had taken life. Everywhere buildings were going up, testimony not only of urban industrialization but
also of a provincial revival. Forestry and mining in the Andean areas had become important industries with promise
of much future growth. Ocean fishing was no longer neglected, little as Argentines were inclined to substitute fish
for beef. The republic was now the possessor of a large merchant marine, purchased abroad, which Peron said
would make her forever independent of foreign shippers. However shaky the economy appeared to bankers and
creditors, electrification, new sources of fuel, and the largest industrial establishment in South America were
realities. Argentinas human resources had also grown faster than most demographers imagined and had done so
recently without much immigration. Her population stood at 18,000,000 by the end of Perns rule, twelve times its
size a century before. No one could doubt that the nation was tapping its riches with some effectiveness. Men had
long admired Argentina as an economic wonder. After a decade of Peron they regarded her as a miracle, for she
developed so rapidly under such an erratic government.
Freedom Peron degraded in nearly every way, but egalitarianism flourished until the masses idolized him
as El Lider (the leader), their unique benefactor. He brought them unionization, higher wages, paid vacations,
shorter working hours, dignity, status, free medical care, improved housing, and safeguards against accident,
illness, and old age. Even the rural workers shared these benefits, to which they responded in the usual twentiethcentury way by departing from the countryside and moving in droves to the cities. Of course, many criticisms of
Perns achievements were valid: that he had done little but insult and threaten the oligarchy, who were still rich;
that his agglomeration of labor unions, the Confederacion general de trabajo, was honeycombed with tyrannical
and grafting officials; that inflation consumed most of the wage increases, that the descamisado gangs gave the
whole lower class a totalitarian tradition that would long linger. These disagreeable points, however, could not and
did not obscure the enormous gains Peron had delivered to the workingmen of Argentina.
Eva Duarte Peron
Perns social policies cannot be separated from the astounding, career of Eva Duarte Peron. Of
illegitimate birth in a provincial town in 1919, she had gone to Buenos Aires as a young woman to become an
actress. She had a few minor parts on the stage but found a better livelihood by singing in cabarets and on the
radio. Soon she was circulating in the fast society of high-ranking army officers, who seldom troubled to present
her to their wives. Thus she acquired fine clothes, jewels, and a bad reputation. Eva was an extraordinarily
beautiful woman, blonde and brown-eyed. Although her education was very limited, she was intelligent and, in a
sentimental way, idealistic. Peron met her during the summer of 1943-1944. He was a widower just then rising to
power. Eva became his mistress, but more; she was a truly fanatical Peronista and an assistant with much
acumen. Peron recognized her important role in liberating him on October 17, 1945. A few weeks later they were

married.

For six years Eva Peron was the most famous woman in the world. She was the real secretary of labor
and welfare in her husbands government. She wrote a newspaper column and acquired a controlling interest in
several journals. After agitating successfully for the right of women to vote, she organized and headed the
womans branch of the Peronista Party. Her voice, which lost much of its musical quality in countless public
harangues, was heard all over the country, on the radio, the balcony of the Casa Rosada, in street meetings, before
labor unions, children, and, in fact, nearly every imaginable group. Her message was not consoling or
compassionate but full of hatred. She inveighed against Perns enemies and scolded those who failed to
contribute their best to his crusade. Her special foes were upper-class womenfolk, the society ladies who sneered
at the titular first lady of the republic. Since Rivadavia's time, in the 1820s, the aristocratic women of Buenos Aires
had supervised a host of charities in their Sociedad de Beneficencia. Eva Peron set out to ruin it, first b acts of
spite, such as having garbage dumped in inconvenient places or by causing servant troubles. Then she outdid it,
creating an Eva Peron Foundation to which workingmen Voluntarily contributed a days pay now and then and
which businessmen who wished to avoid a visit by the descamisados liberally endowed. There was no accounting
of the fantastic sums involved since, as Senora Peron disarmingly stated, Everyone knows I am honest Misdirected
though much of its money was, the foundation did a great deal of good. Charity was now possible on a tremendous
scale, available to anyone who dropped by the Casa Rosada and had a few words with the presidents lovely wife.
Many Argentines received clothing, medicine, and grants to help them through difficult days. Eva Peron had a
wicked sense of humor, which on one occasion she combined with national vanity to delight her countrymen. When
the Argentine embassy in Washington received a routine appeal for contributions to local charities, the greathearted lady in Buenos Aires shipped a large quantity of food and clothing. Argentina, she explained, was
generous enough to share her riches with Yankee beggars.
Valued partner of her crusading husband, scourge of the Best people angel of mercy, Lady Bountiful-these were the roles the onetime frustrated actress played with immense success. Another and more subtle
characterization was filling the position dominated by film stars in some countries and by royalty in others. Eva
Peron had the most expensive clothes and the most spectacular jewels of any Argentine. By flaunting them as she
did, she gave vicarious satisfaction to countless women of the lower classes who relished seeing one of their own
so lavishly bedecked. instead of resenting her extravagance they admired her brazenness. And they enjoyed
being told that such clothing might come within their reach in the better Argentina Peron was building.
No delicacy or modesty inhibited Eva Peron as she forced the Argentines to become familiar with her.
Descamisados were encouraged to chant Evita as though invoking a holy spirit. Her portrait appeared on posters
all over the nation and in the display windows of merchants who valued their safety. Syrupy tributes came forth in
speeches of almost any type, in newspapers, magazines, radio broadcasts, and newsreels. Of course, surreptitious
means were found to circulate jokes and rumors about her morals of the indecent enrichment of her family. In 1951
a campaign was initiated to have her nominated for vice president when Peron ran for reelection in the following
year. However, the army hierarchy was socially conservative and could scarcely contemplate such an affront to
Argentine manhood. In one rare occasion when they crossed Peron, the generals made their feelings clear, and
the campaign suddenly ceased.
Soon afterward it became known that the first lady was sick. An operation for cancer of the throat failed to
deliver her from this ailment. As long as her failing strength permitted, she appeared before her beloved
descamisados, pale and wrinkled, croaking horrendous threats to her husbands enemies. When she dies on July
26, 1952 at the age of thirty-three, thousands of mourners in front of the Casa Rosada wept. All over the country
clocks were stopped at the hour of her passing, many to remain so for two or three years. Black banners were
draped about the innumerable portraits in public places. The painted word Evita still appeared wherever a wall of
facing was blank, and anyone who scoffed risked violence or worse. The province of La Pampa took her name, as
did the city of La Plata, and every province received an order from the national congress to rename a town after
her. The absurd and rather pathetic autobiography, which had been ghost-written, La razon de mi vida (The
reason for my life), became a required textbook in every Argentine school. There was undoubtedly much true
feeling in the blasphemous orgy of national grief that followed the death of Eva Peron, which included demands that
she be declared a saint by the Catholic Church. But much of it was also artificially stimulated by President Peron,
who wished to exploit her popularity and use it to strengthen his own.

Pernism and the World

Under the Peron dictatorship Argentina gave the fullest play to the spirit of belligerent nationalism. The
country was full of aggressions, which had long been turned within itself, since it had not been involved in a foreign
war since 1870. Chronologically, Great Britain was the first enemy. it was not enough for Argentina to overcharge
this good customer for meat and flour during the war and the period of austerity afterward, when these commodities
were in pitifully short supply. Peron also ranted at supposed British perfidies in the past and present, and the
inspired press poured out vile abuse. For a time Peron seemed determined to seize the Falkland Islands, which
Argentines call the Malvinas, but ultimately he shrank from challenging the Royal Navy, demobilized as it was. No
particular purpose can be found in this official bluster unless it was to humiliate the Anglophile oligarchy within
Argentina. After the sale of the foreign-owned railways in 1948, some of the venom went out of the anti-British
campaign. Perhaps Peron was also chastened a little when the British reduced their purchases in Argentina as
world conditions improved. Yet he had needlessly repudiated a century of good will and a most fruitful period of
collaboration that had benefited both countries.
With the defeated Axis nations Peron cultivated close ties, perversely defying world opinion but, perhaps,
displaying a considerable vision. Refugees and war criminals from Hitlers fallen empire found a welcome in
Buenos Aires, with great numbers living in peace despite the clamors of their victims. While Franco Spain was
being ostracized by the United Nations for several years after the war, Peron ostentatiously offered that country his
friendship, keeping his ambassador in Madrid though few other countries did. Eva Peron made a much-publicized
visit to Spain in 1947, where she was greeted like a beloved royal tourist. Peron also irritated Britain, the United
States, and other democracies--whom he seemed to equate with the Once people he derided at home--by
deliberately playing up to Communist Russia. He recognized the Soviet Union, something previous Argentine
governments had never done, and permitted the Communist Party to function openly in Argentina. Several barter
arrangements between Argentina and the Iron Curtain countries were mutually profitable, though not to the degree
Peron had prophesied. As for the domestic Communists. they got along comfortably in Perns Argentina.
Peronistas and Communists were convinced they were taking advantage of one another, and perhaps both were
correct.
Perns friendliness with the Communist world was a useful lever to win favors from the United States, a
device other national leaders was not above using. After the few months experience with Ambassador Spruille
Braden in 1945, the Americans reverted to the role of a long-suffering Good Neighbor who refused to be provoked.
As the Cold War intensified, Peron exploited Washingtons dilemma by insulting and threatening the yanqui, to the
delight of many Argentines and other Latin Americans. This abuse did not arouse a hostile reaction from the United
States, at least officially. On the contrary, it made the government all the more eager to please Peron, as
witnessed by the loan in 1950 that probably saved his regime from a financial debacle. The forbearance of Tio
Sam was based on the fundamental realities that lay beneath the shower of vocal offences from Buenos Aires.
Argentina had no military might whatever in the stark new world of power politics after 1945. Her large and showy
army and her minute air force and navy were insignificant factors in an age of intercontinental bombers and nuclear
weapons. The only way Peron could harm the United States was by granting bases to the Russians. This he was
unlikely to do for many reasons, chief among which was Argentinas urgent need for American machinery and other
capital goods. This need was not reciprocal; Argentina produced nothing the United States could not obtain
elsewhere. Although the Americans were in some years Argentinas prime customers, they could easily turn to
other suppliers. In ignoring or placating the strident dictator the State Department was not being pusillanimous.
Rather, the American policy grew out of the conviction that an inter-American solidarity and long-range relations
with the people of Argentina were worth the price of enduring the provocations of a tyrant.
Toward other Latin American nations Peron exhibited signs of aggressiveness. he had many admirers in
the Hispanic world, and he cultivated the militaristic dictators who aped him and attempted to influence labor
organizations through his own CGT. Paraguay, which was economically at the mercy of Argentina, was ruled by an
army group inclined to be sycophantic before Peron. Bolivia fell into the power of a party inspired by Argentina and
hostile to American Exploitation. The army junta which ruled Peru was generally friendly to Peron, if nervous about
his ambitions. The same was true of Colombia and Venezuela and sometimes of the small republics of the

Caribbean. However, Peron overplayed his hand by assuming too confidently that Chile planned to remake itself
on the Justicialist pattern and become a satellite of Argentina. Brazil had reason to be nervous about Peron. Much
reckless talk in the Argentine army about the supposedly imminent disintegration of the mammoth, spongy republic
allegedly weakened by its Negroid character both offended and frightened the Brazilians. Peron harassed the
liberal regime of President Dutra in minor ways between 1946 and 1951. Uruguay was Perns worst annoyance.
This small democracy was by its very existence a rebuke to the Argentine dictatorship, and its prosperity made a
mockery of some of Perns policies. It was also a nest of Argentine refugees, as it had been in the days of Rosas
a century before. Peron retaliated as much as he dared by forbidding Argentines to travel to the little republic, thus
depriving it of a large source of income from portenos who had long made a habit of visiting its casinos and
beaches. The Mexican Revolutionists, who competed with Peron for Latin American leadership, were perhaps
aware that the Argentine dictator had copied many of their measures, but they consistently made known their
disapproval of his regime.
Peron pretended to profound aspirations. On several occasions he said that World War III had already
begun and that it would lead to the destruction of both the United States and Russia. Therefore, Argentina should
groom itself as a third force--a popular ambition among many nations--to inherit the world. This she should do by
following a course midway between capitalism and Communism, which Peron claimed Justicialism signified, and by
being militarily strong and socially united. Although his metaphysics were rarely taken seriously, perhaps not even
by himself, it was possible to make a persuasive case for the success of his diplomatic policies. A pariah among
the United Nations in 1945, Argentina had come to enjoy some influence in the world organization and to be
courted by all of Hitlers erstwhile enemies while enjoying the friendship of the former Axis partners themselves.
Her Latin American neighbors either feared or imitated Argentina; in any case they respected her. And yet Perns
regime had little but nuisance value in international affairs. When his achievements were weighted against what
Argentina might have accomplished between 1945 and 1955 under a democratic system with a sound economic
policy, there was little to admire, much to inspire pity and disgust.
Decline and Fall
Evil days for liberty or democracy might be tolerated by most Argentines with comparative equanimity as
long as there was reason to believe they were being led into a paradise of material well-being. By 1951 or 1952,
however, it became increasingly apparent that El Lider was faltering rather badly on this path. Meat exports were
only a third as great as they had been fifteen years before. Peron thought it necessary to exhort his people to
consume less beef, by far their favorite dish, and to command them to observe one meatless day a week. More
and more there appeared to be a sound basis for the rumors concerning the fantastic profits the potentates of IAPI
were making at the expense of farmer and rancher, and also the consuming public. And for all the public boasts of
iron and oil discoveries, Argentina was still expending the major share of her diminished credits on imports of these
products. Heavy machinery could no longer be bought in sufficient quantities to keep pace with the scale of
industrialization. There never seemed to be enough electrical power, despite Peronista claims and genuine
accomplishments. Luxuries from abroad were almost unprocurable. Dislocations and inconveniences plagued
almost every aspect of the nations economy, though the rest of the world was booming as never before in all
history. Buenos Aires, for so long the pride of the Hispanic world, became a conspicuously shabby city, unrepaired,
unpainted, dirty, with antiquated services and very old and not many automobiles--all this at a time when other Latin
American cities were experiencing a frenzy of construction and chaotic traffic problems because of so many shiny
new cars. Inflation broke loose in Argentina worse than ever, impoverishing a population which had long been told
that Peron knew the secrets of economics. All over the country people would see the sign, Peron crumpled (Peron
fulfills). It seemed more and more a mockery as business worsened and promises remained unmet.
While economic conditions were becoming more precarious, several events shook the faith of the
population in the regime. One was the revelation, clandestine but rightly believed, and that Eva Peron had looted
her celebrated charity foundation. Another incident was the strangulation of La Prensa, the very symbol of the old
days of Argentine liberty and enlightenment. Having already subdued La Nacion after a long campaign of
harassment, Peron closed in on this final bastion of a free press. In 1951 the noble journal was stilled, its publisher,
Dr. Alberto Gianza Paz, fleeing abroad to receive honor and sympathy wherever there was freedom of the press.

The CGT took over the plant and name of La Prensa. An impudent banner, Ya es Argentina (Now it is Argentina),
was wrapped all the way around its building facing the Casa Rosada. With control of the nations press at last
absolute, the government next barred all foreign journals which had been, or might be, critical of Peron. To a
literate people such as the Argentine these matters were acutely oppressive and humiliating. Finally, the
presidential election of November 1952 revealed the helplessness of the voters to change the system. The first
Argentine president to run for immediate reelection, Peron was unwilling to allow an open campaign and honest
tabulation of the votes, in contrast to 1946. He had an opponent in Ricardo Balbin, the candidate of the Radical
Party and its allies, but this challenger rarely received permission to speak on the radio, and the controlled press all
but ignored him. His public speeches were usually disorderly affairs. According to the announced results, Peron
obtained 65 percent of all votes cast. Possibly this percentage represented the loyalties of the general electorate,
for no one could seriously doubt that Peron still held the support of the masses.
Since his secret police was exceedingly effective in reporting on the state of opinion, the president could
not have failed to know that his popularity was slipping. Like Franco of Spain, he had known many close calls and
always seemed to emerge the stronger after a period of danger. An incident in April 1953, demonstrated his
technique. While he was delivering one of his frequent harangues from the balcony of the Casa Rosada several
bombs exploded, far from his, to be sure, and quite possibly planted by his supporters. The atrocity at once
became an excuse for the descamisados to push in mass through the avenues of Buenos Aires in search of
Perns enemies. By some design they concentrated in the downtown area at the Jockey Club, which for seventy
years had been the sanctuary of the landed aristocrats, the lair of the Hierarchy, as Peronistas believed. The fine
old building was sacked and burned. Valuable paintings, books, furniture, and wine stocks were destroyed while
the fire department occupied itself in other sections of the city. For months nothing was done to clear away the
debris, which filled the fashionable shipping area with a memorable stench. It was a warning to the oligarchy--and
to all of Perns enemies--that no one could fail to grasp. Having made his point, Peron typically sought to
captivate his victims. An obvious shift in official favor from organized labor to big business featured the mood of the
administration in the next few months.
This reversal of policy received explicit verification in July 1953, when Milton Eisenhower, brother of the
American president, paid a brief visit to Buenos Aires in the course of an extensive tour of South America. The
stopover in the Argentine capital had been designed to be so short as to constitute a snub; it was included at all
only after much hesitation. However, he was lionized in every way in full view of thousands of citizens, and
Argentina made known her willingness to change her mind about the iniquity of foreign capital. Before long an
American promoter began the construction of a large automobile and truck plant. Peron shocked devout
nationalists with the suggestion that YPF share its oil monopoly with foreign companies, who could presumably win
better results that Argentines. And, most significant of all, he began to speak of the need for labor to earn its wage
increase instead of relying of the beneficence of the government. Peron was serious about revamping his regime in
a conservative sense, for Argentinas economic plight was nearly desperate.
At this critical point, however, Peron committed a folly which defies comprehension, recalling the
magnificently insane basic errors that previous dictators have made. This was his assault on the Catholic Church.
Most students of Pernism had long, and perhaps, not always justly, counted he hierarchy of the clergy as a silent
partner of the regime. Certainly the Church enjoyed a privileged position under Peron which the republic had
denied it before. While the Argentine people were not conspicuously devout or clerical, they were overwhelmingly
Catholic, and there seemed no reason for Peron to make any changes whatever in the situation, especially now
that he was courting the conservatives. he apparently became alarmed at a Christian socialist movement among
the lower clergy that was kindling a considerable response among the masses. In November 1954 he spoke
menacingly about Church Meddling in student and labor groups and warned of Intrigues on the part of various
unnamed prelates. Suddenly, he announced an intention to legalize divorce and to restore licensed prostitution,
thus reopening issues which had long been settled to the satisfaction of the Church. A modest outburst of protest
following this announcement led to the dismissal of a number of priests, particularly those tainted with Christian
socialism, who had been teaching in the public schools. In reply to this astonishing attack, the clergy rather stiffly
made known its opposition to the proposal to insist on the canonization of St. Eva Peron. Demonstrations by the
faithful in front of cathedrals resulted in severe police measures. Peron was clearly aggravating matters, for
reasons never determined. Congress did his bidding in permitting divorce and prostitution, and the remaining

priests were ordered out of the schools. Religious holidays were no longer to be respected. In May 1955 Peron
commanded congress to desestablish the Catholic Church, destroying a position it had held since 1853. On June
11 a massive demonstration in Buenos Aires by 100,000 of the devout pushed Peron to the most extreme
measures. He at once deported two major Church officials and set the police and the descamisados to caking the
residences of priests and to submitting them and well-known clericals to indignities. On June 16 Pope Pius XII
excommunicated all government authorities in Argentina who used violence against the Church, presumably,
though the point is debated, including President Peron himself.
This sudden war of Church and state was a bewildering g development and one that was altogether
senseless for Peron. He doubtless aroused much of the country, including a large proportion of the female
population and the conservatives he had recently been wooing. Now his other enemies had a popular issue, and
conspiracies developed for the first time since 1945 in an atmosphere of hope. And yet, no twentieth-century
totalitarian dictator had ever been overthrown without the benefit of a foreign liberating army. The first efforts to
destroy Peron fizzled out ignominiously. Several naval aircraft dropped bombs on the Casa Rosada, barely missing
Peron, but missing him, and the aviators flew abroad. A sputter of garrison revolts in various parts of the country
came to nothing. During July it seemed that Peron was surviving another crisis, to emerge with enhanced strength
as he had before. If labor had cooled because of his recent policies and women because of the anticlericalism, the
population as a whole seemed as cowed as ever. The key to the situation was the army, as it had been since
1930. Never quite as bound to Peron as most outsiders believed, the generals knew a declining dictator when they
saw one, though most of them had attained their rank by toadying to him. In August 1955 Peron sensed that the
military was full of intrigue. He reverted to his old formula, pitting the descamisados against the army and gambling
that the enlisted men would defy their own officers.
It was not long until Peron received his reply. The generals conferred at army maneuvers near Cordoba.
Officers of the navy and air force, who had always been tepid in their Pernism, came into contact with the army
conspirators. On September 16 a military revolt broke out simultaneously in several provinces, all army-led. From
Cordoba, where the radio station was seized, broadcasts went out to raise the entire country. Naval units steamed
toward Buenos Aires, threatening by radio to bombard the city unless Peron resigned. Airplanes flew over the
capital in ominous waves. Against such forces the street-fighters were helpless. In truth, the descamisados
exhibited little spirit to die for Juan Peron. On September 21 the garrison near Buenos Aires announced adherence
to the rebellion and occupied the city, the only bloodshed occurring when they overcame a group of die-hard
Peronistas who had barricaded themselves in an office building. Deserted on all sides Peron slipped away on a
rainy night from the Casa Rosada to the legation of Paraguay, and then to a gunboat of that nation anchored in the
harbor.
Hubert Herring - A History of Latin America pp. 677-691

P5

THE ERA OF PERON

The upheaval of June, 1943, delivered the nation into the hands of the military. The bungling generals
who executed the coup proved unimportant, but out of the confusion emerged a new caudillo: one who ruled neither
by the grace of the Conservative oligarchy nor of the middle class, as had presidents since the time of Rosas; but a
demagogue who held power by favor of the sweaty masses. This was the beginning of the era of Juan Domingo
Peron.
The prosperous upper classes had themselves to thank for the latest turn of events. They had controlled
Argentina, with the brief interval, for ninety years; they had named presidents and had often contributed to the
building of the nation. But they had failed to serve the Argentine people; they had denied them free political
institutions, monopolized the land, and perpetuated the colonial abuses of the workers. The middle class had also
failed; despite its dominance from 1916 to 1930, the Radical Party had caused further strife, falling apart into
warring factions; in 1943 it was powerless to block the upstart generals. The oligarchy and the Radicals shared
responsibility for the emergence of Peron and peronismo.

The Rise of Peron

The march upon the Casa Rosada on June 4, the flight of Castillo to the safety of a minesweeper on the
Rio de la Plata, the installation of General Arturo Rawson as president, the shift three days later to General Pedro
Ramirez--these events seemed to the average citizen to augur happier days, for any change was welcome; and the
streets echoed with shouts of Viva Rawson! Viva Ramirez! Viva democracia! Within a week the new government
was recognized by the principal powers, including the United States. A few critics warned that the coup was not a
victory for democracy; and their gloomy prophecies were speedily confirmed by the actions of Ramirez, who
dismissed congress and proceeded to rule by decree.
The election scheduled for September was canceled. Cabinet and other appointments with rare
exceptions were speedily confirmed to blatant admirers of the Axis. Critics were jailed or executed. Influential
spokesmen for the Allies were silenced. Newspapers hostile to the new regime were generally suppressed,
although La Nacion, La Prensa, and the bellicose Critica (whose publisher was currently described as the Hearst of
South America) continued to criticize the usurpers. The Jewish press was banned, while numerous Germansubsidized published without hindrance. Pro-Allied organizations such as Accion Argentina and La Junta de
Victoria were proscribed. The German Embassy continued to turn out tons of propaganda. Secret police haunted
streets, cafes, hotel lobbies, and theaters. Suspects were arrested, jailed, and held without trial.
In October a manifesto signed by some 150 intellectual, professional, and business leaders was printed in
a few brave newspapers; it called for freedom of the press, Effective democracy . . . solidarity with the other
American republics . . . fulfillment of international pledges and abandonment of the idea that Argentina could stand
aloof from those who are fighting in the cause of democracy. The governments answer was fresh repression.
Ramirez appointed as minister of education Gustavo Martinez Zuviria, a novelist who, under the pen name Hugo
Wast, had written more than thirty tales of indifferent quality filled with venom against democracy, Communism,
foreigners, and Jews. Martinez Zuviria was ordered to purge the nations schools and universities, and the
professors who had signed the manifesto were the first to go. There were bold protests. Alfredo Palacios, veteran
Socialist and rector of the University of La Plata, defied the government by refusing to dismiss his professors, but
he was himself forced from office. University students demonstrated but were soon quieted. The ejected
professors included outstanding intellectuals such as Dr. Bernardo Houssay, a physiologist of world reputation (later
honored with a Nobel Prize) who bade farewell to his students with the words: And now I have delivered my last
lecture...The next well be given by a colonel The patriarchal Bishop Miguel de Andrea, beloved champion of
democracy, announced a lecture of Liberty in the Face of Authority; when the police locked the meeting place, his
words were printed and scattered widely, carrying their appeal to Ramirez: To dominate slaves is doubly ignoble; to
reign over the free is doubly glorious! Your Excellency, Mr. President: let your authority be the guarantee of our
liberty. Meanwhile, Martinez Zuviria placed compliant puppets in university chairs, introduced nationalistic
propaganda into the public schools, and added religious instruction, barred since 1884, to the school curriculum.
Ramirez aided the Axis powers by permitting German agents to carry on their propaganda and to furnish
information on sailings of ships to U-boats at sea. The protest of the Allies were ignored. In August Foreign Minister
Stroni addressed a naive note to Secretary of State Cordell Hull, arguing that Argentine Neutrality really served the
all-America cause, hinting at the imbalance caused by the United States arming of Brazil, and suggesting that
President Roosevelt make a gesture of genuine friendship to Argentina by sending airplanes, parts, and arms.
Hull's sarcastic refusal was well deserved, but its principal effect was to discredit and unseat Storni, probably the
one member of Ramirezs inner circle who favored the Allies. Hulls heavy-handed ridicule of the Ramirez regime
united many Argentines behind the government they detested. In January, 1944, the United States and Great
Britain confronted Ramirez with specific evidence of German espionage under the cloak of Argentine diplomatic
immunity. The Argentine congress then Discovered what every newsboy knew, that German and Japanese agents
were conspiring on the Argentine soil, and relations with the Axis powers were severed. As a face-saving gesture,
army officers forced Ramirez to resign in February 1944, and he was replaced by Vice President Edelmiro Farrell, a
blundering nonentity.
The true ruler now was Juan Domingo Peron, leader of the grupo de oficiales unidos (the GOU), who
henceforth directed the floundering revolution over which Ramirez had presided for eight months. Ramirez had
given the Argentine masses no slogans to stir them to action. He had, in effect, told them to hate the United States,

England, democracy, Communism, and Jews; and to love Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco. Such hating and loving
meant little to the average citizen. It remained for Peron to furnish a fighting issue: the emancipation of the
common man.
Those who dismissed Juan Domingo Peron as an insignificant upstart in 1944 lived to change their minds.
He was forty-nine, muy macho (very much a male) in his six feet of hard flesh, with his quick smile and clear eyes
and his easy command of men. His earlier years had been unspectacular. Born in 1895 in the south of the
province of Buenos Aires, a son of poverty, he was trained in the military academy and then rose slowly in the ranks
of the army. In 1930, as a captain, he took part in the Uriburu revolt. In the late 1930s he spent two years in
Europe, studying tactics in Italy, France, Germany, and Spain. In 1943 he supported Ramirez, who appointed him
chief of staff in the war ministry. While Ramirez and his colleagues vacillated, Peron determined that he would rise
to power as the spokes man of the proletariat--the badly paid industrial worker in factory and frigorifico, the
friendless peon on the estancia.
The times played into Perns hand. The cities were crowded with sons and grandsons of Italian and
Spanish immigrants, now loyal Argentines. Alongside them was a host of workers who had moved into the cities
from the back country, an ill-paid company who had quit the quasi feudalism of the estancias for the larger wages in
industry. Crowded into the distended cities, these workers in frigorificos and factories were ready for a leader who
promised better pay, better living conditions, and a voice in government. And of like mind were the middle-class
workers, little better off than the industrial workers. Peron offered himself to these groups as guide and savior. He
moved astutely, picked a job no one else wanted, the head of the weak Labor Department, and cultivated the labor
unions which had hitherto lived by sufferance at the hands of both Conservatives and Radicals. By November,
1943, Peron had won de facto cabinet rank as secretary of labor and was creating a political machine around the
labor unions he controlled. There was no question as to who ruled Argentina after the ousting of Ramirez and the
seating of Farrell in early 1944. In May Peron was named minister of war; and in July, vice-president. In February,
1946, he was elected president; and in November, 1951, he was reelected.
Perns Allies
Not the least of the confederates who helped Peron to seize and hold power was Maria Eva Duarte,
perhaps the shrewdest woman yet to appear in public life in South America. The glittering Evita, object of boundless
affection as well as endless abuse, was the heroine of a success tale in a land where success is avidly worshipped.
Of illegitimate birth, reared in poverty and with little schooling, ostracized by the Once people of her little town in the
south of the province of Buenos Aires, she was early drilled in dislike for the favored upper classes and was
perhaps inspired with some genuine desire to aid others whom society had scorned. Living by her wits, by 1943
she had a minor position in the principal radio station of Buenos Aires--at a wage of a dollar a day. After the coup
of 1943, she won friends among the Ramirez coterie, and within six months her pay was increased thirty fold.
During the last months of 1943 she met Peron and became his mistress as well as his partner in rallying the
masses behind his banner. When the movement to unseat Peron two years later almost succeeded, Evita had a
part in organizing the labor demonstration which restored him to power. Their marriage followed, and the twentysix-year-old Evita shared the honors of the election of February, 1946.
From then on Evita, who in her fine clothes and her costly jewels outshone any woman of the republic,
exercised an authority scarcely second to that of her husband. She became the virtual minister of labor, dispensing
and withholding favors with alternate wisdom and petulance. Political heads fell before her displeasure, while
favorites rose to high place. She became the owner of principal newspapers, bought with funds whose source was
never explained. In 1947 she took a hand in international affairs, making a triumphant state to visit to Spain, Italy,
and France, where she was accorded by Franco, received by the Pope, and feted by the French president. At
home Evita grew in favor with the descamisados, The shirtless ones, who saw in the comely First Lady a model for
all good Peronistas. The wealthy matrons of the capital, guardians of morality and manners, showed their contempt
for this young woman of humble parentage who defied their standards. But Dona Eva paid them off by a
humiliating tour de force. For 125 years the leading women of the porteno society had enjoyed a monopoly of
organized charity in the Sociedad de Beneficia, managing hospitals, orphanages, and related charities with stately
gravity. When they snubbed Evita, she retaliated by organizing the Eva Peron Foundation, to which a presidential

decree committed control of all charities hitherto directed by the virtuous ladies. The Foundation, Evitas alter ego,
became the corporate well of mercy from which flowed waters of healing for widows and orphans, for the sick and
the maimed, for the poor and disconsolate. Its treasury overflowed with offerings from grateful labor unions,
prudent employees, wise foreign corporations, and public employees. It became a multi million peso enterprise,
dwarfing banks and frigorificos. No accounting was made, and the suggestion that organized charity should be
subjected to the rude hands of a certified public accountant was received with shocked displeasure. Evita was then
given supervision of the ministry of health, in which capacity she conducted the first effective campaign against
tuberculosis and malaria and established hospitals and clinics.
Evitas monopoly over matters of labor, charity, and health was exercised with much energy, with due
regard to advancing the political fortunes of her master, and--in fairness to the lady let it be added--with
considerable benefit to the poor and the sick. The irreverent described her exploits as solely designed to promote
peronismo, but the humble Argentine whose childs life had been saved by Evitas blood bank was in no mood to
quibble. When the descomisados demanded that Evita should be nominated for the vice-presidency in 1951, they
were voicing the genuine devotion of the masses. But that promotion for the First Lady was blocked by the army
leaders, who knew, as all proper Argentine males know, the womans place, and who proposed to keep her in that
place.
Organized labor, whether persuaded or coerced, continued as Perns firm ally. Despite resistance by a
few honorable leaders, the General Federation of Labor (CGT) and the independent unions became instruments of
his power. The workers were rewarded with wages, bonuses, and social legislation such as Argentina had never
seen before; they paid for these favors, willingly or grudgingly, with fervid devotion to peronismo. Perns success
with labor was dramatically proved in October, 1945, when his enemies assembled their forces against him. The
opposition included substantial contingents of right-wing businessmen and estancieros, middle-class Radicals, leftwing Socialists, and some union leaders. The disaffection spread to the army and the navy, many of whose offices
deplored Perns failure to make terms with the victorious Allies.
On October 9 an army coup forced Perns resignation as vice president, secretary of labor, and minister
of war. Peron broadcast an appeal to labor, whereupon the military junta imprisoned him on the island of Martin
Garcia. For a week the issue was uncertain, as no new leader appeared. Meanwhile, under the skillful
manipulation of faithful labor henchmen and the eloquent Evita, the packing-house workers from the suburbs
converged upon the capital. By October 17 they filled the streets, shouting Viva Peron! Viva Argentina! The
General Federation of Labor called a general strike for October 18. The contest was over, and puppet President
Farrell announced that Peron was free. Thus the way was cleared for Perns campaign and for his election in
1946. It was labors victory as well as Perns, and both shared in the spoils. Wages were increased; but they ran a
race with inflation, and the workers had only an illusion of prosperity.
The army, without whose support a Latin American president lasts a fortnight, was held in line by Peron.
Those officers who had taken part in the coup against Peron in October, 1945, were eliminated. Most officers
found it profitable to serve their strong-arm president, and many were rewarded with political posts. The pay of all
officers, from second lieutenants to generals, was repeatedly increased until by 1950 they were receiving more,
grade for grade, than their counterparts in the United States. The budgets for the army and the navy increased
handsomely, accounting for about one-quarter of all national expenditures in 1950. Modern guns, tanks, and
planes replaced the obsolete equipment of other days. Skeptics asked the purpose of all this martial display. Was
it for use against marauding neighbors? But only Brazil had guns and powder enough to challenge Argentina, and
she exhibited no bellicose intentions. Or was it for excursions overseas? But when the United Nations, to which
Peron avowed allegiance, invited Argentina to join in policing Korea, Peron found it unwise to send troops so far
from home. Or was it, by chance, designed to extend Argentine dominion over such weakly held lands as Uruguay,
Paraguay, and Bolivia? But the tough-minded knew full well that such imperialistic advances would meet
overwhelming opposition from the other American republics, including the United States; that had been make clear
by successive Pan-American agreements since 1936. The true purpose of Perns strengthened army and navy
was the preservation of national order--which, in the lexicon of dictatorship, means keeping the dictator in power.
Peron was helped by the clergy. His presidential campaign of 1946 was aided by a pastoral letter signed
by Cardinal Copello and the bishops, admonishing the faithful to withhold their votes from any candidate who
advocated separation of Church and state, divorce, or exclusion of religious instruction from the schools. Peron, on

all such counts, was the one untainted candidate. One bishop, Miguel de Andrea, refused to sign the letter,
commenting: It is tragic to sell liberty for a few social and economic advantages. One parish priest refused to read
the pastoral letter to his congregation and was dismissed by the Cardinal. Several hundred Catholic laymen signed
a protest against the hierarchys aid to Peron. Meanwhile, Peron following the example of Franco in Spain,
included priests in all party councils.
The Economics of Peron
Perns bold and initially successful economic panaceas confuted the charges that he was implying
another rough riding caudillo in the familiar Latin American pattern. From his first days of power, he preached
economic emancipation from foreign masters, especially Great Britain and the United States; he demanded
recapture of foreign-owned railroads, telephones and other public utilities, port installations, and grain elevators; he
insisted upon the retiring of all foreign debt. The end of World War II found Argentina in an excellent position to
capitalize on the worlds woes: she had large reserves of blocked sterling piled up in London; and she had the meat
and grain which Europe needed.
Determined to exact top prices from the starving missions and to divert major profits to the Argentine
treasury, Peron created in 1946 the Instituto Argentino de Promocion de Intercambio (Argentine Institute for
Promotion of Exchange) which was a national monopoly corporation for handling all wheat (and later, other principal
products) in the world markets. Commissioned to buy in Argentina and to sell abroad, the IAPI angered foreign
buyers who resented the outrageous prices exacted for meat and grain, as well as the domestic producers who
were paid a third, a fourth, or even less, of the receipts from foreign sales. The IAPI realized substantial gains
during its first three years of operation, although no exact reckoning was ever made public. Its initial success was
followed by economic disasters; denied fair prices, farmers sowed less grain and stockmen allowed their herds and
flocks to be depleted; farm laborers crowded into the industrial centers. During the 1950-51 season the wheat
farmers, partly because of a drought and partly because of the low prices allotted them, could not profitably harvest
more than 80 percent of the reduce acreage they had planted. By 1952 the government was decreeing Meatless
days, an innovation unheard of in the Argentine land of plenty. Although Perns meddling with prices and
production had made him the target for new discontent, his promise to remove Foreign shackles from the economy
was substantially fulfilled. In 1946 the Central Bank, until then a semiautonomous, was nationalized and given
control of all the nations banks, including powerful institutions owned by American, British, French, Belgian, and
other foreign interests. In that same year the national telephone system, a subsidiary of International Telephone
and Telegraph, was acquired by the Argentine government on terms acceptable to its North American owners. In
1948, after negotiations involving the use of the blocked sterling reserves in London and exchange of Argentine
commodities for English coal, oil, and machinery, Argentina had acquired full title to the British-owned railways for
the sum of 150,000,000 pounds, an event which caused rejoicing in Argentina and humiliation in England.
Meanwhile, by drawing upon sterling reserves and profits from the IAPI, Peron had retired the entire outstanding
foreign debt of some 12,500,000,000 pesos. But Peron had overreached himself: the peso was declining in value,
and commercial debts piled up. In 1950 the United States allotted $125,000,000 from the Export-Import Bank to
ease Argentinas strained economy, and in deference to Perns distaste for the word loan, called it instead a credit
to certain Argentine banks, thereby enabling the Argentine president to continue his claim that his nation owed not
a centavo to any foreign power. It was a distinction without a difference, for the credit was guaranteed by the
Argentine Republic.
Industrialization became a magic word for the Peronistas. Argentina, they said, could produce every
variety of finished goods and machinery and thus could escape the colonial status of a country obliged to sell cheap
raw materials to the industrial nations and buy back manufactured goods at crippling prices. This argument was not
new. Factories and mills for costumer goods had multiplied rapidly since 1920. The blocking of trade with Europe
during World War I had encouraged the creation of a national industry. Having once lived almost entirely from its
agriculture and stock raising, the nation by 1942 had reached the point where the returns from industry equaled
those from the soil. Pessimists argued that industry was an exotic hope in a land which had little coal and iron,
inadequate hydroelectric plants, and little more than half the petroleum; but the fact remained that the Argentina of

1942 seemed to be about one-half industrialized. Productos nacionales, symbol of self-respect, included shoes,
electrical equipment, textiles, soap, dishes, processed foods, and almost everything the ordinary citizen bought
from week to week. World War II and renewed interference with the free passage of goods brought further
expansion of the national industrial plant.
Peron launched his first Five-Year Plan in 1946, after he was legally established in the presidency. The
Plan was ambitious, covering everything from votes for women to the installation of hydroelectric plants, but its
heart was industrialization. The framers of the document astutely allotted almost one-half the contemplated funds
to construction of power plants. The chief hindrance to development of factories and mills was the chronic shortage
of fuel and power. The coal used to drive locomotives, to generate electric current, and to stoke the furnaces of
industry had long been imported from England and Germany, and in later years from Chile and Brazil. At times
wood, corn, and linseed were burned. The national petroleum supply had never met more than 60 per cent of the
national demand. Peron launched some forty-five big and little hydroelectric projects. loudly promising that the
power needs of the nation would soon be met. Most of these schemes got little beyond the blueprint stage, for
revenue from the sales of meat and grain dropped, and there was not money enough to build dams and install
generators. Perns legacy to his successors included half-finished power plants, involving commitments beyond
the reach of the national economy.
Manufacturing of all sorts had been given impetus in 1944 by the newly created Bank of Industrial Credit.
By 1947 Peron could boast a five-fold increase in industrial production since 1943 and could say that Argentina had
its own iron and steel industry, coal mines and various other raw materials; makes all powder and explosives
needed in the country and makes all its arms, munitions, and vehicles. But these claims had little validity. To be
sure, Argentinas factories and foundries turned out some farm machinery, tractors, guns, structural steel, and
various other items; but phony bookkeeping concealed the price the nation was paying for this facade of industrial
strength. The experience did not prove that Argentina could not be industrialized; it simply showed that Perns
program was only hocus-pocus.
Although Peron had preached industrialization as the cure for Argentine ills, by 1950 he was rudely
reminded that his countrys prosperity rested upon its pastures and grain fields. His early digressions in fixing farm
prices should have taught him that cattle are not bred by presidential decree, that wheat is not harvested by political
oratory. The output of wheat, for example, dropped from 8,150,000 metric tons in 1941 to a mere 2,300,000 in
1950. Beginning in 1952, he raised farm prices, and offered subsidies for the increase of herds and the expansion
of grain fields, but it was too late. There is no evidence that Peron listened to the economists who warned in 1954
that there had been a 70 per cent decline in the rate of capital investment since 1943 that total production had
actually gone down and that labors buying power had improved little, if any.
The Foreign Relations of Peron
Perns conduct of foreign relations through the stormy postwar years entitled him to oblique credit. When
he entered the scene in late 1943, Argentina was in worse odor in the chancelleries of the democratic nations than
at any time since Rosas. Ten years later his government was recognized by the powers, it was represented by the
United Nations, and held a seat in its Security Council. Peron had won almost every round against his foreign
detractors.
Argentine relations with the United States, which had long been strained, became more difficult under
Peron. The traditional complaint against the powerful northern nation that was the fact that it sold much to
Argentina and bought little. For example, during the fifteen-year period 1924-38, the United States sales to
Argentina had exceeded its purchases by a total of $486,900,000. Furthermore, the successive tariff acts of the
American Congress had blocked the profitable exportation of Argentine hides, skins, tallow, casein, and linseed.
The crowning indignity in Argentine opinion was the exclusion from the American market of the beef of the Pampa,
a step justified by Washington as defense against hoof-and-mouth disease which is endemic in Argentine herds,
but resented by Argentines as an affront to their nation. Meanwhile, the British continued to buy, and enjoy, the
beef spurned by the United States. Such accumulated resentments had created the anti-United States nationalism
under which Peron carried on his quarrel with Washington.
The wartime confusions of Washington worked to Perns advantage. When Secretary of State Cordell

Hull castigated the Ramirez government in late 1943 and early 1944, then cracked the whip over Farrell and Peron
throughout 1944, Peron used the incidents to prove American contempt for Argentine sovereignty. When Argentina
was admitted to the United Nations in 1945, Peron gloated over his outwitting of the imperialistic United States,
despite the fact that Assistant Secretary of State Nelson Rockefeller was responsible for the invitation to Argentina.
And when Spuille Braden came to Buenos Aires as ambassador in mid-1945 and directed his reverent appeals on
behalf of democracy against the current tyranny of Farrell and Peron, the dexterous Colonel again rallied his
supporters against the intruding Yankees. The slogan Pern or Braden was plastered on the walls of the city and
village, and all the reserves of anti-United States resentment were tapped to assure the Peron victory in February,
1946. Finally, after Perns induction in office, the Washington winds shifted again. George Messersmith was sent
as ambassador in the spring of 1946 to make peace with Peron, under instructions to speak softly, to argue mildly,
and to praise tactfully. This more amiable American policy continued throughout Peron's days in office. Meanwhile,
Peron countered by blowing first hot and then cold upon his newly discovered friends in the north. His controlled
press continued to thunder against conspiracies hatched in Wall Street and other spots. He ignored mild
suggestions to soften his ways. The United States maintained its conciliatory course, granting Argentina a
$125,000,000 credit in 1950. But Peron persisted to find asylum in his country.
Throughout his years of power, Peron found comfort in his friend Franco of Spain, whose political
convictions and ways of governing resembled his own. Peron used Argentinas position in the United Nations to
press for inclusion of Spain in the councils of the free nations. Substantial credits to Franco facilitated purchase of
Argentine meat and grain. Dona Evitas dramatic visit to Spain cemented ties between the nations. By 1952, when
it had become doubtful whether Spain could pay her debts, the flow of foodstuffs from the Rio de la Plata had
almost stopped, but praise of Franco continued in the Peronistas press.
Peron prided himself on being a mediator in world affairs, offering a middle way between Communism and
Capitalism--a policy which he called justicialismo, a word whose meaning was never clarified. His dramatic appeal
to the great power in 1947 for a return to the paths of peace may not have greatly impressed London and
Washington (or Moscow), but it had fine propaganda value in Buenos Aires, where the ragged Peronistas learned
to revere their leader as a world statesman of the first magnitude.
Perns dealings with Great Britain brought him further renown. He seized the maximum advantage from
the Empires postwar tribulations, negotiated successive agreements under which Argentine meant and grain were
exchanged for British machinery, coal, and petroleum, and acquired the British-owned railways. Argentina at last
held the whip hand, and used it to exact ever higher prices for the beef that Englishmen craved. Blackmail was the
comment of at least one British statesman, but there was little to be done about it, except to speed up cattle
breeding in the British dominions. By 1954, Englands purchases of Argentine beef were about one-third of what
they had been in 1943.
In dealings with the Latin American republics, Peron wore the mantle of good-neighborliness. He became
the self-anointed protector of weak nations against the imperialistic norteamericanos. In 1947 his ambassador in
Washington chatted happily of a little Marshall Plan to be financed by Argentina to aid the defenseless nations of
South and Central America. Negotiations were initiated with Argentinas nearest neighbors, and there was much
discussion of customs unions, Argentine loans, subsidies and investments in Chile, Bolivia, Peru, and Paraguay.
Perns overtures met considerable resistance, especially from democratic Chile and Uruguay--and he was outbid
by the United States, which had more money to offer. Perns avid courting of his neighbors affections was also
clouded by the pressures he applied. When Bolivias Villarroel, a Peron favorite, was hanged on a lamppost, Peron
blockaded the Argentine-Bolivian border. When Uruguay persisted in welcoming refugees from Perns discipline,
Argentine wheat was withheld and the free passage of Argentine tourists to Montevideo was impeded.
Throughout his years in office, Perns emissaries conducted an adroit anti-United States campaign in the
other Latin American republics. His spokesmen played upon every grievance: they reminded Haiti, the Dominican
Republic, and Nicaragua of the long interventions by American marines; they condemned the gigantic North
American plot to seize monopoly control of Cuban sugar, Bolivian tin, Chilean copper, and Central American
bananas. They prompted Guatemala to assert her sovereignty over British Honduras. Argentine labor leaders,
appointed as attaches in Argentina embassies and consulates, carried the Peron gospel to the organized labor
movements of almost all the republics. By 1952 widely scattered labor unions of Peronistas hue were organized to
an inter-American federation under Argentine leadership-as an offset to the Communist-tinted Latin American labor

ferderation (CTAL) directed by Lombardo Toledano of Mexico. There was suspicion, supported by some evidence,
that these emissaries of Peron played more than a passive role in the military coups which dislodged democratic
regimes in Peru, Venezuela, and Cuba. They were charged with helping Velasco Ibarra to power in Ecuador,
Carlos Ibanez in Chile, and Laureano Gomez in Colombia. Perns role in the Western Hemisphere may be
described as a variation on the Holy Alliance of Napoleonic days in defense of rulers by divine right.
The Death of Eva Peron and the Fall of Peron
The death of the beloved Evita in July, 1952, provoked mad hysteria; hundreds of thousands crowded
around her body as it lay in state; eight were trampled to death, and over a thousand were seriously injured. The
ragged descamisados saw nothing incongruous in petitions to the Pope that she be canonized; to them, she was
the madona de America. They found it fitting that her likeness should appear on postage stamps, that a perpetual
flame be lit in the headquarters of her Foundation, that the broad Avenida 9 de Julio be renamed Avenida Eva
Peron, that the city of La Plata be rechristened in the same fashion, and that every province have at least one
school bearing her name. Her autobiography, La Razon de mi vida, was made required reading in every school;
and when the unfounded rumor spread that the United States government had prohibited publication of a
translation of that book, a mob bombed the Lincoln Library maintained in Buenos Aires by the American
government.
The loss of this symbol of the hopes and prayers of the ragged masses worked a profound
change in public sentiment. There were signs of restlessness, vague rumors of revolt. Faithful Peronistas
wondered whether the golden days promised by Evita could be realized by Juan Domingo alone. There were
murmurings when Peron dropped a score of men whom Evita had put into high posts; notably, when her brother
Juan Duarte was dismissed as secretary to the President--an anxiety not relieved when Duarte was found dead in
his apartment, a bullet in his heart. But the resourceful Peron turned to his old magic; summoning the Peronistas to
a mass meeting in April, 1953, he was greeted by the shouts of some 100,000 people. He began to speak, but was
interrupted by the explosion of two bombs, whose reverberations did more to rally support than all his words. With
the cry: We will hang the guilty on trees, the mob moved through downtown Buenos Aires, gutting with fire the
headquarters of the Socialists, Radicals, and other opposition parties. It then sacked and burned the Jockey Club,
proud center of wealthy portenos, destroying valuable books and paintings. The violence continued throughout the
night, while the police and the army stood by. The next day, a Peronistas newspaper referred to the flames of
purification, and several scores of prominent citizens were arrested and jailed without bail or trial.
The death of Evita was the beginning of the end of Perns rule: by 1952 there were abundant signs of the
bankruptcy of his regime. It was an economic bankruptcy: figures on production, public contracts, and the growing
debt had been falsified, but Argentines began to guess that his fair promises of prosperity had not been fulfilled. It
was a moral bankruptcy: there was fear in mens eyes, and shame. Not least of the symptoms of moral collapse
was the absence of a free and able press. One by one, the many excellent papers of the nation had been silenced.
La Prensa, one of the worlds greatest newspapers, had been expropriated in April, 1951. Belonging to the Paz
family since its founding in 1870, the paper had always served the ends of honorable government, speaking out
against tyranny and corruption. Ramirez and Peron repeatedly sought to silence it by bribery, by withholding
newsprint, and by mob attacks. Finally a government-formented strike of news vendors provoked violence
which furnished excuse for seizure by the government? Resuming publication under the aegis of the subservient
General Federation of Labor, the once great La Prensa became another mouthpiece for the dictator. La Nacion,
lone survivor of the responsible press, continued to appear, but its criticism of Perns regime was no more than
whisper. The decay of national morale appeared everywhere--in conversation in coffee shops, in the public
schools, and in the universities. Free Argentina was silenced and humiliated, but behind locked doors were
plotting.
The year 1955 brought hardening of the opposition to Peron. Business men and landowners, confronted
with the wreckage of the national economy, were grim and determined. The leaders of the armed forces-- partly out
of desire to save their necks in the inevitable collapse of Peronistas power, partly out of patriotic desire to save the
nation-- were conspiring: those of the Navy and the Air Force were the first to strike.
An important area of disaffection was the Church. Though Cardinal Copello and many bishops had

supported Peron during his early years, after the death of Evita, Peron had repeatedly offended churchmen: he
legalized divorce, lifted the ban against prostitution, had proposed to end the Churches participation in public
education, threatened complete separation of Church and State, and advocated the taxation of Church property. In
June, 1955, some 100,000 Catholics demonstrated in the Plaza de Mayo in front of the Casa Rosada, and then
marched to the Capitolio, over which some zealous youth had raised the papal flag.
This protest in June, 1955, set off the long-planned revolt. Naval planes roared over the capital city,
actually dropping bombs on the Casa Rosada. But the plot foundered, and the attacking planes found safety in
Uruguay. Perns retaliation was swift: gangs of Peronistas attacked some of the finest churches in Buenos Aires,
setting fires, gutting the sanctuaries, smashing statues. When two of the higher clergy protested to Peron, they
were put on a plane bound for Rome, whereupon the Vatican excommunicated Peron and all associated with him
for trampling on the rights of the Church. The influential Catholic journal Commonweal in New York commented:
The Church has made terrible compromises with tyranny through the centuries . . . but . . . the Church is final,
uncompromising enemy of any state that demands a total obedience of its citizens.
It was now clear that Perns time was running out. July and August of 1955 brought more plots and riots
which were countered by police violence. Peron offered to resign, addressing his letter to the Argentine Federation
of Labor; whereupon, in a nation-wide strike, labor affirmed its loyalty to Peron. The New York Times editorially
called Perns offer the convulsive reaction of a frightened man who is playing a losing game. On September 16
revolts broke out in army barracks in Cordoba, Rosario, Santa Fe, and Parana; General Eduardo Lonardi was
proclaimed chief of the liberating movement. On September 19, Peron resigned and sought safety on a
Paraguayan gunboat lying in the Rio de la Plata. On September 23, Lonardi assumed the provisional presidency.
Ecstatic mobs toppled hundreds of statues of Peron and Evita, ripping their photographs from walls. The era of
Peron was ended: the chief actor found asylum first in Paraguay, then in Panama, Venezuela, and the Dominican
Republic.
Carlos Fayt - Peronismo Revisited, Latin American Civilization: The National Era Vol. II pp. 304-307 P-6
Fifteen years after the overthrow of Peron the movement he once headed survives, perhaps stronger than ever,
despite the efforts of successive military regimes to conjure it away and the long absence of the exiled caudillo.
The stubborn vitality of Peronismo is not to be explained by the charismatic appeal of the aging Peron or the
totalitarian elements in his regimes. Its popularity derives rather from what was positive in Perns program,
especially its call for economic independence and social justice; and from the memory of the material and
psychological gains--however partial or subjective--made by the Argentine masses during the Peron era.
Continued intense interest in the subject is reflected in the recent appearance of a carefully documented study of
the nature of Peronismo by an Argentine social scientist. His conclusions follow.
I. Peronismo is a form of authoritarian based on the power of the masses, and, in this sense, it offers no
analogy or similarity with any other type of totalitarianism and is an original type, identical only with itself. Its
originality derives from its basal elements and from the crystallization of a new social and political status of the
popular masses. In Peronismo there appear the working class proper, the peasantry, the declassed elements, and
even sectors of the blue collar proletariat and the proletarianized middle class, which obtained measurable
advantages with respect to their social, political, and economic status. For them, Peronismo signified a forward
step in obtaining individual and collective recognition of the importance of their function in society, a certain degree
of participation in power and the illusion of sharing in the wealth. The worker came to occupy a place in the political
scene and the organized proletariat acquired consciousness of its social and economic power and weight. The
proletariat continued to be such; it passed from one dependency to another; but a change--more subjective than
objective--took place in its situation. The intrinsic limitations of Peronismo made this rise not anticipatory solution
but an experience of participation.
2. Having no definite ideology or physiognomy, Peronismo elaborated its doctrine after it had captured
power by the road of universal suffrage. It is an enemy of liberalism by virtue of the individualist conception on
which the liberal system of ideas rests, and of socialism because its conception of class struggle contradicts the
organismic idea of modern nationalism. To class syndicalism it opposed a corporative syndicalism, articulated as an

instrument of political power and a transmission belt between the leader and the masses. To the dictatorship,
identifying not only the State with the Nation, but the Nation with the Peronista movement, seeking to impose upon
it a single doctrine and a single supreme leader. It conception of the State is expressed in terms of will to mastery
and power, demanding unity of action and thought and coordination of efforts. It established a centralized
government and a State organized with expansionist ends and totalitarian in nature. Consequently, it organized
and channeled the trade union movement in accord with the directives of the State.
3. Its doctrine, enunciated in the form of truths, boiled down to the affirmation that true democracy is one
in which the government does what the people wants and defends only the interest of the people, seeking an
equilibrium between the individual and the social interests, attempting to place capital at the service of the economy
and the economy at the service of social wellbeing. As a norm of conduct it demanded that every Peronista work
for the movement, without regarding himself as higher or lower than what he was, always remembering that for a
Peronista there was nothing better than another Peronista. As principles for political action it established a scale of
values to which every Peronista was subordinated: first, the Fatherland; second, the movement; third, men, with
politics regarded as a means of serving the Fatherland, achieving national greatness, and securing the happiness
of ones children. The two arms of Peronismo were social justice (Peron) and social assistance (Eva Peron), and
with these two arms it claimed to unite the people in an embrace of justice and love. IT aspired to national unity
and not struggle, and all this, as a doctrine, was call justicialismo, defined as a philosophy of life, simple, practical,
and popular, profoundly Christian and profoundly human.
Such a doctrine makes difficult the determination of the ideological content of Peronismo. The doctrine
mixed principles taken from the organization of the lodge Obra de Unificacion del Ejercito with simplifications of a
Nationalist, Fascist, and corporative tendency, and with paternalistic ingredients that soften its authoritarian impact
on social life. But this indeterminate doctrine must be reckoned as an advantage for Peronismo, for it made it
sufficiently flexible to adapt to the contingencies of time and place and to bring together within the movement such
opposed groups as nationalists of every kind, military of hegemonic and expansionist ideas, trade unionists,
workers, peasants, and industrialists of a new stamp. For the rest, as an emanation from a concrete situation,
arisen within a determinate system of an aggregate that exerted high pressure on the whole of society.
4. Peronismo could not have existed without the help of the army, the Church, and the working class. Nor
could it have existed were it not for the social and cultural neglect of the Argentine masses and the social and
economic conditions that existed in the moment of its appearance. Jointly they determined the appearance of
Peronismo, but the latter must be understood as a result of the will to power of his faithful and his action in the
process of seizing power, within the Army by means of the G.O.U. (Grupo Obra de Unificacion) and within the trade
union organizations by means of the Secretaria de Trabajo y Prevision.
As concerns formal or external analogies, Peronismo has much resemblance to fascism. In addition to the
precedence of action over doctrine and the similar rejection of liberalism and socialism, the negation of the class
struggle and exaltation of corporativism, the mystical cry of fascism: Dio ce lha, guai a chi le tocca! (God has given
him to us, woe to anyone who touches him!) does not differ from the Peronista cry: La vida por Peron!(Our lives for
Peron). Nor is there any difference in the matter of considering ones countrymen traitors if they reject the political
objectives of the national dictatorship. Other common traits are the promotion of mystical intoxication in the
multitudes, of veneration and rapture, phenomena to be explained not only by objective cultural and social
conditions but by the persistence in the human sub consciousness of religious forces and impulses. The same may
be said of the use of massive means of communication for the ends of agitation and the propaganda and the
requirement of surrender in terms of voluntary sacrifice, using the techniques of persuasion. The mass meetings,
the singing of hymns, the display of banners and posters, the deliberate delay and dramatization of the
appearances of the leader, the preparation of a mystical atmosphere, are elements of common use by both types of
authoritarianism. Similar, too, are the promotion of servility and adulation.
Peronismo also resembles Bonapartism insofar as it is a personal dictatorship, conferred by the people in
conformity with constitutional rules, and that claims its power derives exclusively from the masses, thus presenting
itself as a synthesis of the confrontation between democracy and autocracy. But Peronismo differs from
Bonapartism in its capacity to generate social tensions, its incapacity to operate above the conflicting classes, and
its coefficient of accumulated social antagonism. It differs also by reason of the social function that it assigns to
property, by its formulation of social rights, and by the positive changes that it produced in the situation of the

proletariat.
5. The proletariat that subscribed to peronismo was not anti-democratic. This is proven by the frustrated
effort to organize itself politically in a Labor Party, its Declaration of Principles, its Organic Charter and its program;
and by the need for propaganda, raised into a major function by the Peronista State. For the rest, the basal
structure of Peronismo permitted democratic elections, reserving authoritarian designation for the directing bodies.
But the proletariat was kept in a climate of profound passivity, composed of nostalgia and waiting; it was habituated
to receive everything from the supreme power, without effort and without future. Peronismo was incapable of
profoundly modifying the situation of the masses or of transforming the Argentine economic and social structure. It
set the power of the masses in motion to establish a totalitarian system based on elementary forms of personal
exaltation.
Robert Alexander
The Peron Era: An Interpretation, Latin American Civilization: The National Era Vol. II pp. 300-304

P-7

Controversy surrounds the origins, aims, and fundamental character of the movement called Peronismo.
Whereas some observers stress its avowed objectives of social reform and economic independence, others lay a
heavier emphasis on the totalitarian implications of the Peron regime. The following selection from a recent study
of the Peron era illustrates this second point of view.
The Peron ear promises to alter the whole course of Argentine history. The government of General
Domingo Peron is something more than the run-of-the-mill Latin American strong-arm regime. It is a totalitarian
administration which not only demands that the citizen must submit to its high-handed conduct of public affairs, but
must give active demonstration of support.
Slowly but surely all phases of Argentine life are being made to conform to the Peronista model. The trade
unions have been converted into little more than a tool of the government. The worker is being taught that he
cannot reach out a try to make economic and social gains on his own account, but must accept only what El Lider,
Evita, and the rest of the gang see fit to give him. An independent trade union movement is anathema in the
Argentina of President-General Juan Domingo Peron.
All phases of economic life are being brought within a single strait-jacket. The export of basic crops is
converted into a tool for the ambitions and the policies of the ruling clique. The nations wheat and corn growers,
cattle raisers and shepherds are thus put completely under the power of the ruling group in the just regime of El
Lider.
The industrialists, too, are meeting the same fate. Industrialization is being carried out under completely
political control and most of it under actual military control. All independent organizations of Argentine industrialists
have been either intervened or otherwise forced to conform. Individual anti-Peron industrialists, such as the
chemical magnate Massone, have been forced to take refuge in Montevideo.`
All means of communication and discussion are being made mere mouthpieces for the regime. The great
radio stations of Buenos Aires and the provinces have been forced by subordination, purchase, or intimidation to
become cogs in the wheel of the Peronista propaganda machine. All newspapers, with but one exception, have
been forced either to become part of the propaganda apparatus or to go underground. The great motion picture
industry--which was one of the prides of Argentina--has become but one more weapon in the armory of the
Peronista politicos.
Nor have the great social and political institutions of the country escaped this all-encompassing totalitarian
trend. The Catholic Church was first inveigled into a compromising position of political support of the regime, and
then found itself helpless to withdraw from this alliance.
The Army seems to have been purged of all those who might question or be jealous of the authority of the
Dictator and his friends. Militarism is entering into every phase of the countrys public life. Military men hold civilian
positions--elected and appointive--in great profusion. A large segment of the nations economy has been placed
under direct control of the Ministry of Defense. By means of the large appropriations, munificent salaries, and
greatly heightened prestige within the nation, the Armed Forces have been bribed into acquiescence and

cooperation with the Peronista rulers.

Education is confounded with propaganda. From infancy, Argentine children are now being taught that
their nations history virtually began with Juan Domingo Peron, and that anyone who does not agree completely
with the policies, ideas, and institutions of the Peronista state is a traitor to the nation and to humanity itself. Loyalty
checks by political Federal Police are demanded of teachers and students alike. All faculty members, whether in
primary, secondary, or higher schools, whose allegiance to Peronismo is in the least open to question, have been
ousted.
The checks and balances of a political democracy are being steadily eliminated. Not only does the
Peronista group refuse to seat some of the elected opposition members, but it cavalierly ousts from their posts as
the peoples representatives those leaders of the opposition whom it considers too dangerous. The Supreme Court
has been converted into a Peronista tool, by means of a wholesale purge; lesser judicial bodies have received
similar treatment.
Thus, though the average visitor to Buenos Aires is not all aware of the spreading pall of the totalitarianism
which is slowly but nonetheless completely blacking out the cultural diversity, the vigorous market of ideas, and the
democratic spirit which have made Argentina one of the great nations of the hemisphere, the process is
nonetheless moving relentlessly on.
The nature of Argentine totalitarianism leads to much confusion among outside observers. On the one
hand, there are those Liberals, who, because they have labeled the Argentine regime as Fascist, cannot see that
the basis of Perns support among the people of Argentina is the program of social and economic reform he
pursued in the middle years of the 1940s. These Liberals pronounce hid social legislation as nothing more than
demagoguery, and refuse to admit that he really received the backing of the great mass of the leadership and the
membership of the countrys trade union movement. The Liberals are willing enough to believe that Peron is
converting the trade union movement into a species of Labor Front-- which is true--but they are not willing to admit
that he was in a position to do so only because the same labor movement was responsible for keeping him in
power, once the Army had put him there--which is also true.
It was this same lack of appreciation of Perns program which led the opposition to underestimate the
influence he had gained in the ranks of the workers. The Radicals and Socialists, who make up the bulk of the
opposition to Peron, did not understand until it was too late that Peron really had done things which the workers felt
were in their interest and which therefore won him their gratitude and loyalty. The opposition has now awakened to
this fact, but it may be too late, despite the gallantry and heroism of the anti-Peronista forces.
On the other hand there are those--and many of them are found in high places--which refuse to recognize
the totalitarian nature of the Peronista regime. Because it has until recently allowed the two papers La Nacion and
La Prensa to continue publication, because there is still a Congress with a number of opposition deputies sitting in
Buenos Aires, because Peron has carried out a program of economic development and social reform which is
commendable, this group fails to recognize, or at least admit that the Peronista regime is nonetheless dangerous.
This group, many whose members seem to be in the State Department, the halls of the United States
Congress, and in other positions of trust, therefore continues to treat the Argentine regime as if it were one more
Good Neighbor. It carries appeasement to the extreme of advocating--and then granting--loans to Perns
Argentina. It seems to overlook the extensive work of propaganda and subversion which Peron and his friends are
conducting in other Latin American countries. It seems to refuse to believe in the possibility that Peron may
succeed in his cherished aim of forming a Latin American bloc independent and defiant of the United States.
Not all the people in this second group are to be found in the United States. The British, for instance, for
long overlooked the totalitarian implications of the Peronista regime. All too many Latin American politicians and
labor leaders notice only the labor legislation Peron has put on the books, or his success in defying the United
States, and do not see dangers which the Peronista movement and administration augur for themselves and their
countries.
It is high time that people in both these camps took another look at the Peronista administration as it really
is. If the Liberals want to call Peron fascist, that is well and good. However, they should recognize the nature of
the appeal which he has made. They should realize the implications of the fact that the people of once-proud
Argentina were willing to sell their liberty for supposed economic and social benefits. This is the real lesson of
Argentinas experience for the Liberals.

On the other hand, the statesmen of Latin America should come to realize without equivocation that
although Peron may be successful in defying the United States, he has also been eminently successful in wiping
out civil liberty and economic, social, and political freedom within the borders of Argentina. They should remember
that Peron was the leader of the brutally imperialist-minded Grupo de Oficiales Unidos, which made little secret of
its desire to dominate the South American continent and impose upon it a concentration camp regime patterned on
those of Hitlers Europe. Nor should they forget the economic treaties which Peron offered his neighbors in the first
flush of exuberance in 1946 and 1947: treaties which would have gone far toward destroying what economic
independence those nations now enjoy an, in the long run, subverting their political independence as well.
North Americans, too, should be wide-awake to the dangers of Peron and his regime. Perns Argentina is
the spearhead of the reactionary dictatorial bloc among American nations. This bloc has no regard for the political
democracy and freedom for which the United States stands in the world. Under Argentine leadership this bloc
seeks to destroy the still-remaining democracies in the Western Hemisphere. Unless the United States is careful,
she will one day wakeup to find a united front of totalitarian military dictatorships among the nations to the South,
proudly headed and dominated by El Lider--Su Excelencia Senor Presidente de la Republica Argentina, General
Juan Domingo Peron.
Carl Taylor
Perns Blueprint for Argentina: Latin American Civilization: The National Era Vol. II pp. 294-300

P-8

Popular hopes for a flowering of democracy under Radical leadership were not fulfilled. The Radicals
proved incapable of giving a new direction to Argentine economic and social life. In 1930, at the first impact of the
Great Depression, an army revolt ousted them from power without a fight. Their successors of the Conservative
Restoration (1930-1943) proved equally lacking in solutions for Argentinas urgent problems. The Nationalist
Revolution of June, 1943, followed by the speedy rise to power of Army Colonel Juan Domingo Peron, marked a
turning point in Argentine history. A North American student of rural Argentina summarizes the ambitious economic
and social program of the Peron regime.
Four years ago when he was leaving Argentina the writer recorded in his diary the following five broad
conclusions about that countrys economy and culture: (1) The economy of Argentina is very much a slave of
foreign markets. (2) There is a great geographic disequilibrium in the countrys economic development. (3) There
is a marked unevenness in the distribution of wealth and income and an equal unevenness in the social and cultural
status of various segments of the population. (4) Argentinas educational system does not develop technicians
who are capable of guiding the physical and economic development of her resources and economy. (5) The
country desires to increase of her resources and economy. (5) The country desires to increase its population but
will be unable to do so to any considerable extent unless its total economy is changed.
Before the war, Argentina stood first among the nations of the world in the export of beef, corn, linseed,
oats, and rye, and second in the export of wheat, mutton, wool, and barley. Its chief imports are petroleum, cotton
fabrics, and coal. Most of its farm products are low-production-cost type of agriculture. Its exports are raw, not
processed, products. More than 87 percent of its people live in the east central part of the country, one fourth of
these in the metropolitan area of Greater Buenos Aries City. The concentration of population, industry, wealth,
income, and even agricultural production within a radius of 250 miles of Buenos Aires is astounding. One who
knows Argentina cannot therefore escape the conclusion that the Five Year Plan, to whatever extent it may work
out in practice, is focused on the major economic and social problems of the country. Its provisions for
industrialization bulk large because it is by means of industrialization that the greater development of natural
resources is expected.
Power is recognized as basic to industry and hydroelectric energy is known to be the one outstanding
power resource. Because of this fact and because the building of great dams is a dramatic undertaking many
people think of hydroelectric development as the heart of the Five Year Plan. Others believe that the plans for
controlling international trade are of first importance because, they say, such control will accumulate within the
country the capital essential to industrial development. Still others believe that the provisions for improved

education and increased immigration are even more important than control of international trade and equally as
important as, in fact a concomitant of, industrialization.
The proposals for regularizing and controlling international trade are already largely in effect in terms of
government purchases and sales of principal farm products and the manipulation of exchange rates on imports.
The Argentine Institute for the Promotion of Trade is responsible for both of these activities. It purchases and sells
farm products and it is the government purchasing agent abroad. Vast powers are contained in the charter of this
organization and in addition the Congress has empowered the president to raise or lower duties 50 percent and to
impose duties as high as 25 percent on products that are now free. The exchange rates are varied so as to invited
imports that are desired and to restrict those which are not desired.
President Peron in his presentation of the plan stated four reasons why new industries are needed: (1) to
increase the economic independence of the country, (2) to avoid postwar unemployment, (3) to increase the
nations income, and (4) to increase the financial stability of the country. He stated that toward these ends that
country must guard against dumping from other countries and provide a program of protection especially for new
industries to be developed in the interior.
The plan states that the first task is to consolidate and expand those existent industries which manufacture
prime materials, especially derivatives of agricultural products, and the second is the development of new industries
which will provide additional products for domestic consumption, foreign exports, and national defense. The
industries listed for outstanding development may be enumerated in four groups, in the following order of
magnitude, (1) textiles: cotton, wool, rayon, and the washing of wool; (2) paper of all kinds; (3) minerals in the
following order: (a) tin plate, (b) iron or steel ingots, (c) zinc, and (d) tin; (4) chemicals: (a) soda, (b) oxide of zinc, (c)
red ocher, (d) citric acid, and (e) other minor ones.
Hydroelectric power development is already under way but the big expansion is planned for the immediate
future. Three projects are scheduled for completion and three for initiation in 1947, fifteen for initiation in 1948,
seven in 1950, and eight in 1951. It is estimated that these will increase hydroelectric power from 45,000 kws, to
1,400,000 kws. Many dams will be dual or multiple purpose and they together with special irrigation works will
supply water to more than two million acres of farm land.
In addition to the expansion of tillable lands, by way of irrigation, there are a number of other agricultural
planks of the Five Year Plan. All the lands to be irrigated are to be purchased by the government, at raw-land
values, before water is made available to them and are then to be colonized. Argentina already has on the statute
books an outstanding colonization or land-settlement law...That law, with slight modifications, is to be used in the
colonization program. It provides for a long amortization period, low rates, promotion of co-operatives, technical
education and guidance for colonists, and improved housing. Foreign immigrants may be interviewed and selected
in their home countries, and the colonization agency may actually promote such selective immigration.
In addition to lands to be brought under cultivation by irrigation from large dams, it is also planned to
promote vigorously settlement of fiscal lands, i.e., federally owned lands, some of which are to be irrigated, some
now occupied by squatters, and hundreds of thousands of acres which are being used by large operators who have
never probed title to them. The colonization program will give special attention to the development and settlement
of these lands as a means of partially correcting the disequilibrium of population distribution.
The plan definitely provides for an attack on the latifundia by means of an additional tax on lands which are
not worked and progressive taxes on large holdings, including those whose owners are corporations. The proposal
is that all holdings of over 7,000 hectares (approximately 17,000 acres) shall be forced to subdivide or be
expropriated. Although it is not provided for in the Five Year Plan, the Director of the Institute for Promotion of
Trade recently threatened to expropriate all crop lands for which more than 30 per cent share rent was being
charged and to turn these lands over to be occupying tenants, they to amortize the purchase price of the land by
paying 25 per cent of the crop.
It is also proposed to amend and improve the law of rural rents . . . . This is one of the oldest and most
frequently amended rural reform laws in Argentina. The plan proposed to revise the scale of rents, forbid subrenting, and prescribe what landlords must furnish by way of living accommodations, guarantee tenants against
crop losses due to bad seasons and plagues, and permit tenants to purchase land when it is offered for sale. The
proposed law is not greatly different from the one now on the statute books. . . .
The plan for immigration is coordinated with the plans for both industrial and agricultural expansion and it

is specified that the types of immigrants desired are those who will be assimilated into the spiritual and social unity
of the Argentine people and who possess moral and physical health; especially desired are agriculturalists,
fishermen, technical and specialized industrial workers. It is the plan to co-ordinate immigration with the
construction of great works of irrigation, land conservation, building communication lines, and colonization. It is
assumed that immigrants will find ready employment in the immense public works incident to the Five Year Plan,
that they will find positions in the new industries to be established, and that later number of them will locate on
lands to be irrigated by water impounded behind these dams. Argentina has had practically no unemployment
since World War II began. Industry and commerce were booming during the war and have continued to boom
since. There has been a great exodus of agricultural workers into industrial and commercial jobs and newly arriving
immigrants, of which there have been a good many thousands, have had no difficulty in finding either industrial or
agricultural employment. An official commission spent a number of months in the early part of 1947 recruiting
immigrants in Italy. An immigration treaty was negotiated between Italy and Argentina which provides that
Argentina will advance money and even provide boats for the passage of immigrants and guarantee them equal
treatment with Argentine citizens. This treaty implies that Argentina expects many, if not most, of them to become
colonists.
The plan provides for practically a whole new system of education from the secondary schools to the
universities, for universal education of all children from six to fourteen years of age in the common schools and for
free secondary schools. It provides for a great many trade or technical schools to help farm and urban youth to
become skilled workmen and technicians and for an elaborate system of scholarships for the sons and daughters of
farmers and working men. Some of these are to be traveling schools which will penetrate isolated areas where the
population is too sparse to justify school buildings. A number of these trade and technical schools have been in
operation now for six months. The university plan is already enacted into law. It provides for hundreds of
scholarships for sons and daughters of industrial workers and farmers and a great increase in engineering and
agricultural education by the universities. The plan states that the whole educational system is to educate all
citizens for a democracy and to provide technicians for developing industry and agriculture.
Education is to be compulsory for all children from six to fourteen years of age and divides common school
education into three parts, two years of kindergarten, five years of primary, and two years of office, manual arts, and
artisan training. It also provides for secondary education for those children whose parents cannot afford to pay for it
and for free scholarship for such children in both secondary and technical schools. Secondary education is to be
for five years, the last two years to be in the theory and practice of arts and trades. It is states that secondary
education shall quality students for entrance to universities. At the present time this is not universally true. Free
transportation, free school meals, and free textbooks are to be provides.
Technical education is to be free for all workers who live by their work and for all those who depend on
them, and technical education is to range all the way from workers schools through secondary schools to
institutions of higher learning. All industrial or commercial firms operating with a capital of as much as $125,000
must provide scholarships for a minimum of three grades of technical training. In areas where it is not feasible to
establish these technical schools itinerant schools are to be provided. In provinces and territories there are to be
installed technical schools oriented to the economies of the areas. A number of workers schools were opened in
March and a plan for the establishment of the first technological college, a school of mines in the Province of Jujuy,
is now under way.
President Peron proposed a detailed plan for university education and prefaced his plan with a statement
to the effect that the present university regime is not democratic, that the universities have demonstrated their
absolute separation from the people, and that this has kept the humble classes from studying in them. He asserted
that university professors have not dedicated their lives to university teaching but instead have made their
academic careers side lines and have often used them as platforms from which to promote political and social
doctrines. The remedies he proposed are (1) that graduates from secondary schools shall be permitted to enter the
universities, (2) that scholarships shall be provided for poor students, and that (3) professors shall give full time to
university teaching and research. The scholarships are to cover all or part of the cost of living of the students
dependents if such is deemed necessary.
Peron proposed that all professors must secure appointment by competition but once having been
appointed shall have absolute liberty to exercise their functions. He stated, however, that it is not intended that said

liberty shall include the right to go beyond these functions, exposition and criticism of all political and social
doctrines but not the right to manifest political partisanship. The universities are to be financially supported by
direct appropriation from the federal government by an income tax which all employed persons must pay, by
matriculation and other fees, and from donations, or other bequests. These proposals, with some slight
modifications, have already been enacted into law.
A law has already been passed and appropriations made for a National Agricultural Experiment Station,
patterned to a considerable extent on the Beltsville Station in the United States. The plan calls for the
establishment of regional experiment stations in each of the major-type farming areas, cereal, cotton, sugar cane,
vines, fruits, and livestock. It also provides for strengthening the agricultural colleges at each of the national
universities. The Superior Technical Schools are not attached to the university system but instead are the capstone
of three levels of technical education. In the United States the three levels would be called trade schools,
vocational schools, and colleges. A great expansion in both industrial and agricultural education is contemplated,
the schools to be distributed throughout the country.
The plan recommends elaborate programs for the conservation and development of timber resources and
the creation of a national institute of forestry to carry out this program. The space given to forestry in the published
plan is an indication of the great value that is placed on this hitherto neglected natural resource of Argentina.
Because the territories have always been neglected and their development is essential to the correction of
the disequilibrium of the national economy, and also because they are primarily agricultural areas, the plan provides
for raising them one after the other to provincial status.
The plan as presented by President Peron was very broad, for the most part merely a statement of this
that should be done. Congress is now enacting one piece of legislation after the other to put the plan in force.
More laws have been passed to implement the industrial and labor sections than have been enacted to augment
the agricultural parts of the plan. Some of the laws already passed provide for minimum wages for industry and
farm laborers, for retirement or pension systems, for reorganization of the university system, for the establishment
of trade or technical schools, for the public ownership of electric power, for the building of dams, for the construction
of a pipe line from the oil fields in eastern Chubut to Buenos Aires, for the construction of roads, and for the
colonization of immigrants.
No one knows how successful the Five Year Plan may be but it is clear that it is a heroic attempt to
develop the natural resources of Argentina, to decentralize its industry and population, and to distribute its wealth
and income more widely among all the people. Whether it succeeds in all its details or in its stated purposes, it is
intended to deal with the problems which the writer believed after a years study in Argentina to be central to the
economic and social development of that country. He was privileged to spend the months of January, February,
and March of 1947 in Argentina, during which time he witnessed the extreme enthusiasm of the working people for
the Five Year Plan. He also witnessed the hectic play of forces operating there under the impact of the proposed
reforms of the Five Year Plan. What he has said here should not be taken as a prediction of the degree of success
which the plan may ultimately have but only as a brief account of the things which it proposes.
Jerome Adams - Liberators and Patriots of Latin America pp. 190-202

P-9

Juan Peron
Monarch of the Working Class
Some parts of the life of Juan Peron read like a radio script, in which, of course, the radio actress Eva
Duarte plays herself. There is about both of them a staged quality, contrived, so that in the end there is no sense of
tragedy, no inclination toward pity for them, just a feeling that their audience--the shirtless ones was the
melodramatic phrase--was used for corrupt purposes. Yet peronismo lives on, representing a strong force among
Argentines, a political movement that has outlived the follies of its progenitor. It does so because Juan Peron
touched a nerve among working people, one that had been ignored, if not oppressed, by Argentine elites. For that
reason, Juan Peron deserves to be remembered.
Juan Domingo Peron was born on October 8, 1895, about sixty miles south of Buenos Aires, near the

village of Lobos, where his father worked for a judge. Although some biographers portray Peron as having been in
an impoverished setting, a more sober judgment is that his parents, of predominately Spanish and Italian origins,
were members of Argentinas growing middle class. Peron himself, as have other politicians, contributed to the
image of poverty-stricken early days. Indeed, there is something in Perns mythical background for everyone.
On the other hand, Peronist publicists claimed that his grandparents were friends of a colorful bandit, Juan
Moreira, who operated in the southern part of the province. On the other hand, Peron himself claimed to an
electorate dominated by Italian immigrants that his great-grandfather had been a Sardinian senator. To this claim
there was attached speculation that the family name had been Pern.
When Peron was five years old, his father, suffering hard times, moved the family to Patagonia, a barren
province where Argentina and Chile squeeze together at the bottom of the continent. There the father found work
as a hired hand. Later, he was able to move the family back to the province of Buenos Aires and to buy a sheep
ranch near the Atlantic Coast.
When Peron was ten, he was sent to Buenos Aires to military school, where he proved a natural athlete
and was trained as a horseman, a crack shot, a boxer, and a fencer, later winning the foils championship of the
army. He grew tall, with a broad chest and shoulders. Striking was his smile and dark hair, combed straight back,
which accentuated his aquiline profile. These manly attributes would not discourage political opponents from
whispering in later years of his effeminacy.
One reason for this slur was, obviously, the jealousy of men not so endowed. In Peron's shadow, men
found solace by mocking him. There was also the fact that there would emerge weaknesses in Perns character.
And in a country influenced by Spanish and Italian notions of male dignity, even a man who so carefully crafted his
own image would not long be able to disguise such flaws. It is particularly embarrassing, of course, for the macho
to need a woman to provide the drive for his leadership, and even Perns supporters would have to concede that
he would not have risen half so far without the intellectual and psychological toughness of his second wife, whom
the crowds called Evita.
Nevertheless, Perns military career was relatively distinguished, considering that he served in an army at
war only with its own civilian population. At the age of eighteen he graduated from military school as a second
lieutenant and, soon afterward, completed officer training with the rank of captain. He went on to more military
schooling and in 1929 was appointed to a post in the war ministry. While at the ministry, Peron also taught ,
developing sufficient background in military tactics to write four books.
Yet by 1930, when he was thirty-five years old, Peron was still a captain. In ensuing years, however, his
resume was enhanced with service at the Argentine war college and as an aide to the army chief of staff and to the
minister of war. In developed countries, rapid broadening of an officers experience is possible only in time of war;
in Argentina, Peron was able to rise by virtue of participation in the coup that deposed Hipolito Yrigoyen, the grand
old man of Argentine liberalism.
By 1930, the liberalism that once promised to organize Argentinas formidable cultural and economic
strengths into political dynamism had withered. It had always been held suspect by the landed classes, and after
independence in 1829 the tension between the cosmopolitan Buenos Aires and the agricultural provinces evolved
into a corresponding split between industrialization and the interests of landowners. For a while, it appeared that
liberalism would triumph, a necessity for Argentinas many graces to be accepted in the world community. Liberal
ideas were written into the Constitution of 1853, and waves of European immigrant workers flocked to Argentina in
the mid-1800s, filling, by 1880, the ranks of the Radical party.
But liberalism barely managed to struggle into the twentieth century. When Irigoyen was elected president
in 1916, he proved to be the last hope. In 1930, Yrigoyen was eighty years old and senile, unable to keep his own
aides from raiding the Argentine treasury. The military placed in power civilian puppets, but the end had been
written for any hope of a two-party system in which a liberal opposition would compete for power. Capt. Peron had
learned the way the government worked.
In 1936, now a lieutenant-colonel, Peron was assigned as military attach in Santiago de Chile, the capital
of Argentinas traditional Andean enemy. Peron, at once charming and devious, became a friend of the Chilean
president, Arturo Alessandri--until Peron was discovered trying to buy Chilean defense secrets. Alessandri later
told scholar Joseph R. Barager that when he found out about his Argentine friends duplicity he called him into the
presidential office and pointed out the window at Chiles most effective line of defense: the snow-capped peaks of

the Andes. Peron was declared persona non grata in Chile.

Peron was ready for further training, so in 1939, with Europe dominated by warlike fascist states, Peron
was sent to observe Italys Tyrolean troops. He spent nearly two years studying military organization in several
countries, including Germany and Spain. Argentinas upper classes were strongly drawn to European customs;
commercial ties with Great Britain were important, and cultural ties with Italy, Germany, and Spain exerted strong
influences. Argentine elites--like many of their counterparts in Brazil, Paraguay, and several other Latin American
countries--saw totalitarian government, with its parallel excitement and control of the masses, as the answer for
Argentinas future. Perns own writings disclose his admiration for Alexander the Great, Hannibal, and Napoleon
and his fascination with the views of the German officers he had interviewed.
In the late 1930s and early 1940s, banking on widespread sympathy, German agents operated openly in
Argentina. At a hemispheric conference of foreign ministers in Rio de Janeiro in January 1942--a month after the
attack on Pearl Harbor--Argentina, with Chile, held out against the overwhelming sentiment of other Latin American
nations and the machinations of the United States. Argentina and Chile insisted in retaining diplomatic ties with
Spain, Germany, and Italy.
Argentina might have sustained this diplomatic position had the countrys puppet civilian leaders shown
any subtlety, any finesse. The regime would have become, effectively, a puppet of the Axis. But in 1943, after
leaders arrogance and corruption caused a popular outcry, an embarrassed military threw out the civilian
government and took over itself. Peron was named administrative head of the war ministry.
The post was important for its control of personnel assignments. More important, Perns mentor was
Edelmiro Farrell, minister of war and vice-president of the new regime. Peron would move up, a notch at a time, an
understudy studying the lead role. Indeed, the man in charge of the new military, Pedro Ramirez, did not last long,
mostly because he was yet another example of that enduring Argentine type, the clumsy general. While in power,
however, he helped set the stage for Perns approaching time in the spotlight. Ramirez reaffirmed the embrace
between reactionaries and the Catholic Church, rescinding nineteenth-century prohibitions against Church teaching
in public schools. Also during the Ramirez months, political parties were outlawed; leaders who signed a petition
calling for the return of constitutional government lost their jobs. The internment of labor union leaders was
continued. Finally, however, when U.S. and British agents presented evidence of Ramirez continuing collaboration
with Axis agents, the general had to go. Into his spot moved Perns benefactor, Farrell. In to the vice-presidency
moved Peron.
Lie the student who gets smarter than his teachers, Peron was augmenting his power by forging links
beyond the officer corps. The most important base of his strength was his leadership of the vaguely secret,
reactionary Group of United Officers, but he reached out to workers as well. This was his signal contribution to the
art of Latin American demagoguery. It would one day make him president when the officer corps turned on him.
Peron perceived that more was needed to take- and hold- leadership in the rough realities of Argentine
politics than force of arms. He asked for and got directorship of the Argentine Department of Labor and Social
Welfare (a sub-cabinet position newly created and thought to be powerless), then led the department into
independence from the Department of Interior. That meant Peron was able to create his own bureaucracy by virtue
of which he got cabinet rank. He also got the undivided attention of workers.
The organized labor unions had seen their support among politicians wither. Disaffected, they saw in
Peron an unprecedented chance for alliance, popular numbers added to military strength, held together by
Argentinas fierce nationalism. The combination proved a heady one. Using Perns rhetorical power for
recruitment, the metal workers union, as one example, grew from a nascent 1,500 members split off from other
unions to 300,000 in 1943 to 5 million during Perns presidency.
This ligature between labor and the military is significant in that elites of other Latin American countries
have traditionally seen organized labor as something to be controlled, kept weak. This has ensured one kind of
elite domination, but it fails to realize the potential of developing another. None, however, dare climb atop mass
movements save those confident of their ability to stay there. Peron mounted the back of a work force ready to
regain strength achieved, then lost, under the Radicals.
Perns rhetoric, style, and shrewdness led labor to a position without precedent in Latin America, in the
process assuring his own position. Collective bargaining was carried out under Perns auspices. Wage demands
were satisfied, and workers were kept on the job. Should a union choose to take matters into its own hands, picket

lines were dispersed and workers replaced. For this sacrifice of independence, unions won wage and salary
increases in virtually all segments of the economy, including white-collar, agricultural, and maritime. Perns most
dramatic device was the thirteenth month of wages, a Christmas bonus. It was the vigor of the Argentine economy
that enabled Peron to make good on his high-flown promises, but he would be the man on the balcony, raising his
hands in victory and delivering the bounty. He would later write that he never learned how to be president, but his
military training had taught him to lead.
The strategy even tended to neutralize those unions influenced by communists, and the case of the tough
meat-packers union demonstrates Perns flamboyant style. The union, run by Cripriano Reyes, was moving
toward a strike when Perns statements made it clear that he supported the workers. But Peron perceived that
simple statements were insufficient to the style he was beginning to establish, so Peron left his office and was
driven to the heart of the packing district, down at the docks along the La Plata River. There he met Reyes, threw
his arm around the union leaders shoulders, and walked up the main street with him. When the strike was settled,
Peron had won a valuable friend, one who would become a frequent visitor to Perns apartment.
By late 1943, Peron was consolidating power. He lost no opportunity to enhance his image with the
masses by grandly announcing social programs. In December, with the combination of flourish and cash that
endeared him to common folk, he appropriated 500 million pesos for low-income housing. It was about this time
that he met Eva Maria Duarte.
It is harder to separate fact from fantasy with regard to Eva Peron than it is with Peron himself. Snobs on
one side, zealots on the other, and Eva Perns own flair for the melodramatic confuse the picture. Like Peron, she
was from a small town south of Buenos Aires; she was illegitimate, poorly educated, and ostracized by people in
her hometown even before she worked her way up to ostracism by Buenos Aires society. By virtue of pluck, wit,
and beauty. Eva Duarte made herself an actress and commentator at a Buenos Aires radio station. By ingratiating
herself with the right officers, she had gained entry to circles surrounding the power of the military dictatorship.
Then, when her contacts began losing interest and wandering away, she dramatized, on the radio, reforms
instituted by Perns department of labor and social security. Stories told of great improvements in common
peoples lives wrought by government programs. With either foresight or careful planning, this was done before she
met Peron. It was as much a clever gimmick to make broadcasts popular with working-class people as a ploy to
catch a rising star. Either way, it worked. Eva Duarte, even at twenty-three, had been taking care of herself long
enough to recognize that good copy for her radio broadcasts might last longer, in Argentinas volatile politics, than a
coup leader.
One version of how Peron and Eva met is that after he had given a speech at the dedication of a project,
she approached with her microphone, narrating. She was next to him when an elderly woman approached and
kissed Perns hand, a show of emotion that drove Eva to even greater heights of praise. Peron overhead, was
flattered, and turned to ask her name.
For some time, the two openly shared an apartment on Buenos Aires Calle Posadas while their separate
careers flourished. Peron continued to build support among workers; Eva built an audience.
Both his supporters and her audience saved Perns career when opponents made their move in 1945.
On October 10, amid increasing demands for a return to civilian government--and even calls for Peron to be
executed--Peron was forced to step down from all three of the posts he had acquired or created. He was minister
of war, secretary of labor and social welfare, and vice president. Perns power, it was clear to many, far
outstripped that of the president, his benefactor, who was indecisive and politically weak next to this master
puppeteer of the masses. On the night of October 11, with his enemies calling for his head either figuratively or
literally, Peron resigned. He did so, however, on a national radio hookup orchestrated by Eva. It is widely
suggested that Peron, visibly shaken, wanted simply to save his own hide. Eva Duarte provided the grit to stagemanage his departure so that Argentine workers would be sure to know they were losing their savior.
After the resignations, Peron met Eva back at the apartment. They drove to the river and rode in a launch
through the small islands of the La Plata River delta to a resort used by Buenos Aires businessmen as a weekend
hideaway. The spot offered quick access to safety across the border in Uruguay. But alert river patrols spotted the
couple and they were arrested. That night, after first being returned to their apartment, Peron was placed aboard a
gunboat and taken to the prison island of Martin Garcia. All during his arrest, Peron, said to be shivering with the
dampness, complained of his pleurisy. The same night, he wrote to the president, complaining of rain coming in at

his cell window; he was moved to a more comfortable room. He also asked to be allowed to go into exile, and this
night, as much as any time in Perns career, fixed his reputation for weakness. He seemed unable to conduct
himself with the dignity expected of a deposed leader. And on this night, wrote Argentine journalist Maria Flores,
Eva, in that moment of weakness, gained her hold.
Despite melodramatic claims that obscure just what Evas effect was, it is certain that while Peron was
held she went to the streets, working the doorbells of friends and potential enemies, cajoling the former and
threatening the latter. If Peron was to be saved, he needed help. Those with influence were asked to exercise it.
Those without it were invited to join her in the streets. Those who did not properly reply to her entreaties were
never forgiven. Biographer John Barnes describes her as a woman of incredible humorlessness, startling energy,
and corroding rancor, who had an absolute inability to forget and forgive.
Instrumental in turning out the crowds that freed Peron was Cipriano Reyes, the leader of the meatpackers union. Crowds, including a significant portion of roughnecks, began filling Buenos Aires broad boulevards,
shouting Viva Peron. When the crowds were disparaged in a newspaper headline as descamisados, the shirtless
ones--a reference not to their literal shirtlessness but their being without jackets in Buenos Aires relative formality-Peron jumped on the term. He made a point to assure his followers that he welcomed the support of the shirtless.
In fact, they would become putty in the hands of Eva.
In response to Perns resurgent popularity, Argentine elites, including Perns enemies in the military,
simply missed their opportunity. They were indecisive, and when support for Peron mounted, they caved in. On
October 17, a day that would live in the memory of peronismo, the General Confederation of Labor declared itself at
the side of the crowds chanting We want Peron. Peron was brought to a balcony of the presidential Casa Rosada
and introduced by Gen. Edelmiro Farrell, who had nurtured Perns career and now saw it overwhelm his weak
presidency. Here, Farrell told the huge throng gathered in the plaza below, was the man we all love...the man who
has conquered the hearts of all Argentines.
Not quite all, but Peron was where he wanted to be. Still complaining about his imprisonments effect on
his health, he told the crowd how he loved his descamisados, and how his poor little mother had also been worried
about his whereabouts. From now on, he said, he wanted to be just one of the people. Dramatically, he took off his
sword belt and handed it to the president. With teary eyes, he sent the crowd home.
A paradox was created. Both elections, to satisfy the middle class, Peron, and the masses, were needed.
political parties, prohibited by the military, were again allowed, and elections were scheduled for February 1946.
Peron, whose first wife had died of cancer, married Eva Duarte.
As the elections approached, Perns opposition again slept at the switch. Elites were convinced they
would roll to a presidential victory, but Peron continued to play on themes most appealing to the masses, something
the United States lent its support to Perns opposition by issuing a 131-page pamphlet entitled Consultation
among the American Republics with Respect to the Argentine Government. Because of its cover, it was called the
blue book. For misbegotten tactics, the episode deserves a prize.
The blue book is credited to Spruille Braden, a former ambassador to Argentina who had been promoted
to assistant secretary of state. Braden joined that long line of U.S. envoys, official and amateur, who overestimated
their expertise in Latin American affairs. The majority of Argentines, already convinced that the United States was
uncultured to the point of barbarity, roared its disapproval of the book. Peron turned the presidential race from one
between him and his principal opponent to one between him and Spruille Braden. Of more the 2.7 million votes
cast, Peron won 56 percent; in the Electoral College, his margin was 304 to 72; his supporters won overwhelmingly
majorities in both houses of the national assembly.
Anyone sympathetic to Juan Peron and the role he played in Argentine history might prefer to end his story
here, in 1946. He had served as a catalyst for the workers consolidation of power. His own power was formidable.
He had organized the beginning of a corporate state. However, every system in which powerful classes, at the top,
attempt to balance competing interests, tends, ultimately, in turn inward, ignoring international realities, resisting
internal pressures.
Peron took people in, in every sense of that expression. The man who wrote that the Nazis had the right
idea and called Mussolini the greatest man of this century offered his nation a grab-bag of duplicity and reforms,
spurring the working classes to euphoria, rewriting the 1853 constitution, liberalizing divorce laws, and creating
havoc with the economy.

During the presidential campaign, the Church sought to conserve its power with a pastoral letter that
warned Catholics to beware of candidates who would separate secular from sacred education. Peron cast himself
as the logical extension of the conservative, God-fearing, military government that preceded him. Although some
Catholic leaders rejected Perns vision of a new Argentina, other fell in line. Peron placed the latter on policymaking councils.
After he was elected, schools adopted curricula that extolled the virtues of militarism, the fatherland, and
Peron and Eva. Higher education was governed by its own set of rules, but the rectors of the six campuses of the
national university were appointed by Peron.
The labor movement was controlled by Eva, who proved even more effective than Peron in communicating
with the masses. in charge of the General Confederation of Labor was placed the man who had operated the
elevator in the apartment building where the Peron's lived before their marriage.
Eva was also given control of news media in a country with a respected newspaper tradition. The onceproud La Prensa was hounded out of existence and La Nacion was reduced to subservience. Other newspapers,
with wealthy Argentines buying stock to assure control, were turned into Peronistas propaganda sheets.
Peronists in control of Congress impeached four of the five supreme court justices, and the chief justice
resigned. Throughout the country, lawyers willing to assure safety of Peronist programs took over the courts.
There were legitimate reforms. During Perns presidency, a five-year plan called for improved
electrification and, in fact, some forty-five power plants, large and small, were constructed.
Eva was head of a ministry of health that initiated relatively effective campaigns against tuberculosis and
malaria, both of which were lethal diseases in Argentina because health care outside Buenos Aires was still
rudimentary. Finally, the same plan that promoted electrification also called for female suffrage, and women helped
reelect Peron to his second term.
There was an international acclaim that reassured Argentine masses that all they had been led to believe
about Argentinas cultural leadership might be true. In 1947, Eva was sent on a well-publicized tour of Europe to
meet Franco, to be received by the premier of France, to pay the obligatory visit to Italy, and, of course, to be
received by Pope Pius XII. At home dames of Argentine society who had lost their major public function--brought
donations from hundreds of thousands of people.
While hardly dismantling capitalism as he claimed to have done, Peron straddled the cold war in foreign
relations and returned substantial control of industry to domestic investors. Sixty percent of industry had been
foreign-owned and 30 percent of profits had been flowing out of the country, mostly to British pockets. Gas and
electric companies, telephone companies, and other enterprises, under threat of expropriations, were placed in
Argentine hands.
More complex needs of the society were not so easily mastered. Perns system of government, which he
called justicialismo, was unsuccessful in harnessing the countrys disparate forces. The term justicialismo
suggested a middle path between capitalism and communism at the height of the cold war, but a wandering path it
was. His five-year plan ran out of money and restructured the reality of long years of elite domination. His task was
to distribute wealth and opportunity without destroying the economic structure that had produced wealth, without
scaring off the elites whose domination was so resented.
Change, though, there was. Argentinas quasi-dependent central bank was completely nationalized. The
telephone system was expropriated from its American owners. The railway system was taken from the British.
Steps like these cannot be overlooked in evaluating Perns place in helping a proud, if confused, nation claim its
rights. Peron was created by forces that surged from Argentine frustrations, and it is foolish to suggest that he was
nothing more than a political Narcissus, manipulated by his wife and associates. The accomplishments, like the
blunders, were his. But, in short, Perns unsophisticated leadership, applied to a nation divided, managed to
snatch defeat from the jaws of success. Change was not progress, but confusion.
Perns path had been cleared by prosperity. His presidency began at the end of World War II, when
Argentina sat atop grain and beef surpluses needed by a hungry Europe. Mounds of sterling reserves resulted
from wartime trading. Resources were in place to boost Argentina into something like a position of Latin American
leadership that its people thought was its destiny.
To handle Argentinas postwar trade cornucopia, Peron created, grandly, the Argentine Institute for the
Promotion of Exchange. Typically, however, accounts were not precise. Income had a way of disappearing. Poor

management led, eventually, to such paradoxes as the need in 1952, during Perns second term, to meatless days
in a nation accustomed to one of the highest per capita meat consumption rates in the world. Eventually it was
discovered that ranchers, realizing that Perns middlemen were taking a cut from producers profits, scaled back
production. A national agriculture with so much promise was threatened with ruin.
In addition, the economy was not being infused with productive investment. Speeches portraying Peron as
standing up for Argentine rights-- a place on the United Nations Security Council, for example-- satisfied national
sensitivities, but did not build factories. Stress was on image. Peronist agents among labor unions in other Latin
American countries were disruptive, meddling in politics, supporting conservatives, glorifying Argentinas leadership
in the hemisphere. Meanwhile, unrest grew at home.
In September 1951, there was a coup attempt, during which some say Eva had to pull Peron from a
premature refuge in the Brazilian embassy so he could lead loyal army troops. In October, an abortive attempt by
the General Confederacion of Labor to put Eva in the ticket as vice presidential candidate had to be withdrawn.
Eva, embarrassed, said she was really too young, anyway, to satisfy the constitutional requirement.
Capable of inflaming dislike in all directions, Peron was especially irritating to Great Britain. Close
relations between the two countries are as old as Argentine independence, which the British were instrumental in
winning. British interests in Argentina ran deepest in cattle and grain operations, and British financed and built
Argentinas railroads. But as the British struggled to rebuild after World War II, a war in which many Argentines had
flaunted their support for the Axis, Argentines engaged in what was seen as price gouging. British coal, machinery,
and petroleum were shipped in return for Argentine leather, meat, and grain at exchange rates favorable to
Argentina. When Argentina expropriated the railway system, a bitter dispute led first to Argentinas sterling
reserves in England being frozen, finally to a price of 150 million pounds for the railroads.
In July 1952, an era ended when Eva Peron died. Great crowds of Argentine humanity had loved, if not
Peron, this woman who seemed to understand them. Hundreds of thousands of Argentine working-class people
thronged to see her lying in state; hundreds were trampled, eight of them to death. Her autobiography, My Mission
in Life, was made compulsory reading for schoolchildren. Streets and schools were named for her. And with Eva
gone, Perns administration, already in trouble, increased its speed downhill. The former elevator operator was
fired from his position over the labor movement. Evas brother, Juan, was fired from his job as secretary to the
president-- and found in his apartment with a bullet in his head. The bullet, of the caliber used by military and police
officers, was fired from too far away to have been suicide.
The Church, either because it questioned the morality of its choice or because it realized it had bet on the
wrong horse, turned on Peron. Perns response was typically clumsy. When two clerical emissaries were sent to
the Casa Rosada, they found themselves hustled onto a flight for Rome. When Perns thugs vandalized
cathedrals, the crudeness of the acts sapped the last patience Argentines had with their precocious son.
Peron decorated the presidential residence at Olivos, outside Buenos Aires, and apartments in the city
with mirrored bedrooms and installed garish bars. The world learned of his predilection for teenage girls. His
favorite was a thirteen-year-old. Asked how he could besmirch the memory of Eva with a thirteen-year-old, his
smug, insensitive reply was that he was not superstitious.
In April 1953, with his support disintegrating, with the economy shriveling, Peron did what he did best; he
held a mass rally. Peron was a political leader who did as much as any in the hemisphere to demonstrate the
effectiveness of rhetoric, to take Hitler a speaking style and add television. The glossy magazines carried picture of
Peron as a virile, dynamic leader because that was what the people wanted to see. To his rally, held in Buenos
Aires, hundreds of thousands gladly came. After his speech, they churned through the downtown streets, burning
the Jockey Club, a symbol of patrician complacence, and destroying the headquarters of opposition parties. For
another two years, before their enthusiasm waned to a level the military and the Church could jointly overpower, the
masses insisted on Peron.
In June 1955, disaffected Catholics rallied where the workers crowds had been, showing leaders of
Perns opposition that they, too, could count on numbers. By September, Peron was forced to flee aboard a
gunboat along the same path that had seemed so close at hand a decade earlier. This time, the crowds would not
save him. He wandered to Paraguay, Panama, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and finally to Spain, where he
was taken in by his old idol, Francisco Franco.
The massive working-class discontent that propped up Peron did not subside, but floundered on in search

of a leader. In late 1963, a visitor to southern South America could not help but be struck by the electric
atmosphere that the absent Peron could still create by the mere possibility of his presence, even after eight years in
exile. He was rumored to be on his way from Spain, and there was in conversations in the streets and cafes a
sense of hope, or dread, and expectation that transcended ideas and programs. He was said to be flying first to the
coast of Brazil, then down to Montevideo, and then crossing the La Plata River in a decisive sweep back to power,
without armies, certainly without programs, transported by expectations alone.
The governments of Argentina and Brazil, however, demonstrating international cooperation, turned Peron
back the same day he landed in Brazil. He was bundled back to Spain.
In 1972, however, such was the state of Argentine politics that Peron was asked to return. He proved
unable to achieve the gargantuan task of bringing order to a society split between the working classes and a
military mentality, and died eighteen months after his return. Some considerable part of the disorder, of course, he
had helped create.
He was succeeded by his third wife, Isabel Martinez de Peron, whom he had married in exile. Although
she affected the style and dress of her fabled predecessor, Eva Duarte de Peron, she was no more able to solve
Argentinas Gordian political problems.
Peronismo, with its shifting allegiances, its inclination toward mobs, its tendency toward complaints rather
than consensus, remains deeply entrenched in Argentine politics. There are the old crowds and the sons and
daughters of the old crowds, the old roughnecks, the old images. Peronismo might still represent as much as onethird of the Argentine electorate, a third with which the military and the oligarchs and the Church would rather not
have to contend, a third that remembers that for all the corruption and confusion, working-class wages and selfesteem increased dramatically. It was a third that prevailed in 1989 to elect Peronist Carlos Menem president of
the republic after too many dark years under the boot of the military.
Peronismo, its critics say, is political vulgarity, and Peron himself was an inept, cowardly demagogue.
Peronistas still are able to argue, however, how well they both compare with so much that has befallen Argentina
since.