Argentina General Discussion 🇦🇷

[Libertas Vel Mors]

The Olden Days

Riche comme un argentin, as rich as an Argentine. A phrase that might sound like a sarcastic quip today, but a hundred years ago, Argentina really was the envy of the world. How did the country fall from grace so hard, and how did it rise to those heights in the first place?

Let's start at the beginning.

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Sometime in the 1600s, shores of Río de la Plata. Under candlelight, a trader brags to his friends about the money he made from smuggling a load of goods with the help of another friend, a local ship captain, avoiding cost of shipping them to the "official" port, all the way to Perú. They all share a laugh and celebrate a job well done.

The Spanish arrived to what is today's Argentina only a decade after Columbus discovered "India", but colonization was slow. Gold, the thing that made it worth coming to what was to become known as South America, was further north, as were the centers of colonial power. In 1776, however, Spanish Empire estabilished the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata, with the trade port of Buenos Aires as its capital.

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1807, a street in Buenos Aires. A soldier of the Viceroyalty loads his flintlock with gunpowder, just in time to fire at a group of redcoats under the window. His comrades follow suit. The British see that they're outgunned and have no options left, only to retreat.

Early 19th century was a turbulent time on the shores of La Plata. During the Napoleonic Wars, the British, unsuccessfully, tried their hand at an invasion. Three years later, the Viceroy was overthrown and United Provinces of Río de la Plata declared independence and fought to keep it under the legendary general José de San Martín. Years of wars and chaos followed, but ultimately the Republic of Argentina was created.

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The ship is cramped, but then they all are, aren't they? A voyage from Naples to Buenos Aires is hardly pleasant like this, but the — hopefully — bright future waiting for the passengers at their destination makes it at least bearable. Argentina is even better than America, they said. You should try it. Great wages, lots of opportunities.

It better be worth it after all this seasickness, she thought.

Despite prospectors' best efforts, there were no precious metals to be found around the River of Silver, but there was something else: plenty of high-quality land to be used for agriculture, plenty of pastures to be grazed by cattle and plenty of opportunities for processing the cattle into meat, leather and other products that Europeans craved. The good winds of Buenos Aires carried ships full of goods to the old continent and returned with much-needed immigrants to work in the fields and factories. British capital financed railways and docks to help expansion further away from Buenos Aires, by now a rapidly growing city with a large middle class.

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1880s, Tierra del Fuego. A being arguably unworthy of being called human fires a shot into a bush. Someone was hiding here, someone of whom he thinks just the same. At night, he and his friends feast and celebrate another successful kill.

Argentina, and especially Buenos Aires, was seen as a part of Europe transplanted into an exotic continent. It wasn't just the riches, cafés, and top hats. Argentina is, to this day, arguably the "whitest" Latin American country, for a very simple reason: the vast majority of indigenous people were massacred in successive waves of "conquest of the desert" throughout the 19th century, when warlords, prospectors and landowners expanded further and further south. Today, indigenous people comprise only 1-2% of Argentine population.

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"People of Buenos Aires!"

The young man is only barely literate and struggles to decode the words on the poster. Still, he persists. It's too important not to know.

"The great revolution, the holy revolution..."

He keeps on reading, more and more fascinated by the triumphant call.

"Glory to the Army and the Civic Union!"

He leaves to join the barricades with a spring in his step.

The poster would later be proven to be perhaps a little too optimistic, but the events that led to its creation would nevertheless change the country.

A cabal of feudalists can run a country as their personal fiefdom only as long as the people don't know of any better alternative. The rapid economic growth of late 19th century gave Argentina a new middle class: ambitious and unwilling to put up with old hidebound squires. National Autonomist Party, the conservative party of power, found themselves facing a new opponent: Radical Civic Union, or UCR for short. A sudden economic crisis caused by near-bankruptcy of a bank was the last straw.

On July 26, 1890, UCR launched Revolution of the Park — an attempt to overthrow the old structures and implement universal suffrage. The revolution was suppressed within three days, but it was a democratic awakening. It marked the beginning of a series of attempted revolutions that would culminate in UCR democratically ascending to power.

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He holds the end of a stick of wax in the flame of a candle until it starts to melt. He then seals the ballot box. The voting can start now. It's the first real election in the country's history. Surely, this will mean that the still-young twentieth century will propel Argentina towards even more greatness, towards rule by the people and freedom. Surely...

President Roque Sáenz Peña was a conservative, but he recognized that some things cannot go on forever. He, like most of Argentines, was becoming more and more dissatisfied with political corruption and oligarchs who were preventing the country from moving forward. Universal suffrage, he thought, was the only way to prevent the rising discontent from turning into a revolution — there was yet another unsuccessful attempt to get rid of the oligarchy by force, and the elite feared that they might not be so lucky next time. In 1912, he implemented a law making voting compulsory for all adult male citizens. This was still only a third or so of the population, but it meant that Argentina would no longer be run by a small group of oligarchs and vested interests.

Sáenz Peña died in 1914 and did not live to see the consequences of the law named after him, but two years later, Argentines radically broke with the old order: a revolutionary leader was elected to lead the country.

I know this is old, but your characterization of the NAP is sorely wrong. The Generation of 1870 were not feudalists: they were liberal capitalists, albeit ones who took a sore view of popular democracy. Argentina under their rule experienced rapid economic and political development, and gave economic freedom to its citizens. Its flaw was an undemocratic system in which just a fraction of the population could vote, not feudalism or corruption. A good comparison would be to the United States: the Generation of 1870, and the National Autonomist Party/Unitarians, explicitly modeled Argentina after the United States in most matters save popular participation -- where they took an overly limited view, which proved to be their undoing.

[Libertas Vel Mors]

I'm pretty sire rhat Estrella was in part talking about the "voto cantado" , the roll call voting system that was used before the Ley Saenz Peña which established  universal (male) secret voting

Under this system it wasn't necessary to adulterate the actual results as patronage, intimidation and bribery worked fine enough

I'm pretty sire rhat Estrella was in part talking about the "voto cantado" , the roll call voting system that was used before the Ley Saenz Peña which established  universal (male) secret voting

Under this system it wasn't necessary to adulterate the actual results as patronage, intimidation and bribery worked fine enough

I understand, but I wouldn't characterize that as feudalist -- just authoritarian and undemocratic. Feudal specifically connotes a governmental system in which individuals are tied to the land, which Argentina of course wasn't.

[Libertas Vel Mors]

— we had everything before us —

At first, things seemed to be on right track after Perón's reelection. Industry was booming - the best example was the way Argentina kickstarted its domestic automotive industry with the IAME Justicialista. The ridiculously propagandistic name aside (the car even had a Justicialist logo on the back!), it showed how advanced Argentine technology was at the time and that the country had no problems competing with Europe or America. Living standards kept increasing, a new scientific insititute was founded, hundreds of kilometres of railways were built and Argentina's national debt was paid off.

— we had nothing before us —

Perón was always opposed by the old landowning classes and urban bourgeoisie, but his massive popularity and the fact that Army was, the Evita incident aside, still loyal to him meant that they couldn't do much but tolerate him. However, his increasingly autocratic style made him more enemies than he needed. First, he alienated the Church, then the new middle classes he helped create and, slowly but surely, the army as well.

— we were all going direct to heaven —

...or so might have thought the people marching towards the Cathedral of Buenos Aires on June 11, 1955. A record 200 thousand people attended that year's Corpus Christi procession. They weren't just Catholics - the whole opposition was united in solidarity with the Church, even traditionally secular groups like socialists and communists. They were incensed at Perón's latest round of anticlerical reforms that aimed to at last achieve not just separation of Church from the state, but eradicating its influence in society altogether. In fact, this very parade was prohibited by law, but that just helped to turn it into an angry protest that called for removing Perón from the presidency.

This, in turn, helped to infuriate his supporters, especially the most radical ones. The next day, June 12, the Catholic-turned-radical-Peronist Nationalist Liberation Alliance attempted to set the Cathedral on fire, prevented at last minute by a rally of Argentine Catholic Action, led Mons. Manuel Tato. The editor of a religious newspaper covering the events was arrested, Tato was stripped of his position and forced to leave the country.

Until now, Perón got away with things no previous President could dream of, but what he did this time was a step too far.

— we were all going direct to hell. —

Argentina wasn't involved in World War II, not even indirectly. Aside from a September 1939 incident in Río de la Plata, the country was isolated from the conflict. Fortunately, Argentina wasn't at war with her neighbours either, and so the Morón air base on outskirts of the capital remained unused, its planes staying in hangars - until Thurday, June 16, 1955.

On that day, a workers' rally was taking place in Plaza de Mayo. It was called by Peronist trade unions in response to an alleged burning of national flag during the June 11 Corpus Christi procession. More than that, icreasingly credible rumours of a coup were spreading. At midday, thirty aircraft took off from Morón and bombed the square and surrounding government buildings. More than 300 civillians were killed.

The country descended into something akin to a civil war. Rebel army units tried to capture Casa Rosada, but they were stopped after a series of firefights in surrounding streets. Despite anti-aircraft fire, planes from Morón carried out more bombing and strafing runs. That night, radical Peronists sought revenge: they burned down ten churches and looted two convents. In response, radical Catholics created armed commandos and called for overthrow of the President. Fighting broke out in the streets, infrastructure was sabotaged and buildings of Peronist organizations were bombed.

On September 16, General Eduardo Lonardi, commander of the Córdoba garrison, took over the city. He faced resistance from loyalist infrantry units and more than 100 people died in the fighting. The next day, rebel navy ships bombed the coastal city of Mar del Plata. Bahía Blanca was bombed and taken over by rebel marines, who were expelled by loyalist forces. On September 19, the coup seemed to be failing: Lonardi's troops in Córdoba were surrounded and a loyalist attack was imminent. However, in a show of force, the ships of rebel Admiral Isaac Rojas bombed Mar del Plata again, hitting fuel tanks in the port and causing great destruction.

This seemed to convince Perón that he had to go unless he wanted the country to descend into a full-blown civil war. Paraguyan dictator Alfredo Stroessner gave him a helping hand and on September 21, Perón fled aboard a Paraguayan gunboat and requested asylum in the country.

And it was over.

Similarly to my comments above (And I apologize if I'm nitpicking, your posts are overall great!), I think a lot of your economic praise for Peron is misplaced. For instance you mention the IAME Justicialista, but as the page you links to mentions, less than 200 were ever made, the engines had to be imported from Germany, and the car was never commercially available. More importantly, the economy as a whole was never too great under Peron: there was a perception of economic success, buoyed especially by government propaganda, but a lot of Argentina's issues (for instance, inflation) which continue today emerged under Peron. Even during the post-war boom, for instance, while the Argentinian economy did grow, it grew far more slowly than either its neighbors or comparable first world countries.

[Libertas Vel Mors]

Hugo Moyano is my hero and Alex forgot to say he is also the president of a football club called Independiente

More seriously,  we don't have  nothing comparable to Moyano's union in Spain.  However, we had recently a truckers' strike promoted by an association of self-employed truckers with alleged connections to the far-right. On the other hand, freight transport by rail represents less than 5% in Spain!

I have two questions:

What's the prevalence in Argentinian transport sector of that modern form of slavery called self-employment?

What's the remaining share of freight transport by rail?

This is embarrassing.

[Libertas Vel Mors]

I shaded the 2021 legislative elections by result