Argentina at the Crossroads

Argentina at the CrossroadsPolitics in Argentina 1890-1930: The Rise and Fall of Radicalism by David Rock; Prologue toPeron: Argentina in Depression and War, 1930-1943 by Mark Falcoff; Ronald H. Dolkart;Argentina, 1943-1976: The National Revolution and Resistance by Donald C. Hodges; Leader andVanguard in Mass Society: A Study of Peronist Argentina by Jeane Kirkpatrick; Argentina inthe Twentieth Century by David RockReview by: Alberto CiriaJournal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, Vol. 20, No. 2 (May, 1978), pp. 211-220Published by: Center for Latin American Studies at the University of MiamiStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/165436 .

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REVIEW ESSAY

ARGENTINA AT THE CROSSROADS

Rock, David. POLITICS IN ARGENTINA 1890-1930: THE RISE AND FALL OF RADICALISM. London: Cambridge University Press, 1975.

Falcoff, Mark and Ronald H. Dolkart, eds. PROLOGUE TO PERON: ARGENTINA IN DEPRESSION AND WAR, 1930-1943. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975.

Hodges, Donald C. ARGENTINA, 1943-1976: THE NATIONAL REVOLUTION AND RESISTANCE. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1976.

Kirkpatrick, Jeane. LEADER AND VANGUARD IN MASS SOCIETY: A STUDY OF PERONIST ARGENTINA. Cambridge, MA, and London: M.I.T. Press, 1971.

Rock, David, ed. ARGENTINA IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1975.

Argentina has been, for many decades, the "odd man out" of Latin American politics. A marginal area of the Spanish colonial empire, at least up to the eighteenth century, it progressed in the nineteenth

century from a backwoods region to central importance in South America. This, of course, was due mainly to its early specialization in meat and cereals production, which consolidated the country's Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, Vol. 20 No. 2, May 1978 ? 1978 Sage.Publications, Inc.

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[212] JOURNAL OF INTERAMERICAN STUDIES AND WORLD AFFAIRS

comparative advantages in the "international division of labor" then labor" then present on a world scale. By 1900 massive injections of present on a world scale. By 1900 massive injections of capital and manpower (mostly from Italy and Spain) had already patterned Argentina's outward-oriented development of its economy vis-a-vis the leading power of the day, Great Britain. Furthermore, the early development of an indigenous landowning-commercial elite with managed to survive internecine struggles by local or national caudillos (Juan Manuel de Rosas) and ended up by strengthening the economic, political, and social hegemony of a city over a nation.

In close association with British interests-the railroads that linked the interior's producing areas to the capital being one of the well- known major examples-the "landed oligarchy" was able to crush the last vestiges of provincial autonomies, and in the process it acquired an almost absolute control over the state through its spokesmen and politicians. At the same time, however, discontent was also spreading among displaced members of the elite, together with the beginnings of labor and social agitation in Buenos Aires, which was already at play by the 1900s. Most of this turbulence in an apparently stable milieu was soon going to channel itself into the political arena via frustrated armed revolts or eventually through increased electoral participation.

My purpose here is not to sketch a history of Argentina in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but merely to suggest that without a clear understanding of that period, it will be almost impossible to fully comprehend later events. This is, in essence, the starting point for any meaningful interpretation of contemporary Argentina. Fortunately, most of the books under review help to substantiate this approach, which puts phenomena such as Radicalism, the 1930s, Peronism, and

post-Peronism in a more realistic perspective. It is high time to abandon ad hoc, comfortable explanations that tend to underline certain specific features-Hipolito Yrigoyen's real or alleged senility, Juan Domingo Per6n's personalistic and demagogic attributes-to account for the

complexities of the once-called "Argentine paradox." The five books address themselves, each in its own particular way, to

key issues related to a better appraisal of present-day Argentina and can be considered indicative of recent trends of research on the River Plate country. With the exception of a few articles in the collections of

readings edited by Rock, and Falcoff and Dolkart, most of the material belongs to English-speaking authors. The general tone is historical, with partial emphasis at times on economic matters. There is also a representative sample of the political science variety of survey-oriented techniques as shown in Kirkpatrick's volume.



REVIEW ESSAY [213]

The books under examination, quite appropriately, lend themselves to a chronological-thematic order and progression. Rock's discussion of the rise and fall of the Union Civica Radical bridges the period from the dominance of the landed-commercial elite to the military coup that overthrew Yrigoyen in 1930. By pinpointing the basic characteristics of the Radical administrations in power, Falcoff and Dolkart deal with economic crisis and conservative restoration as they developed in the 1930s, and close the narrative with another military coup in 1943, when Argentina was experiencing the consequences of World War II. Peron- ism, from its inception in those crucial years up to the present, permeates most of Hodges' analysis from a self-styled revoutionary perspective, and of Kirkpatrick's attempts to provide a picture of the movement's composition and attitudes by the mid-sixties. Rock's Argentina in the Twentieth Century offers a handful of interpretations on relevant topics of recent and not-so-recent Argentine history, as a synthetic panorama of the last 100 years or so.

I will try to show how some of the major problems dealt with in each individual work relate to a cumulative understanding of today's Argentina. Hopefully, in the final part of the essay the author's views on very basic issues will be briefly considered, together with suggestions for urgently needed research.

Rock's Politics in Argentina 1890-1930 squarely places the rhetoric and practice of Radicalism in a more illuminating perspective than generally has been the case in Argentine historiography. With few recent exceptions, the tendency has been to confuse the party with the nation, as Gabriel del Mazo did in his day, or, conversely, to disregard it as the sole expression of Yrigoyen's strong leadership, and even to treat it as an avant la lettre prefiguration of Peronism.

This documented study makes intelligent use of secondary literature and clarifies certain key points that throw additional light on the structural causes of processes and events in contemporary Argentina. Such is its discussion of changes in the UCR from a "mass movement managed by upper status groups" (p. 58) in the 1890s into a party that represented the interests of a dependent middle class-both through electoral support and access to its own leadership-by the 1920s. The important role played by state patronage and "political machines"- the legendary UCR comites-in building up Radical majorities at election time are vividly described by the author. So are the relationships of Radicalism with labor groups, an aspect of the period that had not received adequate treatment in previous works. Rock's discussion of "syndicalist" currents is also extremely useful for a better understanding of the links between Per6n and organized labor in the more sophisti- cated context of the forties.




The essential continuity between the oligarchy's economic policies and those of the Radical administrations between 1916 and 1930 is further explained by the author's analysis of the UCR as basically a "coaliton of landowners and nonindustrial middle class groups" (pp. 98-99). The weight of local industrialists and, for that matter, of workers in the Radical coalition of forces was in general a less decisive factor than in Peronism. Without disregarding leadership's discrepancies concerning economic policies, most of the significant conflicts of the period took place in the political arena, such as the infighting between the executive and conservative provincial governments with their over- representation in the senate. The penetration of foreign capital other than British in industrial activities during the 1920s also contributed to the relative weakness of native entrepreneurs.

Yrigoyen's demise in 1930 is realistically shown to have taken place by a combination of the 1929 crisis and ensuing world depression as they began to affect the Argentine economy (structurally dependent on a continuous flow of primary exports), and their repercussions on a corresponding decline in the state's patronage that particularly alientated middle-class support for the administration. The army takeover allowed the landholding-commercial elite to regain control of the state and deal directly with the pressing question of economic survival in the 1930s. Rock's requiem on the UCT is worth quoting:

The contribution made by Radicalism to the development of Argentine society was more in the nature of anticipation and precedent than performance. While it reflected the emergence of a plural social structure, it also portrayed for the first time the difficulties of applying a system of power-sharing in a society markedly biased towards elitism and entrenched privilege. If it served temporarily to defer conflict, it could not fully overcome it [p. 274].

Another step in the right direction of searching for explanations of the present in the recent past without indulging in mechanistic parallels is provided by Prologue to Peron, edited by Falcoff and Dolkart. The pieces do not always possess even quality, and range from Arthur P. Whitake'r's traditional overview of the period to Gustavo Sosa-Pujato's preliminary thoughts on popular culture.

The legacy of the thirties-once called, in a polemical vein, "the infamous decade" by the nationalist writer Jose Luis Torres-still hangs over the Argentine present as the immediate prologue to the ongoing crisis. Those years witnessed political fraud at the polls, massive rural- urban migrations, acceleration of industrialization, state intervention in the economy to cope with the internal consequences of the depression, marginalization from meaningful political and social participation of important sectors of the population (Radicals, workers' organizations),



REVIEW ESSAY [215]

direct military intervention in governmental affairs, and even small- scale revolts against the authorities. (For a critical and complementary analysis of the period, see this reviewer's Parties and Power in Modern Argentina, 1930-1946. Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1974.)

It becomes more and more apparent that Peronism finds many of its objective preconditions in the 1930-1943 years, and that it can be fruitfully investigated as (partially at least) a reaction against the state of affairs prevailing in that era (see Falcoffs "Epilogue," pp. 196-203). Two important articles that deal with the continuities and tactical changes in the 1930s, and that can be read as synthetic introductions to Peronist practical policies, are Javier Villanueva's "Economic Develop- ment" (pp. 57-82) and Joseph S. Tulchin's "Foreign Policy" (pp. 83- 109).

Villanueva shows that the problems of import-substitution industrialization were much more complex than previously assumed. Its dependent character and the documented fact of Argentina's industrialization without an industrial revolution," i. e., a local bourgeoisie that carried the process forward, constitute fundamental points of departure for any examination of today's issues. Tulchin's contribution underlines the continuities and tactical changes in foreign policy of the 1920s, 1930s and early 1940s, which prepare the reader to assess the real scope and built-in limits of Peron's "Third Position" in international affairs.

Prologue to Peron also explores, albeit briefly, certain areas of interest for the student of Argentine society and politics as they materialized in the thirties but have carried over into the sevehties. Two examples are the historical polemics between "liberals" and "revision- ists" and the recurring manifestations of antisemitism, reflected at the time in Hugo Wast's best-selling novels (pp. 116-117).

Hodges' Argentina, 1943-1976, stands in a quite different position vis-a-vis the rest of the volumes covered in this review. It is one of the latest in a long series of works published in the past decade to suggest the viability of a revolutionary guerrilla warfare strategy for Argentina and eventually for Latin America. It is also a partisan defense of the alleged revolutionary potentialities of the Peronist movement, tracing its roots to the "Resistance" period in 1955-1958.

If, on the one hand, the author makes extensive use of hitherto inaccessible publications and internal documents of the militant groups themselves (the different currents within the Peronist "Left"), his

optimistic and at times uncritical presentation of events partially mars the obvious documentary value of his book.

After going over Hodges' analysis, I still find that the reasons for Peronism's appeal to sectors of the radicalized youth in the late 1960s




and early 1970s are not sufficiently explored in his text. Let me suggest a few possible areas in which further research is needed to balance the picture: first, the cumulative impact of civilian administrations and military governments alternating in power from 1955 to 1973 and their common incapacity to deal with the "Peronist problem"; second, the "revolutionary" transformation of the exiled Per6n as opposed to his conciliatory, reformist policies when he was voted back into the presi- dency in 1973; third, the objective contradictions between the nebulous concept of socialismo nacional (socialism as adapted to national peculiarities) held by the political-military organization of the Monto- neros, and Per6ns's more conventional ideas about an "organized community," which became quite evident during his comparatively brief term in office from October 1973 to his death on July 1, 1974. Finally, the elitist and voluntaristic nature of self-proclaimed "hegemonic vanguards" in the Argentine context requires further analytical refine- ments as can be provided, say, by social psychology and related disciplines to account for the complexities of the "reperonization" of Argentina in recent years. This applies not only to the armed guerrillas, both of Peronist and non-Peronist origins, but also to wide masses of voters and sympathizers that supported Peronist tickets in the 1973 elections in reaction to a military regime and with expectations of social justice, economic redistribution, and civil peace.

For different reasons, Jeane Kirkpatrick's study of Peronist Argen- tina, Leader and Vanguard in Mass Society, remains only a preliminary and not very satisfactory answer to the question about the real nature and self-perceptions'among other related issues-of the Peronist movement as it appeared in late 1965. The core of the volume is the analysis of data gathered through 2,014 "personal interviews conducted among a representative sample of adult Argentines," the fieldwork having been carried out "by International Research Associates" (p. 234). Brief references in a preface and epilogue (especially pp. 228-233) to later years up until 1970-1971 do not substantially alter the author's predominantly static perspective.

Even within the chosen parameters of this type of inquiry that draws heavily from Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba's The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations as acknowledged by Kirkpatrick in pp. 10-11, the findings arrived at are not particularly meaningful for the understanding of such an important topic. The questionnaire itself reads like a superficial adaptation of North Ameri- can "political culture" values with obvious concessions to Argentine idiosyncratic features. The issue of the strong emotional relationships between Per6n and his followers is hardly touched upon, and the



REVIEW ESSAY [217]

references to "foreigners"-for instance, questions, 24, 24a, and 25m, pp. 242-243-are obviously too general to encompass foreign penetration of the economy, pressure group activities, and so on, and therefore evaluate the nationalist components of Peronists' perceptions and attitudes. The Cold War rhetoric excessively permeates some of the questions on foreign policy (18c, 22, 22a, 22b), and this reviewer misses the Spanish text of the questinnarie as it was administered to Argentine respondents (only the English version is provided by the author, pp. 239-248).

Deeply concerned as she seems to be with institutional-formal matters in the context of democratic-authoritarian politics, Kirk- patrick dismisses or treats lightly some fundamental issues of recent Argentine history when she endeavors to provide a background to her survey data analysis. Reliance on United States sources, plus an insufficient selection of Argentine studies, allows her to consider as "free elections" those of 1958 and 1963, but not Per6n's 1946 victory (5. 15), to omit serious references to the 1930s and 1940s, and to the role of' foreign investment in the national economy-to mention just a few instances of her superficial handling of events.

Argentina in the Twentieth Century, the volume edited by David Rock, is a welcome departure from more traditional writings on this South American country. The process that in the past had been sum- marily dismissed as a transfer of economic-and to some degree political-leverage from the orbit of British "free trade imperialism" to United States' economic penetration, acquires renewed relevance through the contributions by A. G. Ford (on British investment and Argentine economic development, 1880-1914), Roger Gravil (Anglo- U.S. trade rivalries in the 1920s), and Colin Lewis (Anglo-Argentine trade, 1945-1965). It is precisely the dimension of United States imperialism's presence in the Argentine economy-and the so-called "internalization" of that powerful influence through its links with local industry, banking, finance, and political lobbying-that still requires more deep-searching scrutiny and historical interpretation. Let me suggest, in passing, that some preliminary but significant manifestations of the trend can be found in the last few years of Peron's administration (1952-1955), as a reaction against the economic crises then looming: Kaiser automobile plant, law on foreign investments, negotiations with U.S. oil corporations, and so on.

Other major articles in this timely reader address themselves to a detailed analysis of the interior provinces, such as Ian Rutledge's "Plantations and Peasants in Northern Argentina: The Sugar Cane Industry of Salta and Jujuy, 1930-1943" (pp. 88-113), and to specific




aspects of Peronist economics as Jorge Fodor's "Per6n's Policies for Agricultural Exports, 1946-1948: Dogmatism or Commonsense?" (pp. 135-161). Again, both pieces can be useful for a realistic appraisal of what kind of reforms Peronism did in fact introduce in traditional strongholds of provincial oligarchies, such as the sugar cane barons; or the structural constraints imposed by post-1945 world economic conditions on Argentina's primary commodities, a process still at play, in a quite different setting in the late 1970s.

Rock underlines a basic point in his introduction when he states: "The more [Argentina's] links with advanced society are established, the more chronically unstable she becomes. All the signs are at present [c. 1974] that these internal conflicts will increase rather than diminish with the passing of time" (p. 1). Events up to and since the military coup of March 24, 1976, have validated his assertion even further.

It is this writer's opinion that the root causes of Argentine "instability" have to be looked for in structural processes rather than in random activities of sectorial, power-hungry groups or towering personalities such as Peron. The "tip of the iceberg" simile still applies in this context.

Argentina, therefore, can be considered as a living museum of classes and factions within classes, together with decisive institutionalized groups such as the military establishment (with its well-known inter- service rivalries) that constantly bid for economic-social supremacy, and the corresponding translation of that preeminence into political power, namely, the control of the state. As Argentine history has shown in the twentieth century, none of the competing groups has been able, on its own or leading specific class coalitions, to exercise long-range political hegemony over the nation at large. In deadlock situations, usually connected with socioeconomic or international crisis, the military has acted to break the social "draw" among classes, but their attempts have been only partially successful (to say the least) as witnessed by the outcome of the 1966-1973 "Argentine Revolution," which ended by paving the way to the electoral triumph of Peronism. Whole- sale repression and authoritarianism may produce short-term law-and- order results, but do not replace consensus and shared goals as pre- requisites for civilized, legitimate rule.

The story of the landholding-commercial elite's resilience to changed environments and circumstances could become a most illuminating area of investigation. Its "defensive" adaptability in the 1930s, its survival under Peronism in the 1946-1955 period at the cost of being stripped of political and social supremacy (but maintaining its solid economic foundations), and the more complicated arrangements it had to enter into with new constellations of forces (Frondizi's "developmentalism,"



REVIEW ESSAY [219]

U.S. investors and their local representatives), are only instances of a fascinating play that is still being performed under today's military stage management. If, at present, the oligarchy does not reign supreme in Argentina, its veto-power capabilities cannot be easily dismissed, as Generals Juan Carlos Ongania and Juan Domingo Peron discovered when, in different contexts, they attempted a mild modernization through taxing the landholders' estates.

The interrelationships between economic cycles (stop-go policies, years of inflation and deficit financing, followed in circular fashion by short-lived austerity programs) and political developments can be employed as a guiding principle in the analysis of Argentina's alter- nation of civilian and military administrations, and of the corresponding class alliances and conflicts. The cases of Peronism in power from 1946 to 1955 and from 1973 to 1976 can be more appropriately examined in this light. Peronism-and the issue could perhaps be extended to include other populist coalitions in Latin America- benefited from a (relative) economic bonanza in its first few years in power that allowed it to preside over a fleeting "economic miracle" of increased benefits for workers and employers alike. Later on, more conventional austerity measures plus growing authoritarianism contributed to the regime's survival until the 1955 demise, without losing- be it said in passing-working class support, which cannot be measured exclusively in bread-and-butter terms. The first months of the Peronist restoration in the seventies were only a pale copy of the golden forties, but still managed to keep alive a moderate mix of nostalgia and hope, to be followed by another, more pronounced, economic and social crisis which inexorably led to Isabel Peron's political defeat.

The physical absence of Peron remains one of the most important elements in any evaluation of the present military regime's short-term prospects. The presence of the "Peronist masses" and the question of their permanent incorporation into the country's body politic, is bound to appear sooner or later high on the agenda, in spite of the temporary state of disarray in a movement without recognizable, unanimously accepted leadership, such as at one time was provided by Peron. The picture is made even more complex by the potential challenge to absolute military rule, represented by the action-prone Montoneros, who claim to have inherited Peronism's "revolutionary" mantle. In the meantime, the junta's economic and social policies will have to face the test of eventual popular reactions, predominantly, but not only, from labor groups facing the consequences of their relative depriva- tion vis-a-vis more privileged sectors profiting from the "free enterprise"




model put in practice by the government: landholders, foreign entrepreneurs, speculators, and so on.

Indiscriminate repression as carried on in today's Argentina cannot become a permanent feature of policy-making. Its scope and intensity do not match the more isolated instances of violence and counter- violence in the not-too-distant past, as is indicated by some of the books in this review essay. An exploration of the mutually reinforcing dia- lectics of "revolutionary violence" and official (or officially tolerated and/or encouraged) repression in the immediate past is a more pressing, if dangerous, task for social scientists.

-Alberto Ciria

Argentine-born Alberto Ciria is Professor of Political Science at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada. He has published Parties and Power in Modern Argentina, 1930-1946 (1974), and at present is researching populism in Mexico, Peru, and Argentina.



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Argentina at the Crossroads