“Exclusive Domination” or “Short Term Imperialism”: The Peruvian Response to U.S.-Argentine Rivalry, 1946-1950

Abstract

“Peru lives in a psychological moment of singular confusion,” Argentine Ambassador Hugo Oderigo wrote in 1947, suggesting that “the United States and Argentina are its two great realities. It is attracted to our country by the community of historical origin, lives our reality, and recognizes the greatness” of General Juan Domingo Perón. On the other hand, the hegemonic United States, with its vast wealth and modern industrial order, offered promise for the future. In the years following the Second World War, both Perón and the Harry S. Truman administration forced two Peruvian presidents to choose between what one Lima journalist called “short-term Argentine imperialism” and the “exclusive domination which the Great Democracy of the North today exercises.” Perón's road promised rapid industrialization and liberation from foreign exploitation through statist corporatism and membership in a “southern bloc” of economically-integrated South American states, while Washington stood as the guardian of a new global order based on liberal capitalism and multilateral commerce. This conflict represents an important international aspect of what has heretofore been considered a domestic struggle within Peru from 1945-1949.