Abstract
AbstractThe article examines the ideological character of Juan Carlos Onganía's dictatorship by exploring its ties and dialogue with Francisco Franco's Spain. Known as the “Argentine Revolution,” Onganía's regime (1966-70) was, the article shows, one of the first Cold War Latin American dictatorship to overtly use Francoist ideology as its point of reference. While building on the conventional wisdom that the legacies of the Spanish Civil War informed right-wing thought in Latin America, the study then shifts its focus to Spain's 1960s “economic miracle” and technocratic state model, observing them as a prominent discursive toolkit for authoritarian Argentine intellectuals. Drawing on newly discovered correspondence and archival sources, the article first excavates the intellectual networks operating between Franco's Spain and the Argentine right during the 1950s and 1960s. Once handpicked by Onganía to design his regime, these Argentine Franco-sympathizers were to decide the character of the Argentine Revolution. Second, the article sheds light on the intimate collaboration between the two dictatorships, and further explores the reasons for Onganía's downfall. In doing so, the study adds to a burgeoning historiographic field that underscores the significance of the Francoist dictatorship in the Latin American right-wing imaginary.
Highlights
O n October 21, 1966, Argentina’s new dictator, Juan Carlos Onganía, wrote a letter to Spain’s long-standing despot, Francisco Franco, to be handed to him by Argentina’s education minister, Carlos María Gelly y Obes, during a visit to Madrid
“The Argentine Revolution,” it read [referring to the regime’s official name], “has emphasized in its founding documents the singular value it attributes to the spiritual community with Spain, and its willingness to translate this appreciation into concrete lines of its
Suggestively, Onganía stated that to constitute a “richer plot” in Spanish-Argentine relations, “the Spiritual requires the support of the Economic and Political,” and that the two countries’ “intimate position” in the international arena “must crystalize . . . in an ever-closer collaboration in these fields.”[1]. In his four years in power, Onganía approached no other foreign leader in such adulation, that we know of
Summary
O n October 21, 1966, Argentina’s new dictator, Juan Carlos Onganía, wrote a letter to Spain’s long-standing despot, Francisco Franco, to be handed to him by Argentina’s education minister, Carlos María Gelly y Obes, during a visit to Madrid.
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