Juan Perón

President of Argentina (1943-1955, 1973-1974)

• Born: October 8, 1895
• Birthplace: Lobos, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina
• Died: July 1, 1974
• Place of death: Buenos Aires, Argentina

More than any other figure, Perón dominated the history of twentieth century Argentina. He participated in coups that toppled the government in 1930 and 1943. With support from the armed forces and organized labor, he governed as president from 1943 to 1955 and 1973 to 1974. His legacy continued to divide Argentina long after his death in 1974.

Early Life

Juan Domingo Perón (peh-ROHN) was the son of Mario Tomás Perón, who had given up the study of medicine to live as a minor government bureaucrat and tenant rancher. In 1890, at Lobos, Mario Tomás Perón met Juana Sosa Toledo, a farm girl, and they had a son the following year. Juan was the second born, although the couple still had not married. In 1900, the family moved to Patagonia, but four years later his parents sent the boy to Buenos Aires to begin elementary school while living with some of his father’s relatives.

Large for his age and increasingly self-reliant, Perón stayed on in the city with brief visits to his family, until in 1911 he entered the Military College, a prerequisite for a career in the armed forces. An average student as a cadet, Perón was commissioned a second lieutenant in 1913. By 1929, he was a captain, and his career had been routine and apolitical. Charismatic, hardworking, and energetic, Perón showed talent as a teacher and athlete. He also received an appointment to the Escuela Superior de Guerra (war academy) for three years of intensive study (1926-1929). On January 5, 1929, he married Aurelia Tizón, from a respectable middle-class Buenos Aires family.

Life’s Work

The depression of 1929 provoked a crisis in Argentina that brought Perón into politics. Appointed to the army’s general staff, he joined in conspiracies against the government of President Hipólito Yrigoyen, culminating in the 1930 military coup. Although Perón’s role was a small one, he did perceive an important lesson: The armed forces succeeded in overthrowing the government, he believed, only because a large number of civilians in Buenos Aires took up arms in support of the coup. The Revolution of 1930 subverted the Argentine political system, and constitutional rule came to an end. Perón became a professor of military history at the war academy, improved his didactic and speaking skills, and published several books. Promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1936, he served as a military attaché in Chile. His wife’s death from cancer on September 10, 1938, ended a happy marriage, which had produced no children.

Perón then received orders to go to Italy, an assignment that shaped his political philosophy and later guided his policies as president of Argentina. His experiences in Italy, Germany, and Spain convinced him that some form of fascism would dominate the future, although his own predilection was for a state similar to Francisco Franco’s Spain rather than Nazi Germany. Perón’s reading of military theory, much influenced by German writers, had persuaded him that war was an inevitable state of society. He admired the way that Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini had mobilized and organized their peoples, especially through the use of trade unions, mass demonstrations, and appeals to anticommunism.

After spending 1939 and 1940 in Europe, he returned to Argentina, was promoted to full colonel, and began to conspire with fellow officers against the civilian government. The conspirators’ organization was the Group of United Officers (GOU), an extremely secret faction probably founded by Perón. When President Ramón S. Castillo unconstitutionally tried to name his successor, it provoked the GOU into action. On June 14, 1943, a military faction led by General Arturo Rawson forced Castillo’s resignation. Perón, who had been deeply involved in the conspiracy, did not participate in the military action. He usually disappeared when physical danger threatened.

Perón emerged from the coup as chief aide to General Edelmiro J. Farrell, the new minister of war. As the only leading officer who had a clear idea of what to do with the government, Perón appealed for working-class support. On October 27, 1943, he became minister of the National Labor Department and converted it into a nearly independent Secretariat of Labor and Social Welfare. He simultaneously courted factions within the military and gained support from the workers by according them respect. He encouraged them to organize, aided older unions that supported his policies, and oversaw the implementation of new laws favorable to the working class. Anarchist, socialist, and communist union leaders were repressed. In July, 1944, Perón became vice president under President Farrell, while retaining his other positions. Yet his mounting power threatened his rivals and the United States government, which mistakenly considered him a Nazi.

The end of World War II forced the military government to relax its most authoritarian measures, but more political freedom allowed opponents of the regime to organize. Anti-Peronist elements in the military seized power on October 9, 1945, arrested Perón, and imprisoned him on Martín García Island. When the workers saw that the anti-Peronist faction intended to erase most of the gains that Perón had granted, they rallied to his support. Resorting to mass demonstrations and violence on October 17, the working class forced the opposition to back down, release Perón, and permit free elections for the presidency in 1946. Meanwhile, Perón’s mistress, actress Eva “Evita” Duarte, had shored up his courage, but she had nothing to do with the popular demonstrations despite later myths to the contrary. Although Perón and Evita had flaunted their relationship since early 1944, to the scandal of straitlaced Argentines, they married shortly after his release, in part to enhance Perón’s chances in the presidential election.

With the campaign under way, both the opposition and the United States government underestimated the depth of Perón’s support. His opponents, ranging from the Radicals to the communists, coalesced in the Democratic Union, confident of victory. Meanwhile, United States Assistant Secretary of State Spruille Braden made public a compilation of anti-Perón propaganda, the “Blue Book,” intended to portray Perón as a Nazi and discredit him with Argentine voters. Braden’s ploy backfired, however, because Argentine nationalists resented American intervention. Charismatic and forceful, Perón attracted huge crowds and mounting support. In the freest election up to that point in Argentine history, Perón won 54 percent of the popular vote and decisive control of both houses of congress. He took office on June 4, 1946.

On the surface, Perón ruled for the next nine years as a populist president, playing to nationalist sentiments. He used foreign reserves accumulated during the war to repatriate railroads, utilities, and other holdings from foreign investors. For the first time, Argentine manufacturers benefited from a high protective tariff, along with the governmental measures to stimulate industrialization. The government invested great sums in heavy industry, building the nation’s first steel plant and subsidizing automobile manufacturing. Perón also spent huge sums to provide new equipment for the armed forces.

Perón called his political philosophy Justicialismo, a muddled theory that neither he nor his followers ever clearly defined. It was allegedly a middle position between capitalism and communism. Perón was no democrat despite his reliance on the working class for support, yet neither did he espouse an ideologically consistent form of dictatorship. While his attitudes favored the lessons learned in Italy and Spain, his only consistent policy was Argentine nationalism, much to the chagrin of the United States. The new constitution of 1949, which abolished the proscription on a president’s succeeding himself and permitted Perón’s reelection in 1951, gave women the right to vote and established ten basic rights of workers.

Evita played an important but not crucial role in Perón’s rule. She was the de facto head of the labor department, provided an important link to the common people and to female voters, and ran the Eva Perón Foundation, a graft-ridden charitable institution that enriched its namesake. Evita derived her power from her husband, however, and, as a female involved in politics, was barely tolerated by Perón’s military supporters. Her campaign for the vice presidency in 1951 had to be aborted when the military balked. Her death from cancer on July 26, 1952, deeply affected Perón.

Perón’s regime was also in crisis. Public spending had outstripped revenues, causing serious inflation. Livestock and grain production fell because of Perón’s economic policies. Enemies spread rumors about Perón’s alleged sexual orgies with young girls. As discontent mounted, he became more dictatorial inside Argentina but began to soften his xenophobia in the hope of obtaining international aid. Although Perón and the Roman Catholic Church had initially supported each other, a bitter conflict broke out between the two erstwhile allies, with the government of Argentina making divorces easy to obtain, legalizing prostitution, and limiting the Church’s role in education. When the regime arrested and exiled two bishops, the papacy excommunicated the officials responsible. The next day, June 16, 1955, factions within the armed forces attempted a coup against the Peronist government, but it failed because it lacked the army’s support. Perón responded fearfully, however, and made a number of concessions to the opposition. He seemed afraid to fight and claimed later that he was trying to avoid a civil war. When sectors of the army joined a second coup on September 16, 1955, Perón went into exile, leaving a bitterly polarized nation.

Perón first sought refuge in Paraguay, later drifted through Venezuela, Panama, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic, and eventually took up permanent residence in Spain. Peronists never abandoned hope, however, that their hero would govern Argentina once again. In 1964, he made a semiserious attempt to return but on his arrival in Brazil was prevented from embarking for Argentina and was sent back to Madrid. Even from Spain, however, he exerted great influence over the Peronists, directing their political activities and preventing anyone from challenging his position as leader of the movement. Meanwhile, political chaos engulfed Argentina, with neither the armed forces nor civilians able to govern. Beginning in 1969, terrorism and turmoil mounted until the military decided to permit a free election, even if it might permit a Peronist victory and the return of Perón himself to Argentina.

Perón arrived in November, 1972, too late to be a candidate, but his lieutenant, Hector Cámpora, won the presidency. Cámpora soon resigned, and Perón was elected on September 27, 1973, with his third wife, Isabel Martínez de Perón, as vice president. Yet during his eighteen-year exile, Peronism had changed. Organized labor remained loyal, but many intellectuals, students, and others dissatisfied with Argentine politics, including some terrorists such as the Montoneros and Peronist Youth, also looked to Perón for leadership. Once in office again, Perón sought national reconciliation and seemed committed to democratic rule. The conflicting aims of his own supporters made government difficult, however, and his health failed before he even took office. Perón died on July 1, 1974.

Significance

Juan Perón’s first administration attempted to deal with important obstacles to Argentine development. He played to the interests of organized labor and accorded women new political rights. He attempted to break the rural elite’s control over the economy by subsidizing industrialization. His nationalism carried popular support. Yet his dictatorial method and lack of fiscal restraint, his grandiose but xenophobic foreign policy, the continued enmity of the rural oligarchs, and the regime’s failure to achieve long-lasting social and economic reform undercut his accomplishments. Argentina was far more polarized when he fell in 1955 than it had been when he took office.

By the 1970’s, Perón was the only person with a chance of healing Argentina’s wounds, and his death, followed by the short-lived rule of his third wife, touched off a downward spiral into military dictatorship, leftist and state-sponsored terrorism, and military debacle in the Falkland Islands.

Bibliography

Alexander, Robert J. Juan Domingo Perón: A History. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1979. A short biography, with bibliography, by an author who has written extensively on various facets of the Peronist years in Argentina.

Crassweller, Robert. Perón and the Enigmas of Argentina. New York: W. W. Norton, 1987. This well-written biography argues that Perón achieved great popularity in Argentina, despite accomplishing little, because he embodied the cultural ethos of Hispanic and creole Argentina. Contains a good bibliography and photographs.

Foss, Clive. “Propaganda and the Perons.” History Today 50, no. 3 (March, 2000): 8. Describes how Perón and his wife, Eva, organized a propaganda campaign to win the gratitude of the Argentinean people.

Fraser, Nicholas, and Marysa Navarro. Eva Perón. New York: W. W. Norton, 1980. Generally balanced in its treatment of Evita, this biography strips away much of the myth surrounding Perón’s wife and shows her political contributions.

Goñi, Uki. The Real Odessa: How Perón Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina. London: Granta, 2003. Describes how Perón allowed Nazi war criminals to be given cover in Argentina during the last days of World War II; these criminals remained in Argentina and lived prosperous lives after the war.

Page, Joseph A. Perón: A Biography. New York: Random House, 1983. The best biography of Perón available, this is a lengthy, thorough treatment of his entire career and is more sympathetic to its subject than most studies.

Rock, David. Argentina, 1516-1982: From Spanish Colonization to the Falklands War. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. This excellent overview of Argentine history devotes extensive coverage to Perón, including photographs and bibliography.

Surowiecki, James. “The Argentine Machine.” The New Yorker 77, no. 43 (January 14, 2002): 33. Chronicles the events that created economic problems in Argentina, beginning with Perón’s election to the presidency in 1946.

Turner, Frederick C., and José Enrique Miguens, eds. Juan Perón and the Reshaping of Argentina. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1983. Offers the flavor of Perón’s thought through translations of speeches, lectures, essays, and addresses.