A History of Argentina in the Twentieth Century

Abstract

Imagine a country that was once a rising star among the “recently settled areas,” whose economy was one of the fastest growing in the world and was able to attract both foreign investment and waves of European immigrants. This country was also a pioneer in establishing an inclusive democracy in Latin America. Its future, at the turn of the twentieth century, could not look brighter. After suffering a long series of authoritarian regimes (including one of the most murderous dictatorships of the region) and several devastating economic crises, the same country is today barely pulling out from its worst economic and political disaster. Argentina, a country that once seemed destined to being a regional leader, finds that at the beginning of the twenty-first century, in the words of Luis Alberto Romero, an aurea mediocritas is, after all, a desirable destiny. What has been characterized as “the Argentine counter-miracle” has mystified historians, political scientists, and economists for decades.Luis Alberto Romero, a highly respected Argentine historian and professor at the University of Buenos Aires, here provides a balanced and nuanced analysis of the complex history of the country. Romero’s straightforward writing and James Brennan’s superb translation of the 1994 Spanish original make this an excellent starter for anyone interested in Argentina, and it should work very well as an undergraduate textbook. This edition has been updated and includes an epilogue and a postscript on events through January 2002. The bibliography suggests useful further readings and is fairly comprehensive. Divided in nine chapters, each covering roughly a decade of history, A History of Argentina shows convincingly that we should not seek the “causes” of the Argentine decline in specific moments or episodes in the history of the country (such as the crisis and coup d’état of 1930, the Peronist government, and the military regimes). Instead, a fuller understanding must tie together the complex and multidimensional aspects of Argentine political history and culture. For instance, the origins of the deep political polarization that has prevented even a minimum consensus that could guarantee a sustainable democracy should, paradoxically, be traced back to the very establishment of the first popular government in 1916. The history of the country in the last one hundred years has thus been, in Romero’s view, the history of the Argentines’ inability to create a state that could secure at the same time democracy and acceptable levels of equality.The book under review is essentially a political history of Argentina. This emphasis on politics suggests that, for Romero, the country’s problems are essentially political in nature; this in itself is an interesting and well-argued hypothesis. However, the reader misses a deeper analysis of the complexities of Argentine social history. Any book with such a broad coverage as this one is bound to simplify the density of some historical processes. Thus, for instance, Romero barely touches on the complex role that Eva Perón played during her husband’s first term in office. Similarly, he devotes less than one page to the conflict between church and state that exploded toward the end of the Perón regime. Additionally, although the author claims in the preface that “the world of culture and intellectuals” is at the center of his interests, his insights on intellectuals and intellectual debates are mainly restricted to the decades of 1920s and 1930s. Conspicuously absent from the book is, for instance, an analysis of the intense debates about Peronism generated after the fall of the regime in 1955—debates that remained at the center of Argentine intellectuals’ concerns for at least a whole decade.Although the book is written in a clear prose, I wonder whether someone not familiar with the country can make any sense of the intricacies of recent Argentine politics. But this, of course, is not so much the fault of this worthy volume; rather, it speaks of the difficulties implicit in narrating the history of a country that seems to be caught, now more than ever, in the Tocquevillian tension between liberty and equality.