Peronist Movement Research Articles

The rise of political Peronism in Argentina (1945-1976)

This Research Dealt With Part Of The Political Life That Prevailed In Argentina, Which Was Known As Peronism Or The Peronist Movement, In Relation To Argentine President Juan Domingo Peron, Who Ruled During The Period (1946-1955) And Then Again (1973-1974) And Became Popular Within The Popular Circles, Especially He Took His Political Approach As A Political And Partisan Phenomenon In Argentina, Which Witnessed The Events Of World War II And The Many Repercussions That Followed, Most Notably The Cold War, Which Divided The World Between The Poles Of The Soviet And American International Conflict.

Populism and Ethnicity: Peronism and the Jews of Argentina by Raanan Rein

Reviewed by: Populism and Ethnicity: Peronism and the Jews of Argentina by Raanan Rein Mollie Lewis Nouwen Raanan Rein. Populism and Ethnicity: Peronism and the Jews of Argentina. Translated by Isis Sadek. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020. 296 pp. Raanan Rein’s excellent book combines his deep knowledge of Peronism along with his expertise in both the history of Jews in Argentina and Argentine foreign policy, particularly with Israel. The introduction sets up the premise of the book: whether or not Juan Domingo Perón (president of Argentina from [End Page 227] 1946–1955, 1973–1974) and his administration were antisemitic, and what his government meant for Jews in Argentina. Though the questions might sound simple, or even simplistic, Rein’s ten-point initial response to the questions demonstrates to readers that the answers were complex, nuanced, and led in a myriad of directions. From the beginning, Rein asserts definitively that Perón (contrary to some popular myth-making) was neither a Nazi nor a Fascist, and that he and his administration rejected antisemitism. Perón was a populist, and pulled from a variety of influences to create his pragmatic governing strategy. Trying to neatly fit Perón into an ideological framework obscures the realities and idiosyncrasies of the political movement he created. There were elements of Peronism that were authoritarian, yet others that were profoundly egalitarian. The mistake of many, which Rein points out carefully when analyzing news coverage from around the world, was to impose non-Argentine models to explain Perón’s political movement. The Israeli press, which Rein delves into at length, did a better job of apprehending what was actually occurring in Argentina, though each periodical with its own ideological flavor. Using a wide array of historical documentation, the author explores the heterogeneous nature of Perón’s political philosophy Justicialismo, the Peronist coalition, the response of different Jewish individuals and groups to the Peronist movement and government, and finally the relationship between Argentina and the new State of Israel. Each chapter approaches the book’s central questions from a different perspective. One myth that has persisted for decades is that “all Jews were opposed to Perón [and] that all prestigious or influential intellectuals kept a distance from Peronism” (154). This book clearly demonstrates the fallacy of the myth. Rein spends most of the book exploring the many Jews who were supporters of Perón, including the members of the Organización Israelita Argentina (Argentine Jewish Organization), the Jewish wing of the Peronist Party. The party had a corporatist structure, which sought to formally bring in different groups within society, from labor unions to ethnic groups. Rein argues that in this manner, Perón was opening the door to a multicultural Argentina, with many voices and viewpoints, a model that had not existed in the country before. Rein also explores Jewish intellectuals, media figures, union leaders, and businessmen who were supporters of Peronism, often to the detriment of their relationships with other Jews. What the book makes clear is that each of these men had specific and clear ideological and personal reasons for their support of Peronism. For some, it was the attention to social justice or an independent foreign policy, while others believed in the totality of the Peronist vision for Argentina. Peronism, particularly the first Peronist administration of 1946–1955, promised a new and exciting path forward for Argentina that appealed to many, and it followed through on many of its promises. In addition to the rich material on the Jewish supporters of Peronism, Rein offers an excellent perspective on the relationship between Argentina and Israel at its founding, and the ways that Jews in both countries perceived Peronism. One of the sections of the book that will be of most interest to those less familiar with the story of Argentina in the 1940s and 1950s is the section on Nazis in Argentina, and the role that the Peronist government may or may not have played. Rein ably dissects the many myths and claims about the presence of Nazis, [End Page 228] while demonstrating the complicated nature of the dispersal of former Nazis following World War II. He points out...

The Emergence and Revival of Charismatic Movements: Argentine Peronism and Venezuelan Chavismo by Caitlin Andrews-Lee

We generally think of personalist political movements as shallow and fleeting. Without a programmatic political project and the formal organization to nurture and motivate adherents, these movements are expected to fade away, especially once the charismatic leader exits the scene. But although this pattern has often held, some charismatic movements somehow, puzzlingly persist. Argentina’s Peronist movement was founded in the 1940s and to this day, supporters hang portraits of Juan and Eva Perón on their walls. Hugo Chávez, who first won the presidency in 1998, continues to elicit deep loyalty from a substantial number of Venezuelans even after his death in 2013 and the country’s economic and social collapse.Andrews-Lee’s masterful new book explains how. She persuasively argues that personalist attachment to a charismatic leader—often borne of people’s search for a savior in times of crisis—can be a lasting source of individual social identity, even in the absence of a programmatic project or a party organization. But for a charismatic movement to survive, successors need to pick up the mantle of the original leader. Only those successors who manage both to tie themselves symbolically to the charismatic leader and to achieve impressive feats in office are able to reactivate those charismatic links. Few succeed.Andrews-Lee traces these dynamics specifically by studying Peronism and Chavismo closely. Survey data from Venezuela show the influence of charisma on attachments to Chavismo. Focus-group discussions offer fascinating insight into how followers think about both movements and the enduring bond that they have with their founding leader. Survey experiments fielded in both countries offer further validation that symbolic attachments to the movement can be re-activated.Andrews-Lee also studies the Argentine and Venezuelan cases over time, relying on both secondary sources and her own interviews with elite actors. She shows that putative successors to the original charismatic leader sometimes fail to pick up the mantle of the movement. Cases in point are Perón’s second wife Isabel, who followed him in office in 1974; Antonio Cafiero, the Peronist party leader who failed to secure its presidential nomination in 1988; and Nicolás Maduro, Chávez’s anointed successor. More successful heirs include Carlos Menem, who defeated Cafiero and served two terms as president, and later presidents Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández. All of them tied themselves to the Peronist icons and brought the country out of fresh economic crises.The book offers a compelling portrait of, and plenty of insights into, both the psychology of individual attachments to charismatic leaders and the politics of the movements that they foster. Andrews-Lee’s methodology, combining quantitative and qualitative data, is a genuine strength and a testament to her efforts to tackle an important and thorny research question. She makes a forceful case that charismatic attachments are different from programmatic ones, but her contention that charismatic movements like Peronism and Chavismo survived even in the absence of programmatic platforms is likely overstated. Peronism emerged as a political project of economic nationalism, a programmatic agenda widely supported by the urban working class. Its links to organized labor were part of its dna. Although Peronism was certainly personalist and heterogeneous, Peronist voters disapproved of Menem’s neoliberal turn. Indeed, Menem campaigned on a very different political platform than the one he pursued in office and faced tremendous opposition from his Peronist supporters both on the streets and in Congress during his first years in office. For a time, Menem’s policies were able to stabilize the economy and generate growth, for which voters eventually rewarded him at the ballot box. But surveys showed fewer and fewer Argentines identified with Peronism, and organized labor splintered in the process.Chávez’s 1998 campaign was economically moderate, but his popularity soared when he launched massive redistributive programs and subsidies for basic goods in the early 2000s, winning him solid support from the less-affluent Venezuelans who benefited most. Despite its many failures, Maduro’s Venezuela maintains similar economic policies. Both Peronism and Chavismo are certainly charismatic movements, but they are not without programmatic content. Peronism and Chavismo attracted a mix of charismatic, programmatic, and organizational attachments. Scholars, particularly in political science, tend to discount the role of charismatic attachments. The Emergence and Revival of Charismatic Movements reminds us that those symbolic attachments are a critical part of understanding these political movements and their longevity.

“We Are Peronists, We Are Organic”: Discipline, Authority, and Loyalty in Argentine Populism

Since 1945, Argentine politics has been largely defined by Peronism, a populist movement established by General Juan Perón. While the ideology of Peronism has shifted and swerved over its seven-decade history, its central emphasis on loyalty has remained constant. This paper examines the notion of “organicity” (organicidad), a Peronist conception of obedience, to elucidate how populist movements valorize discipline and loyalty in order to unify their ranks around sentiment and ritual in the absence of more stable programmatic positions. The original sense of “organicity”, as Perón developed it in his early writings, equated to strict military notions of discipline, obedience, and insubordination. In other words, Perón understood loyalty as an organic conception of discipline that consisted of both unyielding deference for the leader and unwavering commitment to the Peronist Movement. Yet, at particular moments in Argentine political history, Peronist militants either find organicity and loyalty to be intrinsically incompatible, or vocalize definitions of organicity that seem to question the top-down structure of the movement celebrated in Perón’s writings. As a result, among Peronists there is disagreement over what it means to behave organically and loyally. This article draws on extensive ethnographic fieldwork among Peronist militants to argue that populism’s authoritarian preoccupation with fealty attempts to obscure the internal contradictions that result from its lack of clear ideological commitments. However, an emphasis on loyalty cannot produce eternally harmonious uniformity. As Peronists come to view those holding alternate interpretations of their doctrine as heretical and traitorous, their accusations against their comrades reveal the intrinsic fragility of populist unity.

Imágenes del peronismo verdadero

El presente artículo analiza las disputas entre distintas facciones del movimiento peronista en las décadas del sesenta y setenta en Argentina, a través de algunas obras del pintor, ilustrador y muralista Ricardo Carpani. Dichas disputas, que existieron en los espacios gremiales, en los discursos públicos, las notas de época y la calle, y que adoptaron formas de violencia simbólica y material con el correr de los años, también encontraron un territorio fértil en las imágenes. Estas últimas, muchas veces ayudaron a construir la figura del adversario y en otras, resultaron destinatarias del odio de éste, por tal razón fueron destruidas, vandalizadas e intervenidas. Las obras de Carpani, quizás el artista argentino con mayor permeabilidad dentro de la militancia política, fueron objeto de una serie de críticas, calificaciones y atentados en esas décadas, ofreciendo un insumo insustituible para comprender el período.

Los que seleccionan (y los seleccionados). Una aproximación a los diputados nacionales peronistas por la provincia de Buenos Aires entre 1946 y 1955

The article studies the candidate selection process for national deputies by Peronism in four successive elections, developed in 1946, 1948, 1951 and 1954, in the scenario constituted by the province of Buenos Aires. In each case, the ruling group that controlled the selective process, the prevailing formal or informal norms, and the criteria or logic that presided over the process are analyzed. The work is part of current research lines related with the first Peronism, either the one that emphasizes the role of second line leaders and the one that privileges the study of provincial politics. It contributes to the empirical knowledge of Peronist political staff and to the discussion about the organizational dimension of the Peronist movement

Efectos sindicales de la nacionalización ferroviaria (1947-1950): la Unión Ferroviaria vs. la Confederación del Personal Civil de la Nación

The article is an analysis of the relationship between trade unionism and Peronism in the post-1947 period and a description of the process of mobilization of railway workers prior to the strikes of the late 1950 and early 1951. It expounds on the effects produced by the nationalization of the railways in Argentina, in the union of the Railway Union and in its relationship with the Peronist government. In a detailed way, it analyzes the dispute over the union representation of a sector of the railway workers with the new Confederation of Civilian Personnel of the Nation, in a context of intensification of the internal conflict of the Peronist movement and, in parallel, of strengthening of the will of governmental order. To end this representation dispute, the railway union's negotiations with the government included defining the position of the railroad leaders (and a large part of the leadership of the General Confederation of Labor) regarding the reform of the power plant's statute, whose project included the faculty to intervene subsidiaries and the adoption of the Peronist doctrine.

La gestión del ministro Ivanissevich y la derecha peronista: los 100 días de Ottalagano

Luego de la muerte de Perón y en un proceso de aumento continuo de la represión, tanto estatal como paraestatal, se produjo en agosto de 1974 el reemplazo del ministro de Educación Jorge Alberto Taiana por Oscar Ivanissevich, quien permaneció en el cargo hasta agosto de 1975. A pocos días de asumir, el nuevo ministro designó como rector interventor en la Universidad de Buenos Aires a Alberto Ottalagano. En este artículo me centro en las principales medidas tomadas por el nuevo rector durante su breve gestión y en las principales acciones realizadas por las organizaciones del peronismo de derecha en la Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires. Entre estas podemos ubicar a la Alianza Libertadora Nacionalista, la Concentración Nacional Universitaria, la Legión Revolucionaria Peronista y el Movimiento Universitario Nacional. Varias de ellas provenían de sectores nacionalistas que, en el marco del proceso de radicalización política de los años sesenta, se habían acercado al peronismo. Otras, en cambio, provenían del peronismo y habían incorporado muchos elementos del nacionalismo de derecha. Todas compartían una cultura política que bajo la idea de la defensa del gobierno de Perón buscaban combatir al comunismo tanto fuera como dentro del Movimiento peronista. La gestión de Ivanissevich y Ottalagano, significó la consolidación de la ofensiva contra la izquierda universitaria.

Fronteras flexibles. Género, peronismo y sociabilidad política en Pergamino (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1946-1953)

Durante el primer gobierno peronista (1946 - 1952), la ley de sufragio femenino de 1947 y el liderazgo de Eva Perón acentuaron la movilización y la institucionalización partidaria de las mujeres. En 1949, la creación del Partido Peronista Femenino como una fuerza autónoma fue seguida por la fundación de unidades básicas femeninas independientes y formalmente separadas de las masculinas por reglamentaciones específicas. No obstante, en localidades rurales las fuentes evidencian la existencia de vínculos entre los espacios políticos masculino y femenino, los cuales eran establecidos a partir de reglas informales basadas en una red de vínculos personales vecinales y familiares, de confianza y reciprocidad. A este fenómeno habría contribuido la existencia de fronteras muy difusas entre lo público y lo privado, como parte de la sociabilidad rural. Como la superposición de espacios de actuación social y política entre géneros merece un análisis específico, la propuesta es reflexionar –con un enfoque microhistórico– sobre la relación existente entre ambas ramas del movimiento peronista, a partir del análisis de historias de vida, fotografías, archivos personales, prensa y documentación partidaria.

La gobernabilidad local a través del prisma de la intervención comunal (Buenos Aires, 1954)

The debate on the building of political power during the Peron Era (Argentina, 1946-1955) provides a solid basis for an analysis of the phenomenon in the municipal sphere. In this context, the article analyzes the “bottom up” politics employed in situations of conflict stemming from communal interventions enforced in 1954 across three regions of the province of Buenos Aires presided over by incumbent intendants (Carlos Casares, Bartolome Mitre and Lujan). Using media and government sources, the aim is to study the relationship between the provincial and municipal authorities with an emphasis placed on aspects of the political roles played by the local government. To do so, the article examines the motives and rationale provided for the interventions and focuses on the local governability, both in terms of representation and participation. To what extent did the local conflict and rupture in political alignments contribute to the dynamic the governability acquired in the communes, and ultimately, in the enforcement of the intervention? In light of such tension, how did militants and local leaders pool their allegiances to the Peronist Movement and channel their efforts toward local figures with social capital sustained by bonds woven into the very fabric of the municipality?

Industrias aeronáuticas y mecánicas del estado y la lógica de la política económica peronista

<p>En este artículo se exhibe el desarrollo productivo de Industrias Aeronáuticas y Mecánicas del Estado (iame), un conglomerado metalmecánico creado en el marco del Segundo Plan Quinquenal del gobierno de Juan Domingo Perón, y se analiza la lógica económica del movimiento peronista en su fase clásica. A la luz de diversas contribuciones teóricas y empíricas, se discuten temáticas conjugadas por el objeto de estudio, tales como el grado de desarrollo industrial alcanzado, la incorporación tecnológica, la postura frente al capital extranjero y la densidad económica de la estrategia de industrialización peronista.</p>

The Universidad de Buenos Aires in the 1970s: analysis of the press release expressing solidarity with Rodolfo Puiggrós.

This article reconstructs the historical context surrounding the emission of a press release by authorities of the Universidad de Buenos Aires, expressing their solidarity with historian and university rector Rodolfo Puiggrós after his resignation. In his term, Puiggrós attempted to fuse the institution's scientific and technological plans with the new development model initiated by Héctor Cámpora and the Peronist movement in 1973. The article makes reference to the project of university transformation promoted by Puiggrós, combining the ideological traditions of Marxism, reformism, and nationalism. A few key points, useful for analyzing the reasons behind Puiggrós's resignation, are presented, and the arguments highlighted within this press release, published by Office of Media and Communications on October 5, 1973, are discussed.

La Universidad de Buenos Aires en la década de 1970: análisis del comunicado de prensa en solidaridad con Rodolfo Puiggrós

This article reconstructs the historical context surrounding the emission of a press release by authorities of the Universidad de Buenos Aires, expressing their solidarity with historian and university rector Rodolfo Puiggrós after his resignation. In his term, Puiggrós attempted to fuse the institution's scientific and technological plans with the new development model initiated by Héctor Cámpora and the Peronist movement in 1973. The article makes reference to the project of university transformation promoted by Puiggrós, combining the ideological traditions of Marxism, reformism, and nationalism. A few key points, useful for analyzing the reasons behind Puiggrós's resignation, are presented, and the arguments highlighted within this press release, published by Office of Media and Communications on October 5, 1973, are discussed.

The Cinema as Political Fact

‘Militant Cinema: An Internal Category of Third Cinema’ and ‘The Cinema as Political Fact’, translated here into English for the first time, were written by Octavio Getino to further elaborate the concept of Third Cinema first defined in the article ‘Towards a Third Cinema’ that Getino wrote with Fernando Solanas in 1969. The text is thus a theoretical reflection on the film‐making practice of Cine Liberación and other groups, particularly in relation to the Peronist movement in Argentina. Leaving the question of what aesthetic forms were appropriate for militant cinema radically open, Getino defines militant cinema as practices of film‐making, distribution and exhibition that operate as an instrument of specific political organisations. In this form of political practice, the screening becomes a ‘cine‐acción’ – a ‘cinema event’ that transforms spectators into political actors participating in a process of liberation.

Redes sociales y retórica revolucionaria: una aproximación a la revista Las Bases (1971- 1975)

This article aims to provide a first analysis of the official publication of the Argentinean Peronist movement, Las Bases. In this magazine, published between November 1971 and August 1975, some peronist networks can be reconstructed. In addition, their central representations can be identified. The idea of a “revolutionary program” came together with some slogans that could define, according to different actors, the “ideological character of peronism as an anti-imperialist movement”: National Socialism, Revolutionary Christianity, Third Position, Army, National claims, are some of the political ideas developed in this magazine.

Le premier retour de Perón : charisme et mobilisation populaire en novembre 1972

In October of 1972, General Peron declared from Madrid : “I have decided to come back to Argentina”. After nearly 12 years of peronism prohibition in Argentina’s political life, the “return Operation” was received as an historical event. It generated both big aspirations and strong worries. This article concentrates on this first return, by analysing the process of Peron’s charisma production, at a very turning moment of Argentina’s second twentieth century. During this process, popular mobilization became one of the most important stakes for the actors involved: it materialized the meeting between the “people” and the leader, and expressed the irruption of a new political actor, the Juventud Peronista (Peronist’s Youth). Consequently, in order to reach the “heart of things”, Peron had to face this new actor that contributed to produce his charisma, but at the same time, aspired to take one’s place in national political space and in peronist movement.

Du péronisme au populisme : la conquête conceptuelle du « gros animal » populaire

Le peronisme constitue l’un des sujets les plus abordes dans la litterature politique et sociologique argentine. Des les annees 1960, une grande partie de cette litterature a associe ce mouvement politique a un nom generique : celui de regime populiste ou national populaire. Le cœur de ces analyses a porte sur le rapport privilegie que le peronisme etablit avec la figure populaire et la mobilisation que celle-ci vehicule. L’objectif de cet article est de discuter la conceptualisation du « peuple » dans les interpretations du peronisme a travers le prisme du populisme, en la confrontant aux discours des acteurs qui s’identifient au mouvement.

In the Name of the Community: Populism, Ethnicity, and Politics among the Jews of Argentina under Perón, 1946–1955

In the Name of the Community: Populism, Ethnicity, and Politics among the Jews of Argentina under Perón, 1946–1955

Workers or Citizens: Democracy and Identity in Rosario, Argentina(1912–1930)

This well-documented study supports a nuanced set of arguments that helps us understand the conflictive nature of party politics in Argentina in the early twentieth century, especially the failure of the democratic project that began promisingly in 1912 and ended in the 1930 military coup. Karush argues that Juan Perón’s 1945 electoral success finds its roots in the nature and discourse of electoral politics up to 1930.Elite concern over the growing dangers of Argentina’s scandalously corrupt electoral system resulted in top-down legislative reform. While the Sáenz Peña law, enacted in 1912, did not lessen the contentiousness of party politics, the Radical Party did stop threatening revolutionary challenges. However, in September 1930 right-wing elements of the military put an end to Argentine liberal democracy. Focusing on the urban laboratory of Rosario, the largest city in the province of Santa Fe, Karush addresses the nature of citizenship, conflicting perceptions of class, and the variable tolerance for pluralist democracy.The Radical Party won the 1912 election in Rosario. The rhetoric of Ricardo Caballero, the party’s most aggressive leader, appealed to the historical vitality of Argentina’s laborers, infusing working-class aspirations into the idea of an Argentine democracy. By invoking the needs of the disaffected within a nativist discourse, Caballero politicized class positions and questioned the legitimacy of the elite republic. This discourse fused class identity with citizenship identity. Democracy was not simply about pristine, affective patriotism and single-minded affinity to the nation; it was something more complex—a political system conscious of social needs. However, Caballero’s connection of patriotism and partisan need were an anathema to other established political actors in Rosario, including the traditional elite and the bourgeois core of the Radical Party, whose definition of citizenship did not easily admit class considerations. Indeed, the prevailing view was that citizenship should not be conditioned by partisan identities: the nation demanded of its people an undifferentiated, indivisible affinity to the patria, devoid of sectoral appeals.Karush explores an oddly irreconcilable pair of worldviews. Workers, on the one hand, saw the state as the principal agent responsible for social conditions. That politicians should respond to sectoral demands was made clear through strikes and the rhetoric of class grievances. In contrast, the majority of intellectuals, professionals, merchants, landowners, and petty entrepreneurs saw political participation as an honorable and patriotic activity that expressed, above all, an essential Argentinidad devoid of ideological partisanship. This view held that issues of social justice eroded democracy. Insofar as the principal political organizations considered partisanship politics to be unpatriotic, Argentine electoral campaigns were largely devoid of specific social or economic content but rich in patriotic and hagiographic discourse. For the most part, politicians and their supporters defined electoral politics and democracy as nation-building tools and not as avenues for representing diverse needs.Most political leaders’ insistence on what Karush calls a “nonpluralist democracy,” in contrast to workers’ commitment to class-based identities and continued use of labor unrest to redress grievances, had two results. In the short term, elites felt increasingly frustrated that class-based political appeals represented a failure of Argentina’s experiment in liberal democracy and nation building. Liberal democracy was defined by a politically mature citizenry and not the relentless dissension unleashed by the class-based appeals of laborers and political firebrands. Thus, the military coup of September 1930 was welcomed as an immediate relief from violence and as an acknowledgment that liberal democracy had failed to build the consensual nation. In the longer term, the failure of parties to address social and economic grievances during this experiment in electoral democracy paved the way for the Peronist movement, which would galvanize neglected sectors and, in the process, redefine the purpose of politics, the nature of the state, and the constituency of the body politic.

‘Bruce Plan’ and Marshall Plan: The United States's Disguised Intervention against Peronism in Argentina, 1947–1950

United States' s charge d'affaires at Buenos Aires, John Moors Cabot, remarked in 1946 of the Argentine presidential candidate Colonel Juan Domingo Peron: 'Whenever we look around for a really good stick with which to beat a certain gent, we never seem to be able to find one handy.'1 The statement illustrates how Good Neighbor pledges of non-intervention in the internal affairs of the Latin American states handcuffed the administration of Harry S. Truman as it sought to combat the Peronist movement in the late 1940s. Although Carlos Escude and C. A. MacDonald show how the United States and Britain used economic boycott and political manipulation to lever Peronist Argentina away from a statist economic programme,2 the Truman administration, which wished to draw all of the Latin American states in its train, saw that an open attack on or condemnation of Peron would backfire and tried to hide its leverage behind the facade of non-intervention. Peron won the Argentine election of February 1946 by advocating 'social justice' for working people and national development through 'populist' statism.3 At the heart of his economic programme was the Instituto