ARGENTINA: Prodigal’s Return

The Hemisphere’s No. 1 authoritarian was back in power.

After one brief day in his Argentine Elba, the federal prison on Martin Garcia Island, Juan Domingo Perón overturned the moderates who had forced his resignation and vaulted back to the balcony of Government House. Thousands of Perón-struck workers cheered: “Viva Perón! Viva labor! Viva Argentina!” Colonel Perón did not bother to reassume his old offices or even to rejoin the army. Seven days after his return, he was still Argentina’s master.

The abrupt collapse of Argentina’s week-old, fumbling interim government came as a surprise to headline readers and chancelleries alike. What manner of country was Argentina, where a ruling clique and a single city, Buenos Aires, seemed to decide a great nation’s political destinies? And what of that democratic policy, laudable in aim, by which U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Spruille Braden had seemed to triumph in Perón’s overthrow? The phenomenon of the Strong Man and his army, his labor unions and his determined bands of street fighters, needed clarification.

Two Worlds. Argentina lived last week, as it had for the past century, in two worlds. One world was the cosmopolitan, factory-packed port of Buenos Aires. The other was the land of rich green pasturage, yellow grainfields and brown, newly-turned earth which stretched west to the Andes, south to Patagonia. It was what Englishmen called the “camp.” as vast as the whole of the U.S. east of the Mississippi.

Those who peopled the two worlds had little in common. The porteños (people of the port) were accustomed of an evening to squeeze themselves into giant teahouses and chrome-and-glass movie palaces. The peón of the “camp,” working for his keep and a little more on the great estancias, found few with whom to gather; even his rooster crowed only twice, because there was no answer.

Both of Argentina’s worlds had long been ripe for change. In few other lands in the Americas had the feudalism of a land-holding aristocracy persisted so long.

For Peón & Porfeño. As Secretary of Labor and Social Welfare, Perón went about getting the backing of both peón and porteño. He upped peónes’ wages to as much as $30 a month, guaranteed them a two-hour rest after lunch (called the “Siesta of Perón”). Some of the worst-off, like the miserable sugar-cane workers around Tucuman, went 100% for Perón.

The porteño was a tougher nut to crack —and much more important. Because it holds roughly a quarter of the nation’s populace (14,000,000) and 75% of its industry, Buenos Aires is the tail that wags the Argentine dog.

For the porteño Perón upped wages an average 10%-20% (the cost of living rose more), rolled back rents and clothing costs 10%. Few of Buenos Aires’ old-line, socialist-controlled workers went into the Perón camp. But on the poorest fringe, Perón found a following. It was this element that Perón’s Labor Secretariat last week turned loose on Buenos Aires. Compared to the 500,000 democratic Argentines who had last month swelled the gigantic “March for Liberty,” the Perónistas were small in numbers. But, aided by the police, they fought a pitched battle for the plant of Critica, a democratic newspaper, chalked “Death to the Jews” on city walls and intimidated other workers in the most paralyzing strike in Argentine history.

Down to the Roots. In his determination to foster a demagogic, nationalistic, anti-democratic setup in Argentina, Strong Man Perón was, in his own words, playing “a daring game.” For he had only a part of the army, the police, the politically inert peones, and a frowsy minority of labor behind him. Unlike Hitler and Mussolini, he could count on neither capitalists nor the middle class for backing

But Perón, however long he might manage to make good his return to power, was no puppet on a string. If the Braden policy had a fault, it was the easy assumption that because Perón was a bad authoritarian, he had no roots in the country he ruled. Last week’s anticlimax proved that he did have roots, of a sort. His enemies would do well to ponder and understand Argentina before they tried again.