By then the military had tired of the vestiges of
representative government, with its party system
and the disproportionate power the conservative
oligarchy enjoyed. In 1943 the officers organised
a coup; the rising star among them was Colonel
Juan Perón. While the corporate state in Europe
faced defeat, it survived in Franco’s Spain and was
to survive in Perón’s Argentina. Perón and his
mistress and later wife, Evita, created a new power
base, an alliance of the army with the hitherto
politically powerless masses of urban workers. The
workers remained powerless but they gained the
illusion of power by supporting the charismatic
caudillo. Franco in Spain, Salazar in Portugal and
Perón in Argentina were apparent anachronisms in
the Western world, which had fought for freedom
and democracy, but they survived and flourished.
Perón could also claim legitimacy after he won
elections in 1946 with a strong showing of 54 per
cent. One reason for his success was the introduc-
tion of a host of social welfare schemes, higher
wages, minimum wages and pensions. Evita used
state funds to finance her foundation which show-
ered benefits on orphans and the poor. When she
died in 1952, still young and beautiful, the
national mourning was unprecedented. The myth
of Evita supported Perón’s rule which, under its
glossy populist surface, used the repressive tactics
of a fascist regime. A state economic plan and state
intervention, with a drive to industrialise, were
designed to build a new Argentina. The workers
prospered.
The economic downturn after 1949, however,
soon brought old tensions to the surface. More
orthodox economic management lowered stan-
dards of living and political theatre and the sup-
port of the Peronist masses alarmed the Church
and the oligarchic and military elite. In September
1955 the military engineered another coup and
Perón quietly departed into exile. An independ-
ent, elected, civilian president was allowed to rule
for just four years from 1958 to 1962, before the
military deposed him and seized power again: they
were always ready to mount coups when the out-
come of the electoral process displeased them.
The president elected in 1963 lasted only another
three years before a further military coup. But
throughout the decades the appeal of Peronism,
despite the efforts of the military to suppress it,
did not lose its glamour among the urban masses.
Argentina depended on world markets for its
exports and imports, but in general the terms of
trade during the 1950s and 1960s moved against
primary producers, though there were brief peri-
ods of prosperity, not least because it presented a
home market large enough for considerable
expansion of the industrial sector. Argentina was
plagued by wild swings of economic policy
between boom and slump, and it was saddled with
the ever increasing burden of foreign loans.
Despite its ‘European face’, in its economic devel-
opment and the strength of its military, Argentina
was also very much a Latin American country.
Amid mounting political violence, Perón
returned in 1973 and was elected president, but
it was too late for him to achieve a political rerun
of his former success. Nine months after his elec-
tion he died. His third wife briefly assumed the
presidency, but she was quite unable to master
the deteriorating economic and political situation.
In March 1976 a military junta staged yet another
coup and took over power for the next six years.This junta turned out to be the most bloody and
repressive in the modern history of Argentina.
The world media was able to draw attention to
its brutality thanks to the courage of the women,
the ‘grandmothers’ who every week demon-
strated silently before the presidential palace,
holding placards and pictures of members of their
family who had ‘disappeared’. Their disappear-
ance was the consequence of the ‘dirty war’ the
junta waged indiscriminately against the opposi-
tion; not only were guerrillas arrested and killed
but anyone regarded as subversive could suffer
the same fate. For the military there were no con-
straints imposed by a rule of law. Mass graves
were subsequently discovered, but no one can be
sure how many died during the years of terror –
perhaps 30,000. And in managing the economy
the generals were no more successful than their
predecessors. Early improvements in response to
stricter monetary controls gave way to inflation
and recession in the 1980s.
In a bid to divert popular discontent the junta,
then headed by General Leopoldo Galtieri,