Peronism
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Argentina Portal |
Peronism (Spanish: Peronismo), or Justicialism (Spanish: Justicialismo), is an Argentine political movement based on the ideas and programs associated with former President Juan Perón and his second wife, Eva Perón, referred to as Spiritual Leader of the Nation of Argentina. Perón's party, the Partido Justicialista (which is governing Argentina now), derived its name from the Spanish words for "social justice" (justicia social').
Peronism has been difficult to define according to traditional political classifications, and different periods as well as factions must be distinguished.
The original ideology was marked by some constants, including:
- Strong centralized government, with authoritarian tendencies.
- Freedom from foreign influences.
- A third way approach to economics which purported to be neither socialist nor capitalist, but to incorporate elements of both in a corporativist manner.
- The combination of nationalism and social democracy
Contents |
Peron's policies
Perón's ideas were initially widely embraced by a variety of different groups in Argentina across the political spectrum. Perón's personal views would eventually become a burden on the ideology; for example his anti-clericalism did not strike a sympathetic chord amongst upper class Argentinians.
Perón's public speeches were consistently nationalist and populist. It would also be difficult to separate Peronism from corporate nationalism, for Perón nationalized Argentina's large corporations, blurring distinctions between corporations and government. At the same time, the labor unions became corporate themselves, relinquishing the right to strike in agreements with Perón as Secretary of Welfare in the military government from 1943-45. In exchange, the state was to assume the role of negotiator between conflicting interests.
Detractors have sometimes considered Peronism to be a fascist ideology. Overthrown in a coup that started a dictatorship in 1955 (the Revolución Libertadora), led by General Aramburu, Perón spent 18 years in exile, mostly in Francisco Franco's Spain. Though his feelings for Franco were mixed, Perón never disguised his admiration for Benito Mussolini's domestic policies.
However, despite these comparisons, Perón and his administration never resorted to systematically organized violence or dictatorial rule. To a large extent what stifled his opposition was the resounding electoral victory which put him and his party in power. It must be said, however, that Peron showed contempt for any opponents, and regularly characterized them as traitors and agents of foreign powers. Perón maintained the institutions of democratic rule, but subverted freedoms through such actions as nationalizing the broadcasting system, centralizing the unions under his control, and monopolizing the supply of newspaper print. At times, Peron also resorted to heavy-handed tactics like illegally imprisoning opposition polititians and journalists, including UCR leader Ricardo Balbin and shutting down opposition paper La Prensa.
Peronism also lacked a strong interest in matters of foreign policy other than the belief that the political and economic influences of other nations should be kept out of Argentina and could thus be said to be somewhat isolationist. Early in his presidency Peron envisioned Argentina's role as a model for other countries in Latin America and beyond. These ideas ultimately did not materialize and were abandoned. Despite the rhetoric, Perón frequently sought cooperation with the U.S. government on various issues.
Perón, despite his admiration for Mussolini, never showed parallels to Hitler's Nazi regime, and never exhibited racist ideas or views like that of the Third Reich or several other fascist regimes. However, under his regime many Nazi war criminals were granted asylum after the Second World War. In 2005, as a result of revelations in Uki Goñi's book The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Perón's Argentina, Argentine President Néstor Kirchner ordered the repeal of a secret directive issued in 1938, under the presidency of Roberto María Ortiz, prohibiting Argentine diplomats from granting visas to Jews fleeing Germany's Nazi regime.
Before Perón came to power in Argentina, Argentina had the largest Jewish population in Latin America. After becoming president of Argentina, he sought out the Jewish community for participation in his government, and one of his advisors was a Jewish man from Poland named José Ber Gelbard. Peronism has no anti-Semitic or other racial bias.[1] The Jewish Virtual Library writes that while Juan Perón had sympathized with the Axis powers, "Perón also expressed sympathy for Jewish rights and established diplomatic relations with Israel in 1949. Since then, more than 45,000 Jews have immigrated to Israel from Argentina." [2] In the book Inside Argentina from Peron to Menem author Laurence Levine, former president of the US-Argentine Chamber of Commerce, writes: "although anti-Semitism existed in Argentina, Perón's own views and his political associations were not anti-Semitic....[3] And while Juan Perón's Argentina allowed many Nazi criminals to take refuge in Argentina, Juan Perón's Argentina also accepted more Jewish immigrants than any other country in Latin America, which in part accounts for the fact that Argentina to this day has a population of over 200,000 Jewish citizens, still the largest in Latin America and one of the largest in the world.[4]
Perón's admiration for Mussolini is well documented.[5] Many scholars categorize Peronism as a fascist ideology.[6] Carlos Fayt, believes that Peronism was just "an Argentine implementation of Italian fascism".[6] Hayes reaches the conclusion that "the Peronist movement produced a form of fascism that was distinctively Latin American".[6]
One of the most vocal critics of Peronism was Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. After the Peron ascended to the Presidency in 1946, Borges delivered the following speach before the Argentine Society of Writers (SADE),
"Dictatorships bread oppression, dictatorships breed servility, dictatorships breed cruelty; more loathsome still is the fact that they breed idiocy. Bellboys babbling orders, potraits of caudillos, prearranged cheers or insults, walls covered with names, unanimous ceremonies, mere discipline usurping the place of clear thinking... Fighting these sad monotonies is one of the duties of a writer. Need I remind readers of Martín Fierro or Don Segundo that individualism is an old Argentine virtue."[7]
From the 1960s to modern day
Furthermore, the absence of Perón himself, who lived for 20 years in exile in Franquist Spain, is also an important key to understanding Peronism, as he could be invoked by all kinds of Argentine sectors opposed to the current state of affairs. The personality cult of Eva Perón, in particular, was fondly conserved, while at the contrary strongly despised by the "national bourgeoisie". In the 1960's, John William Cooke's writings became an important source of left-wing revolutionary Peronism. Left-wing Peronism was thus represented by many organizations, from the Montoneros and the Fuerzas Armadas Peronistas to the Peronist Youth, the Frente Revolucionario Peronista and the Revolutionary Peronist Youth, passing by Peronismo en Lucha or Peronismo de Base, which supported a Marxist viewpoint. On the other hand, older Peronists formed the base of the orthodox bureaucracy, represented by the Unión Obrera Metalúrgica (Augusto Vandor, famous for his 1965 slogan "For a Peronism without Perón," and declaring as well: "to save Perón, one has to be against Perón", or José Ignacio Rucci). Another current was formed by the 62 Organizaciones "De pie junto a Perón", led by José Alonso and opposed to the right-wing Peronist unionist movement. Left-wing Peronism rejected in the early 1970s liberal democracy and political pluralism as the mask of bourgeois domination, while the anti-communist right-wing Peronism also rejected it, in the name of corporatism, claiming to return to a "Christian and humanist, popular, national socialism" [8].
Thus, by 1970, many groups from opposite sides of the political spectrum supported Perón, from the left-wing and Catholic Montoneros to the Fascist-leaning and strongly anti-Semitic Movimiento Nacionalista Tacuara, one of Argentina's first guerrilla movements. All in all, Perón was a pragmatic figure, and through the course of his long career his views would frequently change..
In March 1973, Héctor José Cámpora, who had been named by Peron his personal delegate, was elected President of Argentina. However, a few months after Peron's return and the subsequent Ezeiza massacre during which the Peronist Left and Right violently clashed, with the Peronist Right having set up snipers to shoot on the masses, new elections were held in September. José Cámpora, a left-wing Peronist, was replaced by interim President Raúl Alberto Lastiri, while Peron chose to openly support the Peronist right. On October 1, 1973, senator Humberto Martiarena, who was the national secretary of the Superior Council of the National Justicialist Movement, made public a document giving directives to confront "subversives, terrorist and Marxist groups" which had allegedly initiated a "war" inside the Peronist organizations [8]. From then on, the Superior Council took a firm grip on the Peronist organizations in order to expel from it the Left [8]. On that same day, a meeting during which were present President Raúl Lastiri, Interior Minister Benito Llambí, Social Welfare Minister José López Rega, general secretary of the Presidency José Humberto Martiarena and various provincial governors is alleged to be the foundational act of the Alianza Anticomunista Argentina death-squad [9].
Legacy
The official peronist party is the Partido Justicialista (PJ), which was the only peronist party for a long time. However, during the government of Carlos Menem a group of legislators led by Carlos Álvarez, known as the "Group of the 8", left the party, claiming that the government was not following peronist doctrines. They created instead a new party, the "Frente Grande" (Broad Front). A short time later, José Octavio Bordón left the PJ as well, fearing that he might lose a Primary election against Menem, so he created his own party to take part in the 1995 elections. Similar movements would take place frequently after that, creating many small parties led by single politicians claiming to be the authentic inheritors of peronism.
The PJ did not appear as such during the 2003 elections, as the party did not celebrate primary elections and allowed instead all precandidates to run for the general elections, using small parties created for that purpose. Néstor Kirchner won the elections, but did not disband the Front for Victory after it, so Kirchnerism relies on both the PJ and the Front for Victory as political parties.
See also
- Justicialist Party
- Juan Domingo Perón
- Eva Perón
References
- ↑ Crassweller, David. Peron and the Enigmas of Argentina. W.W. Norton and Company. 1987: 221. ISBN 0-393-30543-0
- ↑ Jewish Virtual Library. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/Argentina.html#WW2
- ↑ Inside Argentina from Peron to Menem: 1950–2000 From an American Point of View by Laurence Levine, page 23
- ↑ "Continuing Efforts to Conceal Anti-Semitic Past." Valente, Marcela. Valente, Marcela. IPS-Inter Press Service. April 27, 2005.
- ↑ Eatwell, Roger (1999). Contemporary Political Ideologies. Continuum International Publishing Group. pp. 196. ISBN 9780826451736.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Peronism and Argentina By James P. Brennan
- ↑ Borges: A Life, page 295.
- ↑ Manuel Justo Gaggero, “El general en su laberinto”, Pagina/12, 19 February 2007
Bibliography
- Tomas Eloy Martinez, El Sueño Argentino' (The Argentine Dream, 1999) and Memorias del General (Memoirs of the General, 1996).
- Daniel James, Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine Working Class, 1946-1979. NY: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
- Félix Luna, Perón y Su Tiempo, Vol I-III.: Sudamericana, 1990.