argentina: a modern history

228mm

29mm 155mm

Jill Hedges

JillH

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www.ibtauris.com

ArgentinaAModern History

In the early twentieth century, Argentinapossessed one of the world’s mostprosperous economies, yet since thenArgentina has suffered a series of boom-and-bust cycles that have seen it fall well belowits regional neighbours such as Chile. At thesame time, despite the lack of significantethnic or linguistic divisions, Argentina hasfailed to create an over-arching post-independence national identity and itspolitical and social history has been markedby frictions, violence and a 50-year series ofmilitary coups d’état. Such difficulty indefining and resolving a common past hasincreased the complexity of resolving anational project for the present and future.

This lack of a national sense of identity,highlighted by continuing frictions betweenBuenos Aires and the ‘interior’ over thecentralization of power in the capital, isperhaps one factor explaining the enduringattraction of Peronism since its origins in theearly 1940s: Juan Perón’s maxim, ‘if I define, Iexclude’, provided for a broad form ofidentification covering a range of differentregional, socioeconomic and politicalexperiences. However, it also provided thebasis of an amorphous and ideologicallyvacuous political platform that has eludedprecise definition for 50 years, thus distortingthe country’s entire political spectrum.

Jill Hedges here analyses the modern historyof Argentina from the adoption of the 1853constitution until the present day,highlighting the political factionalism, theweakness of and lack of trust in politicalinstitutions and economic dependence onforeign capital which have contributed to itspolitical instability and economic fluctuation.Exploring political, economic and socialaspects of Argentina’s recent past, this bookwill be invaluable to anyone interested inSouth American history and politics.

Jill Hedges has been Senior Editor for LatinAmerica at Oxford Analytica since 2001 andwas formerly Editorial Manager of businessinformation service Esmerk Argentina. Shehas a PhD in Latin American Studies from theUniversity of Liverpool.

Front Cover Images:Flag: © Julydfg | Dreamstime.comBronzes: Photo by Stephen St. John/National Geographic/Getty Images

Cover Design: Jan Marshall

‘Jill Hedges tells the story of Argentina clearly.

There is considerable emphasis given to the careers and

calculations of the ruling strata,

particularly the political careers of Juan Domingo Perón and

his wives Evita and Isabelita. This is a concise,

well-informed, and highly readable one-volume history.’

Laurence Whitehead, Nuffield College, Oxford.

‘Jill Hedges here provides a fact-laden

and accurate political history that will be helpful to students

of contemporary Argentina. She covers all of the key

political movements – Liberalism, Radicalism, Peronism –

while shedding particularly useful light on

such institutions as the Church and the military.

Her explanations of the twists and turns in Argentine economic

policy are thorough and clear.’

Matthew B. Karush, George Mason University.

P1: PHB Trim: 155mm × 228mm Top: .5in Gutter: .75inIBBK044-FM IBBK044/Argentina ISBN: 978 1 84885 654 7 May 4, 2011 16:4

Jill Hedges has been Senior Analyst for Latin America at Oxford An-alytica since 2001 and was formerly Editorial Manager of the businessinformation service at Esmerk Argentina. She has a PhD in Latin Ameri-can Studies from the University of Liverpool.

‘Jill Hedges tells the story of Argentina clearly. There is considerable em-phasis given to the careers and calculations of the ruling strata, partic-ularly the political careers of Juan Domingo Peron and his wives Evitaand Isabelita. This is a concise, well-informed, and highly readable one-volume history.’

Laurence Whitehead, Nuffield College, Oxford

‘Jill Hedges here provides a fact-laden and accurate political history thatwill be helpful to students of contemporary Argentina. She covers all ofthe key political movements – Liberalism, Radicalism, Peronism – whileshedding particularly useful light on such institutions as the Church andthe military. Her explanations of the twists and turns in Argentine eco-nomic policy are thorough and clear.’

Matthew B. Karush, George Mason University


ARGENTINAA MODERN

HISTORY

Jill Hedges


Published in 2011 by I.B.Tauris and Co Ltd6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010www.ibtauris.com

Distributed in the United States and Canada Exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010

Copyright c© Jill Hedges 2011

The right of Jill Hedges to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by herin accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any partthereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, ortransmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978 1 84885 654 7

A full CIP record for this book is available from the British LibraryA full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available

Printed and bound in Sweden by Scandbook


CONTENTS

Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1 National Consolidation 1853–80 . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

2 The ‘Golden Age’ 1880–1930 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

3 The Infamous ‘Decade’ 1930–43 . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

4 Peronism: The Original Protagonists . . . . . . . . . 61

5 The Rise of Peron, 1943–5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

6 The ‘Revolution’ of 17 October 1945 . . . . . . . . . 98

7 Peronism in Power 1946–52: The FirstPresidency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

8 The Death of Evita and the Fall of Peron . . . . . 148

9 Peronism Proscribed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170

10 Descent into Chaos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198

11 Provincial Perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220

12 Return to Democracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

13 Default and Disarray . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269

Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313


x ARGENTINA: A MODERN HISTORY

SOUTHPACIFICOCEAN

SOUTHPACIFICOCEAN

Argentina

SOUTHATLANTIC

OCEAN

SOUTHATLANTIC

OCEAN

BRAZIL

PARAGUAY

CHILE

SOUTHATLANTIC

OCEAN

BRAZIL

PARAGUAY

Figure 1. Map of Argentina (Courtesy University of Texas Library)

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4 Peronism: The OriginalProtagonists

Official history indicates that Juan Domingo Peron was born in thetown of Lobos, Buenos Aires province, on 8 October 1895. Like mostother elements of the life of a man who was singularly economicalwith the truth on many occasions, even this simple fact is open todebate. Some sources indicate that Peron was in fact born a day ortwo earlier, in a small rural house outside Lobos, while other crediblesources indicate that he was born nearby in Roque Perez on 7 October1893, and his birth was only registered two years later when his fatherdecided to recognize his illegitimate son. According to this version,sustained by Peron himself later in life, the birth was registered inLobos because it housed the Registry Office nearest to Roque Perez.This minor dispute over Peron’s origins is characteristic of the am-biguous nature of most supposed facts concerning his life, and sug-gests that that life began as it meant to go on.

Peron was the second son of Mario Tomas Peron and Juana SosaToledo; their older son, Mario Avelino, was born in 1891. Mario andJuana were not married at the time, and did not marry until 1901.Peron’s paternal grandfather, Tomas Peron, had been a distinguisheddoctor and later a senator, and is said to have developed the first rabiesvaccine in Argentina. When his father died in 1889, Mario abandonedhis medical studies and left for the country, where he became a pub-lic employee in Lobos and formed a family with Juana Sosa. Juanawas a young country girl of humble and apparently partly Indian ori-gin, several rungs lower on the social ladder than Mario. The fact of


62 ARGENTINA: A MODERN HISTORY

having been an illegitimate son, of a mother not considered socially re-spectable, was later a bond between Peron and Evita, although Peron’sresentments arising from this condition were less vehement thanhers.

Outside the context of small-town Argentina, such resentmentsmay seem unwarranted or hyper-sensitive, but this does not take ac-count of the obsessions of that provincial society, especially thosemembers struggling to be recognized as middle class and seekingcharacteristics which made them superior to others. Although it isestimated that some 30 per cent of all children born in Argentina inthe early part of the twentieth century were illegitimate, this circum-stance was one which separated genteel (albeit impoverished) societyfrom the lower classes, who, for cultural and economic reasons, wereoften unwed. Another distinguishing characteristic was skin colour,as those of European origin hastened to distinguish themselves fromthe dark-skinned natives. The long-established criollo aristocracy, onthe other hand, looked down on recent European immigrants, partic-ularly of Spanish or Italian origin, whose skin tone and educationallevel were often difficult to differentiate from those of the despisednegritos. The fact that Peron’s parents were not married, and that in-deed his middle-class father had taken up with a peasant girl with In-dian features, were therefore issues which represented an overblownsocial stigma.

When Peron was five years old, Mario moved the family to theremote southern region of Patagonia, taking a job as administrator ofthe Chank Aike estancia in Santa Cruz province. The isolated child-hood spent by Peron in Patagonia seems to have left a number ofmarks on his adult character and thinking: the miserable conditionsin which rural workers lived became familiar to him, although in lateryears he would remember the peons as his companions and teach-ers, and he developed an independent and aloof personality (despitebeing outwardly ever-smiling and open, Peron maintained a certaindistance in his relationships all his life, and very few people wereclose to him). He also developed an abiding admiration and affectionfor dogs, which he later described as his best friends in his Patago-nian childhood and which he always held in higher esteem for theirintelligence and loyalty than his human interlocutors. In 1904, thefamily moved slightly to the north, to Chubut province where theweather was less severe, although the limited accounts provided laterby Peron of his parents indicate that both were austere and, in his


PERONISM: THE ORIGINAL PROTAGONISTS 63

mother’s case in particular, iron-willed and prepared to withstandwhatever came.1

Also in 1904, Peron and his brother Mario returned to Buenos Airesto study, although Mario shortly thereafter fell ill and returned per-manently to Chubut. Thus Peron, at a very early age, found himselfobliged to further develop his independent nature. His schoolmateslater remembered him as dominating and bossy (words also later usedto describe Evita by her own former schoolmates). While not an es-pecially distinguished student, at 15 he began studying to enter med-ical school. He changed his mind and career abruptly when he wasaccepted by the military academy (Colegio Militar), following in thefootsteps of several paternal uncles. The Colegio Militar was at thetime under the direction of Prussian military officers and their disci-ples, and instilled an admiration for German military discipline andfor authoritarian attitudes that remained with Peron and most of hiscolleagues for life – although the proclivity for authoritarian attitudesand the belief that government at both the family and national levelmust be authoritarian to be strong was, and remains, widespread inArgentine culture, and not confined to its armed forces.

In 1913 Peron graduated as a sub-lieutenant and joined the in-fantry, a less socially prestigious body than the cavalry. He was ini-tially stationed in Parana, Entre Rıos province, and transferred in 1920to the Non-Commissioned Officers school at Campo de Mayo, nearBuenos Aires, where for the first time he received glowing reports asan instructor. He was described by contemporaries as entirely devotedto his career and to the men under his command, teaching those fromthe most underprivileged backgrounds the basics of etiquette, hygieneand table manners in addition to their military training.2

In 1926, Peron was sent to the Superior War School, founded totrain middle-ranking officers for higher command posts. He spentthree years studying there before becoming a professor of military his-tory in 1931, a post which developed both his vocation as a teacherand his intellectual pretensions. During the course of his tenure there,the then Captain Peron wrote three books on military history, as wellas a history of Patagonian place names. Also during this period Perontook another step which formed part of the upwardly mobile careerof any young military officer: in January 1929 he married a younglady of good family, Aurelia Tizon, known as ‘Potota’. Aurelia, a mu-sic teacher by profession and the daughter of a middle-class BuenosAires merchant with good connections in the Radical Party, was



14 years younger than Peron and deferred to her husband’s greaterexperience. By the standards of the time she was doubtless consideredto have made a good match, with a rising young army officer of goodstatus and good looks, even if his earliest origins had been less thanconventional.

At this stage, at least, Peron had shown himself to be extremelyconventional in most respects, entering the military career as a tradi-tional means of advancement (the military and the priesthood wereamong the principal career choices for upwardly mobile or academi-cally minded young men of respectable but less than moneyed back-grounds). Aurelia was likewise of a conventional background, fond ofmusic and painting, and the ten-year marriage was generally perceivedas successful. A measure of the formality of the relationship, as well asa measure of Peron’s frequent coldness with respect to other people,is that virtually his only public comment on Aurelia, made in a 1970interview more than 30 years after her death, was: ‘In ’28 I marriedAurelia Tizon. She was a very nice girl, a concert guitarist. She playedvery well. Unfortunately she died young.’3

The only unconventional aspect of the marriage was the lack ofchildren. The question of Peron’s infertility, which according to somesources was confirmed by a family doctor during this first marriage,was a thorny one for his followers in a machista society. It has beendisputed by rumours that both Evita and his third wife, Isabelita, hadbeen pregnant by him and had suffered miscarriages, and by Peron’sown later statements that he had fathered a child by an Italian actressduring his stay in Europe in the late 1930s. Subsequently, well afterhis death, a lady named Martha Holgado persistently claimed to be hisillegitimate daughter (despite DNA tests indicating the contrary), evenclaiming to have maintained a close relationship with him during histerm as president and to have been present at a number of historicalevents. However, other testimonies, as well as the fact that none ofPeron’s three marriages produced children, would tend to suggest thathe was in fact infertile.4

THE BEGINNINGS OF A POLITICAL CAREER

In 1929, Peron graduated from the Superior War School, shortly be-fore the start of the Great Depression. A year later, he would be caught



up in the military plots to overthrow the ageing Yrigoyen. Peron wasrecruited to the ranks of the officers backing Uriburu, although a fewdays before the 6 September 1930 coup he withdrew from Uriburu’scamp and joined that of Justo, whose supporters were more numerousand who favoured the formation of a joint military–civilian govern-ment. While the sudden shift from one side to another was an earlysign of one of his more consistent traits, Captain Peron played a veryminimal role in the coup, and one that he later regretted, noting thenefarious precedent it set in public life, the ending of the hopes ofgreater social progress and the strengthening of the most conservativesectors of the oligarchy.

Uriburu took rapid steps to rid himself of members of the pro-Justo faction, and Peron was sent to patrol the Argentine–Bolivianborder for two months, before assuming his new post as professor ofmilitary history at the Superior War School. After Justo was electedpresident, Peron was promoted to the rank of major, and also servedas aide-de-camp to the defence minister. However, at this stage of hiscareer Peron was still far more devoted to his military and academicpursuits than to politics, honing his talents as a writer, teacher andcommunicator.

Early in 1936, Peron was named military attache in the Argen-tine Embassy in Santiago, Chile, a delicate mission considering theless than cordial relations between the two countries, and one whichdemonstrated that he had reached certain prestige in the army. Peronand Aurelia remained in Chile until March 1938, during which timehe was promoted to lieutenant colonel, although he was also accusedof spying for Argentina and was rumoured to have been expelledby the Chilean government. In fact, Peron was later known to haveformed a group of informers for the purpose of obtaining informationon Chilean military plans, an activity which was not unusual for theholders of the post (being in fact its principal function). However, itwas his successor, Major Eduardo Lonardi, who was eventually trappedby Chilean intelligence and deported, a cause for bad feelings betweenthe two which may have influenced the fact that the same Lonardiwas to lead the coup against Peron in 1955.5

In September 1938, Peron became a widower when Aurelia died ofuterine cancer. At a loose end for several months, in February 1939he was sent to Europe to receive training at a regiment in the ItalianAlps, an assignment he would later inflate to suggest that he had been



sent to analyse the military situation in Europe at the outbreak of theSecond World War. In fact, in 1939 and 1940 he served at variousAlpine outposts, not precisely at the heart of political and militarystrategy-making, although he is also said to have visited Germany andVichy France during his stay. The use of mass organization and massspectacle in both Italy and Germany doubtless made an impressionon him as an example of how military discipline could be imposedon society for the good of society as a whole (sic), and of how therelationship between the masses and a leader could transform society.

However, this is not to suggest that Peron was a convinced fascist,as many anti-Peronists have automatically supposed. While Peron ad-mired order and vertical power structures, and although he was un-scrupulous enough (and superficial enough) to ignore many aspectsof fascism in the name of convenience, he never favoured large-scaleviolence. Indeed, he was far from alone in the destructively naivebelief that the corporate structure of the military, with vertical con-trol and the subjugation of individual will to a common goal, couldbe transferred to civil society and would indeed benefit that societyby making it more harmonious and efficient. At the same time, anysympathy for mass destruction would have been erased by his visit toSpain on his way back to Argentina in 1940, where he was appalledby the still-recent destruction caused by the Civil War and its ongoingeffects, and the memory of which he would later cite as the reason forpulling back from violence which could have produced a civil war inArgentina in the 1950s.

Peron returned to Argentina in late 1940 and was almost immedi-ately transferred to a mountain regiment in Mendoza province. A yearlater he was promoted to the rank of colonel and put in commandof a mountain regiment, also helping young officers to prepare to en-ter the Superior War School. In 1942, Peron was assigned to inspectmountain troops, and placed under the orders of General EdelmiroFarrell, a complaisant superior officer whose relationship with Peronwould help Farrell to the (de facto) presidency and Peron to the po-sition of power behind the throne a short time later. Returning toBuenos Aires in March 1942, Peron quickly became involved in thepolitical undercurrents of the army’s younger officers (many of whomhad been his pupils and with whom he had a good relationship). Hewas also involved at this time in another clandestine and dubiousrelationship: on his return from Mendoza, Peron brought with him



a teenaged mistress, known as ‘Pirana’, who was kept in the back-ground, and introduced as his daughter when it was necessary for herto appear.

The political undercurrents in the army were divided between thosefavouring the renewed candidacy of the pro-Allied Justo for the elec-tions planned for 1943, a group of Axis sympathizers who wished toavoid the assumption of a pro-Allied government and a group favour-ing continued Argentine neutrality in the Second World War. Outof the third group was born the clandestine loggia Grupo de OficialesUnidos (United Officers Group, GOU), of which Peron was a memberand probable founder.6 Despite his hitherto conventional military ca-reer, the experience in Europe would appear to have awakened Peron’staste for both politics and conspiracy. Within a short time, the GOUwould play a role in the coup d’etat of 4 June 1943, which wouldpropel Peron to the post of secretary of labour, minister of war andeventually vice-president, posts from which his ability to lead wouldbe extended far more widely. His leadership qualities were enhancedby his considerable charisma, good looks, energy and apparently per-manent good humour.

THE SEARCH FOR THE ‘REAL’ PERON

Although the facts of Peron’s biography to this point are relativelywell-known, if not always clear-cut, it may be noted that this bio-graphical sketch gives an idea of the public persona but does notconjure up a clear image of the private Peron or the personality be-hind the public image. There is a reason for this: the real personality ofthe private Peron seems elusive and largely undefinable even for thosewho knew him. Peron can be seen acting the role of teacher, study-ing military history and philosophy, acting as conspirator, disciplinedofficer, or as an audience displaying interest in what his interlocutorhad to say and, in turn, saying what that interlocutor wanted to hear,smiling president or leader of masses. However, the person behindthe public mask remains more nebulous. By all accounts somewhatcold, unspontaneous, distant and untrusting behind the mask of bon-homie assumed in public, he was also widely considered by those whoknew him to be genuinely concerned for the poor conditions of hisconscripts and, by extension, the social classes they represented.



These contradictions are not irreconcilable: the fact of being am-bitious does not automatically rule out a genuine belief that thoseambitions also involve the betterment of others, and the fact of beingreserved does not rule out an interest (possibly a somewhat academicor impersonal one) in the sufferings of others. Both insecure and au-thoritarian, Peron could arguably be defined as similar to a rich un-cle, happily distributing largesse to poor relations and enjoying theirthanks, but on his own terms; a figure who would not cohabit as hap-pily with peers as with inferiors or disciples. All his life, Peron wasunquestionably happier in relationships in which his position was su-perior to that of the other party, a not uncommon characteristic whichin his case had damaging consequences by leading him to surroundhimself with incompetents and sycophants within his government.At the same time, his more Machiavellian and megalomaniac char-acteristics co-existed with a basically simple and austere personality,and with a basically simple perception: just as in the barracks or onthe estancias, problems should be resolved by the person in charge,who should have the capacity to do so.

THE SCANDALOUS ORIGINS OF EVITA7

The case of Evita is substantially different: her public and private per-sonalities appear to have been largely the same, also including con-flicting elements but evident to any observer. While Peron was work-ing his way up through the ranks of the infantry, in what promisedto be a successful but fairly typical military career, Evita was bornin another small town in the province of Buenos Aires, smaller andmore remote than Lobos, and in even less socially acceptable circum-stances. Her mother, Juana Ibarguren, a pretty woman of Basque originand poor family, was from the small village of Los Toldos, buried inthe midst of the endless Pampas. At an early age, she went to workas a cook at the La Union estancia, near Los Toldos, and soon be-came the official mistress of the estanciero, Juan Duarte. Duarte wasfrom Chivilcoy, a larger town some 100 kilometres away, where hislegitimate family stayed when he went to take charge of the admin-istration of La Union, owned by his father-in-law. Duarte and Juanawere to have five children: Elisa, Blanca, Juan, Erminda and Marıa Eva,who were informally acknowledged by Duarte to be his progeny but



were not legally registered on their birth certificates with the surnameDuarte. The youngest, Marıa Eva, was born on 7 May 1919 on theestancia, where she lived the first few years of her life, until Duartereturned to Chivilcoy and Juana returned to Los Toldos with her fivechildren.

Juana, invariably described as a hard-working woman of very reso-lute character, found a small adobe house on the outskirts of Los Tol-dos, literally on the wrong side of the tracks from where the town assuch ended at the railway line. The house still stands (now surroundedby newer houses which have sprung up as the town grew outwards);it was bought by perennial Peronist politician Antonio Cafiero in the1980s and converted into a rather understocked museum, featuringthe sewing machine of Dona Juana. (As in the case of Peron, thehouse has been inaccurately described as the birthplace of Eva Duartede Peron, although in this case there is no doubt that she was bornelsewhere and came to Los Toldos at the age of five.) Dona Juana wasfrom all appearances an exceptional person who could well deserveher own biography, were the material available: as a young girl shehad the courage to go to a remote estancia to work, on the groundsthat the pay was better than working as a seamstress in Los Toldos.8

Thereafter, she did not shrink from returning to Los Toldos and bring-ing up her children alone, working to support them and striving togive them more options in life than she had had herself.

The 1920s was a period in which a woman in her position hadfew employment options, and her most likely role in life would havebeen to set up family with a labourer and work in the house or in thefields with him. However, Dona Juana apparently did not yearn forthis sort of life, and used her good looks to find, at least temporarily,more attractive partners. At the same time, she did not want her owndaughters limited to the choice between being a labourer’s woman, amistress or a servant, and made remarkable efforts to ensure that theirown good looks could be turned to the same advantage as their socialbetters, that is, finding a respectable husband who could give them acomfortable life. Working as a seamstress, she received the concessionto make uniforms for the local school (allegedly through a subsequentlover who worked in the municipality) and eked out a sufficient livingto feed and clothe her family.

That family, however, was even less socially acceptable in ultra-conservative Los Toldos than the Peron family might have been in



Lobos, and contemporaries were to recall years later that many fami-lies would not allow their children to play with the Duarte clan, callingthem offensive names and even throwing mud at them in the street.That ultraconservatism and snobbishness was exacerbated by the factthat Los Toldos was a very small, undistinguished and largely poorvillage lost in the Pampas, where only a very few – the railway sta-tionmaster, the teacher, the bakery owner, a few landowners and oneor two public employees in the post office and municipality – mighthave had some claim to being socially a cut above the rest. Los Toldos(‘the tents’) was also, as its name implies, originally an Indian camp.The fact that it still had a considerable Indian population (consideredthe lowest of the low in proudly white, immigrant Argentina), andthat its inhabitants could be looked down on as poor, ignorant andprobably Indian as well, made those inhabitants all the more anx-ious to demonstrate their own respectability and to find means todistinguish themselves from those who could be considered inferior.Into that category fell unmarried mothers and illegitimate children.Moreover, Dona Juana was far less circumspect than the norm: herchildren used the surname Duarte (although they were registered ontheir birth certificates and in school records as Ibarguren), and sheherself behaved as a hard-working, attractive and respectable matron(albeit with occasional other ‘protectors’) rather than the abject figuresociety might have accepted.

One of the more notable facts about Dona Juana is the fact thatshe raised her children through her own efforts and without acceptingcharity. Charity was certainly available at the time to people in herposition, through the Church and respectable ladies associated withit, but only available at a high price: that of accepting humiliation.In addition to accepting the position of miserable and undeservingsinner, the price of a plate of food also included the humiliation ofhaving the children inspected for dirty fingernails and lice. This wasnot an altogether wrong-headed or ill-intended act by ladies anxiousto impose their superior notions of hygiene on individuals whose ownsanitary concepts were often rudimentary, but the practice impliedthe humiliating assumption that mothers did not know how to raisetheir children, and that poor children could thus be assumed to befilthy. Dona Juana disdained the aid, rejected the inspection and senther children to school scrubbed and immaculate in spotless whiteuniform.



An indication of how little Dona Juana was prepared to accept so-cial limits in this respect came in 1926, when Juan Duarte died inChivilcoy. Dona Juana took her children to Chivilcoy for the funeral,insisting that they be allowed to say goodbye to their father. Such im-propriety was considered completely shocking: Duarte’s legal familyhad probably known (or at least imagined) that he had had anotherwoman during the years they were apart, and probably accepted thisas a normal fact of life – always provided that they were not con-fronted face to face with the fact, or with the other woman and herchildren. Their entry to the funeral was adamantly refused, and theywere packed off with an earful of abuse. While accounts of the fu-neral differ, the total rejection they experienced at the hands of therepresentatives of petit bourgeois society remained with them all. (Ac-cording to Raul Suarez, a nephew of Juana Ibarguren who lived withthem in Los Toldos as a child, Duarte’s wife had been unaware of therelationship until 1925 and, upon discovering the existence of Juanaand five children, lost no time in travelling to the estancia with twopolice officers in tow, and in evicting her husband, his mistress andtheir offspring from the premises. Suarez also claims that the widowrefused to allow either Juana or any of the children to see Duarte’sbody when he died.)9

Suarez remembered Dona Juana and her daughters as being of verystrong character, somewhat big-headed and with pretensions abovetheir station, primarily due to the fact that all were fair-skinned andpretty. Suarez’ reminiscences regarding his cousins go beyond evenPeronist mythology in trying to make their history more respectablebut give some insight into the mentality of Los Toldos, as even thisrelative of equally humble social origins felt the need to make thefamily appear less marginal than they really were. Los Toldos, whichhas expanded to a neat and attractive town of around 10,000 residentsand shows the economic benefits of the rise in soya cultivation in thearea in recent years, continues to show a strong conservative andbasically anti-Peronist streak. Despite a small bust in the main square,it shows little but distaste for the memory of its most famous daughter.

In 1931, when Evita was 11 and her oldest sister Elisa was estab-lished as a post office employee, Dona Juana arranged a transfer forElisa (supposedly through another ‘protector’) and moved her fam-ily to Junın, a fairly large town some 50 kilometres from Los Toldos,and set about establishing them in a better social station. In Junın,



Dona Juana switched from sewing to cooking, offering meals to re-spectable single men at a time when restaurants in the interior ofArgentina were largely unheard of. Given the number of single menworking in Junın who needed meals and were unable to pay a servant,and given both Juana’s experience as a cook and the presence of fourpretty daughters, it can be assumed that this was a fairly good busi-ness. At the same time, while her daughters still faced the stigma oftheir illegitimacy, she was extremely strict regarding their comport-ment. In addition, while neither Los Toldos nor Junın offered manyprospects for a woman alone, Junın at least offered a wider range ofgood marriage prospects, having both a military barracks and a sub-stantial administrative and professional sector, including the railwayemployees.

The policy of Dona Juana was highly successful with both Elisa andBlanca (by this time a schoolteacher), who eventually married an armymajor and a lawyer based in Junın. The mere fact that both Elisa andBlanca were employed could be considered remarkable at the time,and present-day residents of Junın describe the family as exceptionallyprogressive in this respect. That progressive tendency may have beendue to necessity rather than design, but it is no less remarkable thattwo daughters of a family of such humble origin should have foundemployment and that that employment should have been not that ofservants or laundry women, but more socially respectable posts. Thefact that Blanca should have completed secondary school to becomea teacher, when even most middle-class women did not do so, is animpressive feat that should not be taken lightly.

Evita, the youngest, however, was less receptive to her mother’splans for bourgeois respectability: from an early age, Evita, an avidmoviegoer, dreamed of being an actress like her idol Norma Shearer,and was determined to go to Buenos Aires to launch herself in thatless than socially respected profession. However, her later dedicationto hard work, absolute determination and her firm belief in the possi-bilities of progress for the poor (who, to her frustration, often failed toshare her vision of the progress they should desire) imply that DonaJuana’s teachings nonetheless made a lasting mark on her youngestdaughter.

Evita finished primary school at 14, where contemporaries recalledher as both sweet and shy, on the one hand, and – when convinced



of something she wanted to achieve – persistent, persuasive and dom-ineering (the latter characteristic frequently weighing in to win herpoint where persuasion failed). She was also recalled as a no morethan average student, but with a passion for reciting and participat-ing in school plays. When not declaiming before an audience, shewas introverted, limited in her social circle by the continuing stigmasurrounding her illegitimate birth, and very close to her mother andsisters, with a special soft spot for brother Juan, the only man of thehouse.10

THE HARD ROAD TO THE TOP

At 15 Evita left Junın for Buenos Aires, early in 1935. The circum-stances of her leaving are the subject of various versions, the mostcommon of which is that she was taken to Buenos Aires by AgustınMagaldi, a well-known tango singer who, depending on the version,either took a kindly interest in the young aspiring artist or was se-duced by her and pushed into taking her with him to Buenos Aires.Other versions indicate that she went alone, or accompanied by hermother, or that her brother Juan, by this time working as a salesman,accompanied her to Buenos Aires. In any case, unlike the vast majorityof young girls who dream of becoming actresses, she went.

With the exception of the fact that Evita went to Buenos Aires tobecome an actress, and did so, this story was and is not uncommonfor people of poor family: the need to leave home at an early age inorder to look for work, and often never to return, remains a commontheme. One of the more popular television programmes in Argentinain the 1990s, Gente que busca gente (people seeking people), undertookinvestigations to try to locate long-lost relatives separated by hardcircumstances: middle-aged women who were forced to leave hometo seek work as servants as young teenagers and who lost all contactwith their families; former maids seeking the now adult children theyhad been forced to give up as babies, when they became pregnantby their employer; the children of unwed parents who had never seentheir father; or the mother who gave them up for adoption because shewas unable to keep them alone. Poverty and deprivation usually play arole in these stories, and the extent to which these experiences are still



common makes it easy to understand why Evita had a special rapportwith the poor, and why her story struck a chord with so many, whohad suffered the same privations and vicariously enjoyed the triumphwhich she, and so few others, finally achieved.

The role of Magaldi has always been disputed by many, who ar-gue that there is no record that he played in Junın in 1934. Magaldidied, a young man, in 1938, before Evita became even moderatelywell-known and thus was unable to confirm or deny the story. Thisfactor makes him a convenient protagonist: Magaldi, arguably sec-ond only to Carlos Gardel in popularity, was famous enough to makean impact in the story, while the concept of being picked up by atango singer sounded sufficiently romantic for the soap opera publicand sufficiently sordid for the anti-Peronist legend. Reasonably reli-able contemporary witnesses assert that Magaldi and Evita knew eachother in Buenos Aires, implying that contact was established eitherbefore or after she left Junın.

Magaldi, who had separated from his wife in the early 1930s, wasabove all known for his social sensibilities, generous nature and social-ist leanings: his tangos speak frequently of exploitation and misery,the plight of the poor and forgotten prisoners, rather than romanticmisadventures, and have a distinct ring of pre-Peronist propaganda. Ifindeed he did meet Evita in Junın in 1935, they might well have beengenuinely attracted to one another, and Magaldi might well have beenwilling to help Evita to reach Buenos Aires, with or without a romanticattachment. In general terms, it was common practice at the time forvisitors from Buenos Aires to take back young girls from the interior,to work as servants, to study, or for less above-board purposes, andthe fact that he might have taken Evita to Buenos Aires would in itselfhave been nothing unusual.

If the version that Magaldi arranged an interview at a radio stationis to be believed, it can only be assumed that his influence (which, likehis career, was in fact limited by his political affinities) was insufficientto ensure that Evita got regular employment: the first several years shespent in Buenos Aires were lean ones, with walk-on stage or film partsand long periods of unemployment. However, even soon after arrivingin Buenos Aires she did receive presentations which opened the doorsto radio and stage auditions and a series of bit parts, which indicatesthat she was acquainted with someone in a position to open thosedoors. This period gave rise to the later version that she had been a



prostitute, or at least something of a professional mistress, using themen who used her to further her career. Unfortunately, Evita was notthe only young actress to learn that the casting couch was ubiquitousin Buenos Aires, or that her thespian talents were insufficient to ensureengagements without accepting that condition of employment – onewhich was also often forced on other working women, and one fromwhich she would not have been exempt had she chosen an alternativeemployment.

This background, hardly the norm for first ladies of the land, wasused to her detriment by critics who denigrated her for succumbingbut did not question the system which imposed sexual oppression asa norm. While treated with total disregard by many in the system,during the difficult years of her early career she was also befriended byothers, who recalled her as a sensitive and often sweet young womanand who made efforts to offer an occasional role or at least a mealwhen times were hard. Evita was later famous for having a long anddetailed memory, for both friends and enemies, seeing both in blackand white terms which were unable to admit defects in the former orvirtues in the latter.

This attitude was also expanded to include whole groups of soci-ety: according to her way of thinking, the wealthy, the middle classand those with power over her had treated her with scorn and ex-ploited her, and therefore would receive the same treatment. The poorand humble, who had not spurned her for her illegitimacy and hadshown solidarity in times of need, were good and deserved her abso-lute commitment to ensuring that they received due retribution. Atthe same time, that identification gave her a clear idea, which she per-haps could not have explained but intuited perfectly, of what thosepeople wanted and what they needed, or felt they needed, as opposedto what middle-class politicians thought they wanted or needed. Spon-taneous and lacking in intellectual rigour, Evita did not philosophizeabout what was needed to bring about social justice, or contemplatethe long-term cultural changes which would need to be patiently in-culcated to do it: she saw injustice and went after it, to resolve imme-diate problems as immediately as possible, and to punish those sheheld responsible for that injustice. This attitude may not be optimalfor a national leader, but it is understandable as the same unsophis-ticated reaction experienced by the common person in the face ofcruelty: the difference is that the power which Evita would eventually



have made the consequences of that reaction quite different fromthose of the ordinary person. A victim of many injustices, Evita couldnot bear to see injustice, and the methods she found to address itcould be equally unjust, as well as being personal reactions to per-sonal situations which did not change the fundamental sources of thatinjustice.

During the early years of Evita’s less than flourishing acting career,she was said to have had an affair with Pedro Quartucci, a well-knownactor. In the late 1990s Quartucci’s daughter claimed to be the daugh-ter of Evita, citing as evidence that blood tests showed she was not thedaughter of Quartucci’s wife.11 This version was publicly supported byQuartucci’s widow, who signed an affidavit in 1997 to the effect thatNilda Quartucci was in fact the daughter of the actor and Marıa EvaDuarte. According to Nilda Quartucci’s version, she had been born in1940 in a clandestine clinic, and had been taken away by Quartuccito be raised in his legitimate family; on Quartucci’s orders, Evita hadbeen told that the baby had died (a not uncommon practice in casesof the kind).

This version remains unresolved – DNA tests on Evita’s survivingsisters were negative and the Supreme Court rejected a petition toperform a DNA test on Evita’s body – and does not at first sight ap-pear probable. The authorities of the ‘Liberating Revolution’ whichoverthrew Peron in 1955 obsessively rooted out any fact, rumour orfalsehood which could have served to blacken the reputation of Peronor Evita, and the possibility that they could have overlooked thisbombshell seems remote. In particular, in 1955 many people whohad known Evita in her early years in Buenos Aires were still alive,frequently anti-Peronist, and would surely have been aware of con-temporary rumours. Nilda Quartucci claimed that Evita subsequentlylearned that her daughter had lived and was in fact the daughter ofthe Quartucci family, but by that time was first lady of Argentina andcould say nothing about the issue. (One of the so-called ‘proofs’ citedof Evita’s motherhood is a letter sent to her sisters by her confessor,Father Hernan Benıtez, 33 years after her death, in which he refers toEvita’s ‘secret suffering’, which was the true key to her greatness andwhich none but he and her sisters knew. According to the letter, thatsuffering, worse than the cancer that killed her, followed her to hergrave and she frequently told him that she could not bear it and wasdisposed to take ‘extreme measures’.12)



From 1939, Evita began to enter what would be her metier as anactress: radio soap opera. Her brother Juan, working for the Radi-cal Soap company, apparently got her into Radio Belgrano and intoprogrammes sponsored by his employers. Beginning with secondaryroles, she worked steadily in larger roles than she had received onstage or in the cinema, and by late 1943 she was signed to star ina series of biographical programmes about important women in his-tory, playing Queen Elizabeth I, Sarah Bernhardt, the last Tsarina andothers. Also, at around this time, she was presented to Colonel Ani-bal Imbert, the officer in charge of post and telegraph in the militarygovernment which had come to power in June that year (a positionwhich included control over radio broadcasting). The introductionwas apparently made by her friend Oscar Nicolini, Imbert’s secretaryand a supposed sometime lover of Dona Juana. The subsequent re-lationship unquestionably favoured her rising radio career, and mayhave furthered her entrance into Argentine history, as Imbert is widelysupposed to have introduced her to Peron.

THE MEETING OF PERON AND EVITA

Given the fact that Peron and Evita were both public figures who flour-ished well within living memory, it should not in theory be difficultto pinpoint when, where and under what circumstances they met.However, as in most other aspects of their lives, there are a numberof versions of their meeting and none is definitive. What is relativelycertain is that they met in the context of the 15 January 1944 earth-quake which devastated the western town of San Juan. Peron, in hiscapacity as secretary of labour, took charge of organizing relief effortsfor the survivors: in his unreliable memoirs, he later recalled that hemet Evita when she came to his office to offer her assistance in fund-raising for the San Juan victims; other versions indicated that theymet when she and a group of other actresses accompanied Peron in astreet collection for that purpose.13 (The version of cousin Raul Suarez,again rather more puritanical than others, is that Evita went to SanJuan, duly chaperoned by her sisters, to perform ‘artistic numbers’ tobenefit the victims, and while in that city met Peron, also touring thesite.14) The most common version is that they met at a fund-raisingconcert held at Luna Park stadium in Buenos Aires one week after the



earthquake, and that Imbert probably introduced them. In any case,a short time later the two had moved into adjoining flats in Posadasstreet, in Buenos Aires’ upmarket Barrio Norte area, and Peron haddespatched his youthful mistress back to Mendoza (allegedly due toEvita’s vigorous action in turfing her out of his flat).

There is no question that Evita’s character was not the decorousand inconspicuous one demanded by society for a woman (including,in particular, the mistress of a prominent man, whose role should havebeen as self-effacing and invisible as possible). Whereas Peron was in-nately cautious, sometimes to the point of inaction, Evita invariablydemonstrated determination, strength of character, impatience andimpetuosity. At the same time, she was never shy about expressingher opinions forcefully, including on issues on which it was not con-sidered acceptable for her to have an opinion, often in a rich andexpressive vocabulary of a type which women of whatever social classwere not expected to use. Evita was, like Peron, more comfortable inmost cases in relationships in which her role was superior and whereshe could display kindness: with those who admired her, who came toask her for favours, who needed her intervention, she was famous forshowing patience, generosity, tact, respect and interest in seeking a so-lution for their problems. With those whom she suspected (doubtlesswith reason) of despising her, she could be brutally rude and abusive,as well as vengeful, counting on the fact that they had no choice butto accept that abuse, just as she had once had no alternative.

Whereas Peron had previously been discreet with respect to hisprivate life, he became totally indiscreet in his relationship with Evita,living with her openly and allowing her free rein to intervene in hispolitical affairs. At the same time, he turned his tutorial instincts toher, forming her in his own political thinking (and, consciously ornot, having his own thinking partially reformed by his passionate andintuitive partner). Peron found a willing pupil in Evita, who absorbedhis teaching, read the authors he recommended and, undoubtedly,rejoiced in being considered a person worthy of being a disciple andconfidante.

While at this stage Peron certainly saw her as a protegee and anappreciative audience, rather than a future political tool, Evita’s excel-lence as a pupil, combined with her own exceptional political instinctsand charisma, would later make her an invaluable partner, both as a



tireless propaganda machine for her husband and as a vital link be-tween the people and Peron, somewhat distant from personal contactwith everyday problems due to both his office and his nature. Peronhimself was to say years later, in one of his more truthful and perspi-cacious comments on his own career: ‘One person had to take careof the big things: the General. Another had to take care of the smallthings: Eva. I took care of the Nation. Eva, of the personal problems ofits inhabitants. With her, with Eva, there was direct contact with thepeople. For that reason, maybe, some remember her more.’15 Evita’simpetuous nature also had its influence on Peron, who had shown alifelong characteristic of planning each step in his career with militaryprecision, seeing each goal as an objective to be taken, and who fromthis time developed a strong talent for improvisation. Although thisrelationship might be seen as strikingly progressive for its time, it alsobetrays the underlying machista current that remains something of aPeronist paradox: while Peronism has generated the most powerfulfemale figures in Argentine politics (including two presidents), all ofthem have owed their position, to a greater or lesser extent, to theconvenience of their husbands.

While in 1944 and 1945 Evita concentrated primarily on her radioand film career, she also took on a new radio programme, Toward aBetter Future, which offered propaganda for the military ‘revolution’ of1943 and the policies of the military government. Her military linkswere also said to have won her film roles, given military control notonly over content but over film supplies – indeed, her histrionic abil-ity appears to have been limited in this metier, although it is worthnoting that, despite the interference of the de facto government,Argentina continued to enjoy, from the 1920s, a thriving and highlysophisticated film industry. She also took an increasingly high-handedattitude with colleagues, reputedly leading to an acrid dispute with theleading lady in one of her films, La cabalgata del circo. Libertad Lamar-que, a famous and patrician actress, apparently came to words andpossibly blows with the rapidly rising second lead on the set of thefilm, as a result of which Lamarque was obliged to transfer her careerand her address to Mexico when Evita became first lady. However,Evita did not play an active role in politics at this stage and Peron’smachinations in power in this period cannot be attributed to her. Nev-ertheless, her visibility was irritating to the army, as was her disregard



for their codes of conduct and her habit of offering gratuitous opinionson political appointments and other matters far outside the normalremit of the mistress of a military officer. That irritation would formpart of the impetus for the backfired efforts to remove Peron frompower, which would culminate in the demonstrations of 17 October1945 and his long-term installation at the centre of political life.

P1: PHB Trim: 155mm × 228mm Top: .5in Gutter: .75inIBBK044-IND IBBK044/Argentina ISBN: 978 1 84885 654 7 April 29, 2011 20:5

INDEX

Accion Catolica, 95, 129, 160, 161,163

Acdel Vilas, Edgardo, 212–13, 232Agosti, Orlando, 214Agriculture, 15–16, 21–22, 26,

27–28, 124, 224, 228–9, 241; andKirchner, 288

Alberdi, Juan B., 9, 12, 229Alem, Leandro, 32–33Alfonsın, Raul, 218–19, 243, 245–50,

253–4, 259, 261, 274; and humanrights, 246; death of, 289

Alianza Libertadora Nacional (ALN),85–6, 165

Allende, Salvador, 204Alonso, Jose, 182, 184, 192Alvarez, Carlos ‘Chacho’, 263, 270,

272Alvear, Marcelo T., 40–2, 47, 51, 225Angeloz, Eduardo, 251, 252, 253Antonio, Jorge, 179, 183Ara, Pedro, 149, 150, 171Aramburu, Pedro, 167, 170, 177,

182, 187, 188, 211, 213Argentine Confederation, 7, 8, 14–15Arias, Ricardo, 173Avalos, Eduardo, 81, 99, 102Austral Plan, 245Avellaneda, Nicolas, 21–3, 229

Balbın, Ricardo, 121, 146, 147, 178,195, 201, 205, 218, 270

Baring Brothers, 6, 31Batista, Fulgencio, 176Belgrano, Manuel, 5, 229Benıtez, Hernan, 139, 149‘Blue Book’, 114Bordabehere, Enzo, 50Bordon, Jose O., 227, 263Borges, Jorge Luis, 112

Borlenghi, Angel, 121, 161, 164, 165Braden, Spruille, 113–4, 133Bramuglia, Juan Atilio, 121Buenos Aires, city of, 2, 3–6, 8–10,

14, 28–30, 36, 44, 53–4, 286Buenos Aires, province of, 10, 16, 23,

47, 54, 181, 206, 252, 264, 267–8Bussi, Antonio Domingo, 232–3

Castro, Fidel, 176Cafiero, Antonio, 69, 163, 250Caggiano, Cardinal Antonio, 138,

155Campora, Hector, 152, 179, 194,

195–6, 198–202, 215Cantoni, Aldo and Federico, 36, 40,

44Castillo, Ramon, 51–2, 81, 235Carrio, Elisa, 281, 286, 289Caseros, Battle of, 15Catamarca, province of, 220, 221,

233–9, 249, 251Catholic Church, 1, 8, 13, 55, 239,

262; and Juarez Celman, 31; and1943 coup, 83–5; and 1946election, 112–13; and Peron, 95–7,128–9, 130–1, 154–67; andChristian Democrat Party, 157–9;and Peronist opposition, 189–92

Cavallo, Domingo, 217, 254, 258,273, 274, 275, 276

Central de los Trabajadores Argentinos(CTA), 267

Cepeda, Battle of, 15Chubut, province of, 15, 62Cobos, Julio, 288CONADEP (National Commission

on the Disappearance of Persons),212, 216, 246, 247

Concordancia, 47, 50–2, 60



Confederacion General del Trabajo(CGT), 58–9, 93, 101, 103, 106,115, 119, 160, 164, 177, 182, 186,187, 199, 204, 230, 267, 285

Conquest of the Desert, 22–3, 229,240

Constitution of 1853, 11–14; of1949, 128–9, 133–5; of 1994,261–2

Convertibility Plan, 254, 263, 270,278, 291

Cooke, John William, 179Cordoba, province of, 2, 15, 23, 36,

167, 187–8, 206, 286Cordobazo, 187–8Coup d’etat of 1930, 45, 46; of 1943,

59–60, 81; of 1955, 163–4, 167–9;of 1962, 181; of 1966, 194; of1976, 214–5

Debt, 6, 20, 31, 217, 273, 275, 283,287, 290; 2001 default, 277–8

De la Rua, Fernando, 270, 280;presidency, 272–6; resignation,276

Del Carril, Hugo, 112De la Sota, Jose, 271, 273, 277, 281De la Torre, Lisandro, 32, 50Derqui, Santiago, 14Dodero, Alberto, 126–7Dorrego, Manuel, 7Duarte, Juan, 73, 77, 136, 151–2Duarte de Peron, Eva, see Peron, EvaDuhalde, Eduardo, 252, 261–2, 264,

266, 267–8, 269–70, 271, 274;presidency, 277–81

Eichmann, Adolf, 137, 138Ejercito Revolucionario del Pueblo

(ERP), 188, 194, 199, 206, 211,212, 216, 231

Entre Rıos, province of, 6, 14, 15, 36Espejo, Jose, 115, 120, 144, 152, 179Eva Peron Foundation, 139–42, 152Evita, see Peron, EvaEzeiza massacre, 200–1

Falklands/Malvinas conflict, 218Farrell, Edelmiro, 82, 96, 102–3

Federalism, 11–12, 221–2; andfederal intervention, 11, 13, 233,237, 238–9

Fernandez de Kirchner, Cristina,281, 282, 283, 286–91

Figuerola, Jose, 121, 134Firmenich, Mario, 187, 204, 211Foreign trade, 4, 20, 21–2, 25–6, 37,

40–1, 47–8, 51Fuerza de Orientacion Radical de la

Juventud Argentina (FORJA), 48, 85Framini, Andres, 181, 183Franceschi, Gustavo, 84, 128Franco, Francisco, 84, 136, 176Frepaso, 262, 268, 273Frondizi, Arturo, 147, 178, 179,

180–1, 193, 211, 237

Galtieri, Leopoldo, 218Garay, Juan de, 2Gardel, Carlos, 44Gauchos, gauchesque literature,

19–20Gay, Luis, 105, 111, 115, 118–20General Confederation of Labour, see

Confederacion General del TrabajoGrupo de Oficiales Unidos (GOU), 67,

81–3Guevara, Ernesto ‘Che’, 176, 180,

186–7Guido, Jose Marıa, 181–2

Haya de la Torre, Vıctor Raul,86–7

Human rights, 211–13, 215–17, 232,246–8, 259

Ibarguren, Juana, 68–72Imbert, Anibal, 77, 78Illia, Arturo, 182–4Immigration, 15–16, 19–20, 28–31,

54, 224, 229, 234, 241Industry, 25–6, 28, 37, 40–1, 52–3;

automotive, 41; importsubstitution, 52–3, 59, 124;mining, 233; oil, 41, 43, 223,241–2

Inflation, 149, 245–6, 256, 285,291–2


INDEX 315

Instituto Argentino para la Promociondel Intercambio (IAPI), 122

Internal migration, 53–5, 56–7International Monetary Fund (IMF),

266, 269, 273, 275, 279–80, 283,290

Irigoyen, Bernardo de, 32Isabelita, see Martınez de Peron,

Marıa Estela

Jauretche, Arturo, 48, 85Juarez Celman, Miguel, 23, 30–2Justicialismo (Partido Justicialista),

129–30Justo, Agustın P., 47–50, 51Justo, Juan B., 32, 47

Kelly, Guillermo Patricio, 85Kirchner, Nestor, 238, 281, 282, 287,

289, 290; presidency, 282–86Krieger Vasena, Adalberto, 186,

188

Lamarque, Libertad, 79–80Lanusse, Alejandro, 188, 192–3, 194,

196La Rioja, province of, 8, 9, 16, 249,

251Lastiri, Raul, 199Lavagna, Roberto, 280, 281, 283,

286Lavalle, Juan, 7Law of Empheteusis, 6–7Lencinas, Carlos Washington and

Jose Nestor, 36, 40, 43, 225–6Levingston, Roberto, 188Liberating Revolution, 170–1Liga Patriotica, 38–9Liniers, Santiago, 4Lonardi, Eduardo, 65, 167, 168, 170,

187, 189, 237Lopez, Estanislao, 8Lopez, Francisco Solano, 16Lopez Jordan, Ricardo, 16Lopez Murphy, Ricardo, 272, 273,

281Lopez Rega, Jose, 184–5, 193, 195,

198–9, 203, 204, 205, 207, 210–11,212, 213

‘Loyalty Day’, see October 17, 1945

Luder, Italo, 213, 219, 245, 250,252

Machinea, Jose Luis, 272Magaldi, Agustın, 73, 74Maradona, Diego Armando, 245Marco del Pont, Mercedes, 290Martınez de Hoz, Jose, 217Martınez de Peron, Marıa Estela

(Isabelita), 173–6, 183–4, 193, 195,201, 202–5, 232; presidency,210–14; coup against, 214–5

Massera, Emilio, 213, 214, 216, 217Mendoza, province of, 2, 27, 36, 40,

43–4, 167, 184, 220, 221, 222–7Menem, Carlos Saul, 33, 227, 238,

248, 250–68, 270, 271, 281–2;presidency, 253–68; andcorruption, 257–9, 274;privatizations, 254–6; andre-election, 265–8

Menendez, Benjamın, 145, 187Mercante, Domingo, 81, 90, 94, 115,

129, 134, 261–2Miranda, Miguel, 121–2, 124Mitre, Bartolome, 9, 15–19, 21, 32Montoneros, 188, 191, 192, 194,

199, 205, 207, 211, 213, 216, 248,259

Monzalvo, Luis, 94, 105Moreau de Justo, Alicia, 298Moreno, Mariano, 5Mosconi, Enrique, 41Movimiento Popular Neuquino (MPN),

221, 240, 242–4Movimiento Todos por la Patria (MTP),

248Mussolini, Benito, 84, 88

National Reorganization Process(PRN), 215–6

Neuquen, province of, 220, 221,239–44

Nicolini, Oscar, 77, 99, 135

October 17, 1945, 101–11, 230;Loyalty Day, 123

Onganıa, Juan Carlos, 181, 231; and1966 coup, 184, 189; presidency,185–88, 190; overthrow, 188



Ongaro, Raimundo, 186Ortega, Ramon ‘Palito’, 233, 264,

267, 269Ortiz, Roberto, 50–1

Palacios, Alfredo, 149Partido Autonomista Nacional (PAN),

17, 21, 23, 24, 32, 33Partido Laborista, 111, 114, 118–9,

242Patron Costas, Robustiano, 52, 82,

235Pavon, Battle of, 15Pellegrini, Carlos, 32, 34Penaloza, Vicente ‘Chacho’, 16Perez Jimenez, Marcos, 175, 176Peron, Eva Duarte de (Evita), 114,

117, 135–43; early life, 68–73;acting career, 73–7, 78–9;relationship with Peron, 77–80,97; and military, 96–7, 143; andOctober 17, 105–6; marriage toPeron, 111; and Church, 130–1,136–7, 155; ’Rainbow Tour’, 126,136–7; illness and death, 143–7,148–51; vice-presidential bid,143–5; and CGT, 14’, 126, 136–7;illness and death, 143–7, 148–51;vice-presidential bid, 143–5; andCGT, 145; body of, 171–2, 193,211, 213

Peron, Juan Domingo, 46, 186,192–6, 226, 230, 236, 242, 243;role in 1930 coup, 13, 67–8, 98–9;early life, 61–3; military career,63–7; first marriage, 63–4, 65; andfascism, 66; and GOU, 67, 81; andEvita, 77–80; and Nazis, 87–9,137–8, 265; and trade unions, 52,58–60, 89–94, 109–10; andChurch, 95–7, 112–13, 130–1,154–67; 1945 arrest, 99–101; andOctober 17, 101–4; and army, 107,109–10, 111, 166; marriage toEvita, 111; 1946 election, 114–15;first Five-Year Plan, 121–5; andnationalizatons, 126–8; and 1951elections, 143–7; second Five-YearPlan, 154, 155; and UES, 158; and

June 1955 coup attempt, 163–4;overthrow, 167–9; exile, 168, 173,175–6; ‘Operation Return’, 182–3;1973 re-election, 201–9; death,208–9

Peronism, ideology, 85–7; andNazism, 88; opposition to, 97,98–101, 110, 113–15, 117, 118–21;Peronist Doctine, 129–32; ‘ThirdPosition’, 132–3, 260; ‘OrganizedCommunity’, 131–2; proscriptionof, 176–84

Peter, Jose, 90, 92Pinedo, Federico, 49, 51Piqueteros, 266, 276, 285Pius XII, 137Privatization, 254–6

Quijano, Hortensio, 111, 145, 148Quiroga, Facundo, 8, 9, 250

Railways, 18, 26, 27, 125, 126, 228,230, 233

Ramırez, Pedro, 82Rawson, Arturo, 82Rebel Patagonia (Patagonia Rebelde),

38–9Redrado, Martin, 290Remes Lenicov, Jorge, 278, 280Reutemann, Carlos, 264, 267, 271,

273, 277, 281Revenue-sharing, 49–50, 249–50Reyes, Cipriano, 93, 99, 100, 105,

111, 115, 118–19, 298Rico, Aldo, 246–8Rivadavia, Bernardino, 5–7, 9Roca, Julio A., 13, 32, 33, 229, 240;

and Conquest of the Desert, 22–3;presidency, 24–30

Roca-Runciman Treaty, 47–8Rodrigo, Celestino, 213Rodrıguez Saa, Adolfo, 267, 277,

281Rojas, Isaac, 168, 176Rosas, Juan Manuel de, 7–10, 49, 260Rucci, Jose, 194, 205, 207Ruckauf, Carlos, 271, 273, 277

Saadi, Ramon, 235, 237, 301


INDEX 317

Saadi, Vicente, 218, 234, 236–8, 249Saavedra Lamas, Carlos, 50Sabato, Ernesto, 110, 169Saenz Pena, Luis, 33Saenz Pena, Roque, 35, 36Saenz Pena law, 35Salta, province of, 17San Juan, province of, 17–18, 36, 40,

44, 77, 167San Martın, Jose de, 5–6, 222Santa Cruz, province of, 39, 62, 282Santiago del Estero, province of, 2,

36, 236Sarmiento, Domingo F., 9, 12, 17–21Sapag family, 221, 239–40, 241,

242–4Scalabrini Ortiz, Raul, 48, 85Scioli, Daniel, 281, 283, 289Seineldın, Mohamed Alı, 247–8Sociedad Rural (Rural Society), 22, 98,

113Solano Lima, Vicente, 182, 195,

202Solis, Juan de, 2Standard Oil, 41, 43, 153Stroessner, Alfredo, 173

Tacuara, 187Tamborini, Jose, 111, 114Tejedor, Carlos, 21, 23Tizon, Aurelia, 63–5, 296Trade Unions (see also CGT), 38, 39,

41, 54–9, 90–4, 184, 186, 187, 267Tragic Week (Semana Tragica), 38–9Triple A (Argentine Anti-Communist

Alliance), 198, 201, 211Trujillo, Rafael, 176

Tucuman, province of, 2, 5, 13, 27,186, 211–13, 220, 221, 227–31,236, 264

Union Cıvica Radical (UCR), 32–4, 36,47, 134, 178, 226, 269;antipersonalistas, 40, 42, 47; UCRI,178, 181, 182; UCRP, 178, 181,182

Union Democratica, 111–13Union Industrial Argentina (UIA), 54,

99Union de Estudiantes Secundarios

(UES), 158, 160United Provinces, 6–7, 10Uriburu, Jose Felix, 46–7Urquiza, Justo Jose de, 10, 11, 14,

15

Valle, Juan Jose, 172–3, 188Vandor, Augusto Timoteo, 179, 191,

182, 183, 184, 186, 188, 206, 207Vargas, Getulio, 86, 153Videla, Jorge R., 214Vuletich, Eduardo, 161

War of the Triple Alliance, 16–17,22–3

Yabran, Alfredo, 258–9Yacimientos Petrolıferos Fiscales (YPF),

41, 43, 153, 223, 241–2, 254, 266Yrigoyen, Hipolito, 13, 21, 33–4;

presidency, 36–40; secondpresidency, 42–6; and Lencinas,36, 40, 43, 225; coup against,45–6; death, 45

argentina: a modern history

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