Argentina General Discussion 🇦🇷

[Estrella]

No significant elections will be taking place anytime soon, but I've been getting pretty interested in Argentina recently, and there are multiple Argentine posters here, so I figured that a thread for occasional updates and interesting things about the country would be nice.

I'm also planning (fingers crossed) to make a detailed-ish summary of Argentine politics in the past couple of decades, [self promotion] like I did for a couple other countries.

[Estrella]

Anyway, what prompted me to start this thread now is that yesterday was the 26th anniversary of the AMIA bombing. On June 18, 1994, a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires was attacked by a suicide bomber in a van, killing 85 people. A front for Hezbollah claimed responsibility, but the whole case was very muddled and dragged on for years, with many political repercussions. The investigation was a mess, suspiciously so in some cases, with rumors about Iran being behind the bombing and offering then-president Menem $10 million to close the case. Under Néstor Kirchner, some progress was made as Alberto Nisman was appointed a special prosecutor and issued several Interpol arrest warrants.

Cristina Kirchner's handling of the case was especially controversial - she was criticised for signing a memorandum of understanding with Iran (later revoked by Macri) about investigating the attack. Nisman alleged that this was an attempt at a cover-up and on January 19, 2015, he was found dead in his home. In 2017, Nisman was proven right after all and Cristina was charged for treason, but thanks to her parliamentary immunity avoided going to jail.

Here's the breaking news informing about the attacks.

[kaoras]

Would love to hear about the summary. Back then it took me a lot of time figuring out Argentina's politics

[Estrella]

Would love to hear about the summary. Back then it took me a lot of time figuring out Argentina's politics

Yeah, me too lol.

So, anyway, here's the first part of that promised summary/guide/introduction/whatever, starting in 1916 and going president by president. It's shorter than I imagined it at first, but then no-one wanting to read a dozen walls of text is always a good excuse for laziness I'm still sure it was worth it writing this, if only to give me the opportunity to come up with witty titles for the individual parts haha.

Apologies for any mistakes, I wrote most of this at night thanks to my f***** up sleep schedule. If When I'm wrong about anything, you're welcome to correct me

Btw, no idea when the second part is coming.

[Estrella]

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.

[Estrella]

The Man of the People: Hipólito Yrigoyen

1916—1922

Plaza de Mayo was yet to see some of the most (in)famous events in its long history, but this was perhaps the first of the spectacles it became known for. A seemingly neverending mass of people. At its top, literally, as he was being carried by them, was The Man — the first democratically elected president of Argentina.

Hipólito was on top of the world. The people loved him, and he loved them back — at first, anyway.

The 1916 presidential election was a stunning triumph for the UCR. Hipólito Yrigoyen, a veteran of the Revolution of the Park, was elected President with 47% of the popular vote and a narrow majority in the electoral college. On October 12, 1916, he made Case Rosada his home and a new era began.

The Radicals realized that even though Argentina was a rich country, and getting richer by the day, it was in urgent need of modernization to keep this advantage. Yrigoyen got to work right from the start. With Europe in the middle of World War I, their industries were fully focused on military uses and Argentine products were suddenly in great demand. The economy boomed and wages rose, but workers demanded more. The government passed laws to establish minimum wage and collective bargaining. Another of his major accomplishments was an education reform, creating an autonomous, secular and free system of universities.

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Of course, the deeply entrenched oligarchs that the UCR was founded to oppose did not vanish overnight. Yrigoyenismo was a clear danger to their interests and they weren't willing to go down without a fight. Natalio Botana, Uruguay's proto-Rupert Murdoch, founded the sensationalist conservative tabloid Crítica that served as a platform for conservatives criticism of Yrigoyen (their headline on the day of his inauguration was "May God Save the Republic"). Upper-class youths led by Manuel Carlés (a Radical, ironically) founded the Argentine Patriotic League, a far-right anti-leftist and anti-Semitic organization that often joined the police in beating the hell out of striking workers.

Towards the end of his term, though, criticism of Yrigoyen was increasingly justified, despite being very "pot calling the kettle black" — especially when coming from the right. The president's behavior, in a typical Latin American fashion, was becoming more and more egotistic — his previously conciliatory relations with the legislature turned heated and most importantly, he turned against people who made him President.

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In November 1918, the Great War came to an end. European nations could reorient their industries back to producing consumer goods. All of a sudden, Argentina's exports weren't in such high demand anymore. Big corporations cut wages and unemployment rose. This was the spark that set fire to growing discontent within the working class. Inspired by Russian Revolution and emboldened by Yrigoyen's earlier reforms, workers took to the streets and demanded better conditions. On January 7, 1919, trade unions announced a general strike. This was the start of Semana Trágica, the Tragic Week. Over the course of next seven days, pitched battles on the streets between strikers, communists, anarchists, Patriotic League, police and army ended in several hundred deaths.

An even more brutal suppression took place in Santa Cruz, a province in the far south, dominated by sheep farming. A wave of strikes started in 1920 and the situation escalated throughout 1921 until, on November 4, a ranch owner shot two strikers dead. The strikers responded by taking several ranch-owning families hostage.

The Buenos Aires elites were, not to put too fine a point on it, scared sh**less. Conservative press was calling for blood and President gave them what they wanted. On Yrigoyen's orders, an army regiment under command of Col. Héctor Benigno Varela unleashed a wave of terror throughout Santa Cruz. Nobody is sure about the exact numbers, but they reportedly executed as much as 1,500 workers involved in the strike, forcing some of them to dig their own graves.

If Revolution of the Park was the political awakening of the middle class, these events were its equivalent for the working class. Just like with the Park, they were forcibly suppressed and their consequences weren't immediately evident, but they would eventually turn Argentina's political system inside out.

Oh, by the way, for those who wonder how the f*** do you pronounce that name, it's Eergozhen.

[CumbrianLefty]

Well the Brits may have had their collective posterior kicked out of the mainland at the start of the 19th century, but they were soon to establish themselves in a certain location nearby. Which has been a factor in Argentine history ever since.

[kaoras]

My biggest cultural shock related to Argentina was seeing that they had the guy behind the Conquest of the Desert (and the process itself) in their money. In Chile, you couldn't put the equivalent guy in a half-cent coin without putting half of the country on fire.

[Estrella]

Well the Brits may have had their collective posterior kicked out of the mainland at the start of the 19th century, but they were soon to establish themselves in a certain location nearby. Which has been a factor in Argentine history ever since.

Weirdly enough, it seems that sometime in mid-19th century, Argentina stopped really caring about getting Falklands back and all there was to the dispute were some diplomatic shenanigans (well, with one exception). UK was open to negotiating a transfer of sovereignty to Argentina, maybe even over islanders' heads and had the junta not been desperate for something populist that would make people not hate them, they might have succeeded in getting the islands peacefully.

The junta deciding to go to war with Chile instead would've been a much more interesting outcome for history nerds. Not that that dispute was any less silly.

My biggest cultural shock related to Argentina was seeing that they had the guy behind the Conquest of the Desert (and the process itself) in their money. In Chile, you couldn't put the equivalent guy in a half-cent coin without putting half of the country on fire.

Why is that, I wonder? And who is your equivalent of Roca?

[kaoras]

My biggest cultural shock related to Argentina was seeing that they had the guy behind the Conquest of the Desert (and the process itself) in their money. In Chile, you couldn't put the equivalent guy in a half-cent coin without putting half of the country on fire.

Why is that, I wonder? And who is your equivalent of Roca?

Cornelio Saavedra: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelio_Saavedra_Rodr%C3%ADguez. Mind you, he has some conmemorative plaques in the towns he founded and used to have statues (I'm pretty sure most of them were destroyed during the unrest) and a town named after him (Puerto Saavedra, ironically one of the most left wings areas of Auracanía), but really, he isn't viewed as a hero or anything. Absolutely nobody cried about the destruction of his statues.

Unlike Argentina with the Conquest of the Desert, the Occupation of the Araucanía nowadays isn't seen in a favorable light. One of the founding myths of Chile is the resistance of the Mapuche against the Spanish and the fact they couldn't be conquered and remained independent well into the XIX century.  That chileans have the "blood of the araucanan warrior" is the most chauvinistic version of that. Chile, unlike Argentina also had significant mestizaje during the Colony and people who identify as Mapuche are around 10% population. The majority of people are at least somewhat sympathetic to their revindications.

Besides, I'm under the impression that Argentina teaches the Conquest of the Desert as an act of nation-building, very important for the progress of the country and whatnot. Here in Chile the Occupation of the Araucania is taught as something that happened, it doesn't have any mystic to it.

[CumbrianLefty]

Weirdly enough, it seems that sometime in mid-19th century, Argentina stopped really caring about getting Falklands back and all there was to the dispute were some diplomatic shenanigans (well, with one exception). UK was open to negotiating a transfer of sovereignty to Argentina, maybe even over islanders' heads and had the junta not been desperate for something populist that would make people not hate them, they might have succeeded in getting the islands peacefully.

Well up to a point, perhaps. School textbooks continued to talk of "las Malvinas" being Argentine, there were postage stamps produced regularly showing them as part of Argentina, etc etc.

The ruling junta opportunistically decided on an invasion in 1982 partly because their grip on power was showing serious signs of loosening, and partly because they misread some of the signals (both on the UK's willingness to defend the islands and how the international community - the US in particular -would react) But its not really true to say they manufactured the underlying sentiment from nowhere.

[Lexii, harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy]

My biggest cultural shock related to Argentina was seeing that they had the guy behind the Conquest of the Desert (and the process itself) in their money. In Chile, you couldn't put the equivalent guy in a half-cent coin without putting half of the country on fire.

Why is that, I wonder? And who is your equivalent of Roca?

Cornelio Saavedra: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelio_Saavedra_Rodr%C3%ADguez. Mind you, he has some conmemorative plaques in the towns he founded and used to have statues (I'm pretty sure most of them were destroyed during the unrest) and a town named after him (Puerto Saavedra, ironically one of the most left wings areas of Auracanía), but really, he isn't viewed as a hero or anything. Absolutely nobody cried about the destruction of his statues.

Unlike Argentina with the Conquest of the Desert, the Occupation of the Araucanía nowadays isn't seen in a favorable light. One of the founding myths of Chile is the resistance of the Mapuche against the Spanish and the fact they couldn't be conquered and remained independent well into the XIX century.  That chileans have the "blood of the araucanan warrior" is the most chauvinistic version of that. Chile, unlike Argentina also had significant mestizaje during the Colony and people who identify as Mapuche are around 10% population. The majority of people are at least somewhat sympathetic to their revindications.

Besides, I'm under the impression that Argentina teaches the Conquest of the Desert as an act of nation-building, very important for the progress of the country and whatnot. Here in Chile the Occupation of the Araucania is taught as something that happened, it doesn't have any mystic to it.

For a second I thought you guys had stolen our Cornelio Saavedra, the first president of the Primera Junta, founder of the oldest military battalion of Argentina and one of the founding fathers of Argentina

It turns out you were talking about his son

[Lexii, harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy]

My biggest cultural shock related to Argentina was seeing that they had the guy behind the Conquest of the Desert (and the process itself) in their money. In Chile, you couldn't put the equivalent guy in a half-cent coin without putting half of the country on fire.

Why is that, I wonder? And who is your equivalent of Roca?

Cornelio Saavedra: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelio_Saavedra_Rodr%C3%ADguez. Mind you, he has some conmemorative plaques in the towns he founded and used to have statues (I'm pretty sure most of them were destroyed during the unrest) and a town named after him (Puerto Saavedra, ironically one of the most left wings areas of Auracanía), but really, he isn't viewed as a hero or anything. Absolutely nobody cried about the destruction of his statues.

Unlike Argentina with the Conquest of the Desert, the Occupation of the Araucanía nowadays isn't seen in a favorable light. One of the founding myths of Chile is the resistance of the Mapuche against the Spanish and the fact they couldn't be conquered and remained independent well into the XIX century.  That chileans have the "blood of the araucanan warrior" is the most chauvinistic version of that. Chile, unlike Argentina also had significant mestizaje during the Colony and people who identify as Mapuche are around 10% population. The majority of people are at least somewhat sympathetic to their revindications.

Besides, I'm under the impression that Argentina teaches the Conquest of the Desert as an act of nation-building, very important for the progress of the country and whatnot. Here in Chile the Occupation of the Araucania is taught as something that happened, it doesn't have any mystic to it.

Nowadays it's taught a lot closer to how it's done in Chile and there was a strong debate a few years ago about removing Roca from the $100 banknote, and he was replaced with Evita during the Cristina Fernández administration in 2011, which was instead replaced with a taruca deer in 2018 as part of a
the new animals-on-banknotes series.

All three are still legal tender

[Estrella]

A Brief Intermission: Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear

1922—1928

Yrigoyen wasn't allowed to seek immediate reelection for a second term, and so a fight erupted within UCR about who gets to be his successor. There was significant backlash within the Radicals to what was perceived as, ehm, radicalism that led to instability and dysfunctional government. As usual in these parts of the world, the dispute was as personal as it was ideological. An "antipersonalist" faction emerged, composed of land-owning moderates and conservatives who perceived him as too populist, too narcissistic and too authoritarian. Yrigoyen decided it was better to keep the elites on his side and it was a member of this faction that won his endorsement for the 1922 election - a well-connected conservative aristocrat and son of the first mayor of Buenos Aires, Marcelo T. de Alvear. He won the election easily, getting 49% of popular vote against a scattered field of conservatives and regional caudillos.

De Alvear's first official act after inauguration was visiting Círculo Militar, a club of high-ranking army officers. For them, this was a welcome change from the days of his confrontational and distrustful predecessor. He appointed multiple officers as ministers in his cabinet and lavished the armed forces with money, turning them into the best-equipped ones in Latin America. This gave them a boost of self-confidence a willingness to assert their place in running the country. It wouldn't be long before an opportunity arose for just that.

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A moderate patrician like de Alvear was a good fit for calm waters of the 1920s . As the post-war economic crisis subsided, so did strikes and social disturbances. The government kept reforms going and passed laws regulating child labor, created retirement funds and kickstarted the oil industry with massive investments into YPF, a state enterprise created under Yrigoyen. YPF's new director Enrique Mosconi massively expanded the company, invested in exploration, refineries and infrastructure and made the company able to compete with other, foreign, firms that exploited Argentine oil.

Nevertheless, there were black spots on his presidency - the darkest one being July 19, 1924, when the Toba indigenous people, confined in camps and used as de facto slave labor in cotton fields, rose up against the ever-worsening conditions. On command of governor of the Chaco province, the army responded with a bloody campaign that killed 400 people in a single day. The name of the compound that was the centre of these events, was Napalpí - Cemetery.

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As the 1928 election was drawing near, cracks were starting to show in UCR. The divisions - again driven by clashes of egos at least as much as by policies - between de Alvear's centrist antipersonalistas and Yrigoyen's leftist personalistas could no longer be papered over. The President was very much an aristocrat of Buenos Aires' new upper class, made rich thanks to ownership of large tracts of profitable land or lucrative trading with foreign companies in the UK or USA. He was a liberal who supported social reforms, but only as long as they didn't go against his interests. Yrigoyen, by contrast, was a middle-class radical who had no time for concerns of people like de Alvear and held no qualms against demolishing the old order they represented.

And so the old strife-ridden Radical Civic Union finally broke up. Yrigoyen, leading the largest faction that kept the name, decided to give the presidency another go and the voters approved. On election day, he triumphed with 61% against the Antipersonalists' 28%.

Hipólito was back.

[Estrella]

He's At It Again: Hipólito Yrigoyen

1928—1930

Throughout the late 19th and early 20th century, the key to Argentina's fast and near-uninterrupted economic growth lied in its geography: massive amounts of arable land and pastures, all of highest quality in the continent. The country became a leading producer of crops, meat and animal products, which were exported all over the world, but especially to Britain. In turn, Britain provided Argentina with investments in infrastructure and businesses and industrial products for its domestic market - all in all, a very globalized economy, if such a word existed in 1929.

Then, on October 24, 1929, Wall Street crashed and so did the economic bonanza sweeping the developed world, of which Argentina was back then undoubtedly a part of. The Great Depression began, international trade subsided and countries that were dependent on it suffered. Argentina wasn't hit as badly, though. The government made a smart decision and made Argentina the first major economy in the world to abandon the gold standard. The value of the peso plummeted, but this move made exports more competitive. Despite 80% of Argentine GDP coming from foreign trade, the effects of the Depression weren't that bad - for example, unemployment was relatively low, never rising into the double digits.

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A crisis may not be catastrophic, but it still is a crisis. Oh, we're not doing as badly as other countries - try telling that to a worker who has been fired from his job, to a family struggling to get by after their wages have been cut, to a businessman who lost his entire livelihood on the stock market. The country needed decisive action, right there, right then.

Alas, the old radical in Casa Rosada wasn't the in his prime anymore. When the crisis hit, the President was 77, weak both physically and mentally and increasingly dependent on his advisors. Already in his first term, Yrigoyen showed that he may be a skilled populist on the campaign trail but rather... pragmatic in government. Worse, he became more authoritarian. He forcefully intervened in provinces governed by dissident Radicals and may or may not have ordered (probably not, but the suspicion was there) the assassination of Carlos Washington Lencinas, an opposition senator and caudillo of the province of Mendoza. His funeral in November 1929 turned into a massive rally against the government.

The popular pressure on the government to do something kept rising. In the 1930 midterm elections*, UCR still won but lost a lot of support to Socialists. Some months later, Yrigoyen listened at last. He dusted off his old radical credentials and came up with a bombshell: all oil resources in Argentina were to be nationalized and placed under themanagement of YPF. On August 1, 1930, YPF took the first step and intervened in the oil market to regulate prices and break the trust between British oil companies and American Standard Oil.

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The prospect of Yrigoyen turning into a radical and threatening the commercial interests of the upper class, people who became rich thanks to their connections with British and American investors wasn't a surprise to anyone. Antipersonalistas were seen as the bulwark that could keep yrigoyenistas out of power after conservatives became too disorganized and too intertwined with oligarchy to win elections. The spectacular failure of this strategy in 1928 led the right wing to look for different solutions. As soon as Yrigoyen's second term began, Agustín Pedro Justo, one of de Alvear's military cabinet appointees, began scheming. His favored outcome was removal of  Yrigoyen from the presidency and his replacement by a civilian, sort-of democratic government composed of conservatives and anti-Yrigoyen Radicals. This put him in conflict with his main co-conspirator, General José Félix Uriburu, who aimed for an explicitly undemocratic corporatist regime inspired by Mussolini's Italy and Primo de Rivera's Spain.

When the oil nationalization was announced, Yrigoyen's removal from office suddenly turned from a vague possibility into something terrifyingly realistic. YPF's intervention on August 1 started the countdown. Over the next weeks, a military coup was openly discussed, even encouraged, in Crítica and other traditionally anti-yrigoyenista newspapers. On August 5, government suspended elections in provinces of Mendoza and San Juan, whose governors were removed by Yrigoyen earlier that year; on August 29, posters appeared in Buenos Aires demanding the president's resignation; on September 3 and 4, a wave of demonstrations swept Buenos Aires.

At dawn on Saturday, September 6, a group of congressmen, including conservatives and anti-Yrigoyen socialists, visited Campo de Mayo, the largest military base in Argentina. The base commander refused their call to take action, but other officers enthusiastically agreed. The army moved into Buenos Aires with minimal resistance and arrived at Casa Rosada. Yrigoyen and his Vice-President Enrique Martínez were taken to nearby La Plata, where they both signed their resignation.


* A honorable mention to the hilarious number of Radical splinters that ran in that election: UCR-A, UCR-Cab, UCR-O, UCR-C, UCR-D, UCR-P, another UCR-D, UCR-R, UCR-T, UCR-L and UCR-B... that's 11 Radical Civic Unions, in addition to the official one. That's just the splinters that kept the UCR name, though: there was, for example, the Public Health Party (0.9% nationally, 4.2% in Buenos Aires) whose aim was to, among other things, to mandate health certifications for food workers and putting expiration dates on product packaging.

[Estrella]

Let's Try Something New: José Félix Uriburu

1930—1932

The September Revolution, as the coup was called by its proponents, was indeed something new. Since mid-19th century, Argentine politics was, by South American standards, very stable - no successful revolutions, no successful coups, transfers of power based on results of generally democratic elections. Now, General Uriburu was the first in a long list of de facto presidents - ones that came to Casa Rosada not through the ballot box, but rather a tank.

The coup d'état was illegal (duh) and while running around the streets with guns might have given the new regime sufficient legitimacy in practice, they were anxious to get a legal basis for their actions. They got it in a Supreme Court decision that, to put it simply, proclaimed all decisions the junta makes are as valid as ones made by a democratically elected government and allowed it to legislate by decree, as long as the law is later confirmed by Congress. This became known as the de facto government doctrine.

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The ideological division between "business conservative" Justo and corporatist Uriburu continued after the coup. Let's talk about where the latter was coming from.

Remember the striking workers' arch-enemy, the Argentine Patriotic League? They, together with other movements that wanted to continue the pre-1916 conservative social order and opposed liberalism/leftism in general and Yrigoyen in particular, morphed into Nacionalismo, a more-or-less cohesive political movement. Over time, they changed and radicalized - from vaguely anti-revolutionary or reactionary conservatives into a group openly inspired by Fascism and Nazism, though with some local modifications - although they were strongly anti-Communist and anti-Semitic, their motivations for reining in capitalism and helping the working class stemmed from a quasi-Christian Democratic vision of social justice. They were, indeed, strongly Catholic and opposed Yrigoyen's secular education system as a "tool of Freemasons" (who were actually pretty strong among Radicals back then, so this is slightly, just slightly less unhinged than it sounds). Their other main pillar was, as you can guess from their name, nationalism. In conflict with political and economic elites, they opposed British and American ownership of industry, infrastructure and natural resources. Internationally, they had links to similar movements in Europe but they were ideologically closest to people like Francisco Franco and António Salazar.

Nacionalistas never formed any paramilitary group, political party or other organized front for themselves - partly because of internal divisions, partly because Radicals, their biggest enemy, were out of power and there was nobody to fight against and partly because they radicalized to the point where they regarded the existence of parties and even democracy itself as dangerous. They did increase their strength, though, especially in the army - something that was to come to haunt the regime they helped to install.

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After the coup, multiple Radical leaders were arrested after being accused of plotting to overthrow the new government, others were kept under police surveillance and Yrigoyen himself was exiled to Martín Garcia Island. Nevertheless, the coupists wanted to come back to some form of democracy as soon as possible. The de facto government doctrine made the new regime legitimate in eyes of the law (as twisted as it was) and now they were looking for legitimacy from the people. The first attempt wasn't exactly successful - a provincial election in Buenos Aires resulted in a narrow victory for UCR's Honorio Pueyrredón over the government's preferred candidate, and so they decided to try a different approach.

The government's strategy for the 1931 presidential election was, tellingly, called el fraude patriótico. It was created to lead to victory of Concordancia, a grouping uniting the main supporters of the regime. The alliance was composed of Antipersonalist Radicals (UCR-A), National Democratic Party (PDN, an attempt to unify conservatives left in the wilderness after 1916) and Independent Socialist Party (PSI, a spineless pragmatic splinter of the old Socialist Party led by Roberto Nobe, founder of the tabloid Clarín and Federico Pinedo*, a future Minister of Finance). Uriburu's poor health and personal distaste for politics ensured that he was out of the running and Agustín Pedro Justo was the candidate - as a member of the PSI, strangely enough. He won 59% of the vote - a victory that was convincing numerically, unconvincing democratically.

As for the opposition-governed Buenos Aires, a new election was promptly called to, ehm, fix the result. Pueyrredón was kicked off the ballot and the correct candidate won with 55% against his closest challenger, the 42% of voters who voted blank.


* Federico Pinedo later became (in)famous for his involvement a bizarre incident - during a parliamentary debate in 1935, he got into a schoolyard-insult-laden argument with Senator and presidential candidate Lisandro de la Torre, which was followed two days latter by his fellow Minister Luis Duhau physically assaulting the Senator on the floor of Congress. The brawl ended with Duhau's bodyguards shooting and killing (likely on purpose) Enzo Bordabehere, another Senator who was trying to protect de la Torre. Pinedo then challenged him to a duel and probably would have killed his opponent if he wasn't such a terrible shooter (and afterwards refused to reconcile and called the duel "an irrational sham"). As for de la Torre, the Bordabehere murder seems to have played a part in him committing suicide three years later.

[Estrella]

No Democracy Please, We're Argentinian

❊❊❊

Act One: Agustín Pedro Justo

1932—1938

Upon entering office, Justo's government was faced with a bleak economic picture. The Great Depression led to an increase in the popularity of protectionism around the world. Argentina's dependency on exports, especially to United Kingdom, meant that its industries were suffering. The last straw was the Imperial Preference system, designed to promote trade within the Commonwealth by isolating it from outside markets. Argentina was desperate to break a hole in the wall of tariffs to stop its economy from falling into an even deeper crisis.

In 1933 Vice-President Julio A. Roca and Board of Trade president Walter Runciman signed an agreement. Argentina received a (rather low) beef export quota and in return Britain and British companies received a huge number of perks, including exemptions from labor law. The blatant one-sidedness of the deal poured fuel into the fire of outrage about Argentina being exploited by foreign interests and it remained a political powder keg for several years (that Pinedo-de la Torre dispute was started by a debate about just this).

The Roca-Runciman Treaty made it clear that the times have changed and primary sector exports weren't going to be enough for an economic recovery. The government decided to experiment with import substitution industrialization (ISI), a policy that would soon become vogue throughout Latin America. The rationale for ISI was that instead of buying industrial products from abroad, the government would establish tariffs on imports and invest in building factories at home. This would mean that money would stay in the country and plenty of new workplaces would be created.

That was the theory, at least. In practice, it meant that agriculture, Argentina's most profitable industry, already hurt by the pact with Britain, found itself abandoned. ISI was, to some extent, successful, but as the supply of money from agricultural exports dried up, Argentina found itself in a long spell of mediocre economic growth - not as bad as some other countries during the 1930s, but nevertheless a sharp contrast to the preceding boom decades.

❊❊❊

The 1930s were otherwise not that bad, though. Justo was, in a way, a throwback to de Alvear - a mildly reformist type that supports change as long as it doesn't threaten the position of his social class. His government established the Central Bank of Argentina, introduced a nationwide income tax and had a surprisingly good relationship with workers' unions.

In 1930, the majority of trade unions in Argentina, ranging in ideology from social democrats to communists to anarchists, all merged into the General Confederation of Labour, the CGT. This gave the unions and their hundreds of thousands of members the potential to be a powerful force in society and politics. Union bosses, however, decided to cooperate with the government instead and avoid strikes in return for the occasional wage increase here or a new labor regulation there. This created divisions and various radical splinter groups, but the core organization managed to stay mostly united until 1942, when it split into the hilariously unimaginatively named anti-communist CGT n°1 and communist CGT n°2. After a military coup in 1943, these two groups were forcefully reunified and CGT again became a cohesive, powerful organization. One member of the military junta, a certain Colonel Perón, would realize that this was something he could exploit... but that's a story for another time.

❊❊❊

As Justo's presidential term was nearing its end, it was time for Concordancia to choose a new candidate; they selected Roberto Marcelino Ortiz and Ramón Castillo as his running mate. Both were controversial: Ortiz was clearly a cronyist choice motivated by his ties to British commercial interests and Castillo was a part of the quasi-feudal landowning aristocracy that still clung on to power in the provinces. El fraude patriótico returned and the Ortiz-Castillo ticket won the 1937 election with 54% against former president Marcelo T. de Alvear's 42%.

[CumbrianLefty]

Thank you so much for these, Argentina is a fascinating (if sometimes tragic) country.

[Estrella]

No Democracy Please, We're Argentinian

❊❊❊

Act Two: Roberto Marcelino Ortiz

1938—1942

Manuel Fresco was, by all accounts, an ambitious man. That wasn't necessarily for the best - especially if ambition meant remaking his fiefdom to suit his views, especially if those views were a thinly disguised version of fascism. He was the Governor of Buenos Aires Province from 1936 to 1940 and led what was arguably the closest emulation of Mussolini's or Franco's policies among all of their plentiful Latin American fanboys. He even had the former's bust in his office and liked to deliver speeches praising his toothbrush-mustachioed colleague. Massive modernist architectural projects one one hand - an education to instill obedience and "traditional values" on the other.

However, when the clearly (and amateurishly) rigged 1940 provincial election led to a narrow victory of Alberto Barceló, his protégé and the corrupt caudillo of the Buenos Aires suburb of Avellaneda, the President decided to act. Ortiz was, for his part, someone who valued democracy as more than something to be used as a controlled outlet for popular anger. For once, federal government's questionable power to intervene in provincial politics was used for good. The President deposed Fresco and annulled the election. Unfortunately, that didn't last - not long after Ortiz left office, Fresco's ally Rodolfo Moreno was fraude patriótico-ed into governorship.

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You wouldn't know it from the subservience of trade unions, but there was a lot of social discontent in Argentina. Import substitution was successful in that it spurred the growth of industry and led to migrants, both from the countryside and from abroad, flocking into major cities. Between 1914 and 1947, metro Buenos Aires grew by nearly three million people; further hundreds of thousands moved into growing industrial centers in the provinces. The conservative, laissez-faire approach of the government, combined with incompetence and corruption when it did decide to act, meant that these immigrants were forced to live in villas miserias: shanty towns on outskirts of cities, full of overcrowded shacks without access to electricity or sanitation.

Hardly something rare in Latin America, but Argentina had a vibrant tradition of political activism and these people would be the perfect match for socialist or communist parties anywhere in the world. But the Infamous Decade, as the Uriburu-Justo-Ortiz period was known, was an illiberal regime that would permit these parties to exist, but wouldn't look too kindly on any large-scale social activism. Yrigoyen was dead and the PSI was nominally socialist, but nobody held any illusions about their actual policies. There was a political vacuum in society - millions of workers and poor people were dissatisfied, enraged, but they didn't have any ideology or, failing that, a charismatic figure to turn to.

Yet.

❊❊❊

The sad state of President's health was long well-known. In his last months, he had been blinded by diabetes. That was the last straw that led to his resignation on June 27, 1942 and to his death less than a month later. His Vice-President Ramón Castillo took his place.

[Estrella]

No Democracy Please, We're Argentinian

❊❊❊

Act Three: Ramón Castillo

1942—1943

Eighty-nine years ago to the day, on September 1, 1939, international diplomacy broke down and, as the people were calling it back then, a second Great War was about to erupt. Seems like a great time to have a talk about foreign policy, isn't it?

For a country that was so deeply economically and politically intertwined with an European power as Argentina was with Britain, a policy of neutrality in wars in Europe seems like a strange choice. The reason for that connection to Britain, however, was the fact that Argentina was her breadbasket and slaughterhouse. Unrestricted submarine warfare wasn't all that common before WW2, and during wartime it was much easier for Argentine ships to travel to Europe as a neutral third party rather than as enemies. If U-boats were given a justification to start firing torpedoes at Argentine ships as freely as they did at British ones, UK's fragile supply network keeping her soldiers and civilians fed would collapse. It was vital for Britain that Argentina stays neutral.

But by the 1940s Britain wasn't the only player anymore. The United States saw Latin America as their sphere of influence and were keen to weaken Britain's connections to the region, not to mention that they didn't need Argentine exports and didn't have any trade routes that could be endangered by a war. After Pearl Harbor, America was adamant to get as much Latin American countries to join the war as possible. Argentina kept refusing the US plan for South America to join the allies en bloc and American pressure grew and grew, to the point that Argentine government was perceived in some circles as enablers of fascism, if not fascists themselves.

❊❊❊

In 1930, nacionalistas and the oligarchs fought together to remove Yrigoyen. They had a common enemy but as soon as he was out of the picture, the differences between them became visible. The oligarchs were mostly landowners, aristocrats, bankers and old money types in general; they made their fortune thanks to business connections with Britain and weren't particularly happy about endangering them - after all, a threat to these interests was the immediate trigger of the 1930 coup.

The nationalists, on the other hand, were mostly middle class, with their core and most active members being Army officers (ground forces that is, not the Navy, which was very aristocratic). They didn't like Concordancia's policy of appeasing foreign investors and neither did they like their classical liberal economic policies when they saw a need for government to take action. Not to mention that some of them went beyond the call for neutrality and were outright supporters of fascism.

❊❊❊

1943 was an election year. Concordancia announced their preferred candidate and... it didn't quite go as planned. Robustiano Patrón Costas was almost designed to send Argentines frustrated with the increasingly ineffective and out of touch government into a howl of rage.

He supported joining the Allies and sending soldiers to the front; the military hated the lackey of foreign diplomats who used Argentina as a pawn in their grand game. He was an ultra-rich landowner from the provinces and baron of the sugar industry; the bourgeoisie hated the almost medieval feudal aristocrat who prevented them from climbing the social ladder. He was a staunch economic conservative who paraded around with British investors; the working class hated the man who let foreign companies exploit and underpay them at work and let them live in squalor at home.

Costas could not win; and yet, he could not lose. It became clear that the incumbent President would be willing to resort to electoral fraud on an unprecedented scale to get the result he wanted.

In the eyes of the military, they had only one option.

❊❊❊

Nationalists in the armed forces had a core of sorts. The United Officers Group or GOU was created to organize efforts to prevent Costas' accession to power and Argentina's entry into war. It originated from two lieutenant-colonels, Miguel Montes and Urbano de la Vega and over time expanded to 26 members. There was no official leader, but some members had more influence than others; among those were officers such as Arístobulo Mittelbach, Arturo Saavedra and a certain Juan Perón.

The second coup of the century started at the same place the first one did: the Campo de Mayo barracks. The operation itself was much better organized than the previous one. Units moved quickly and secured key locations, with the exception of Navy School of Mechanics on the outskirts of the capital. Officers of Armada were the only group that remained loyal to the government and Ejército had to take building by force, at the cost of thirty lives.

The President saw the writing on the wall, fled Casa Rosada, boarded a fishing trawler and escaped across the river to Uruguay.

❊❊❊

from commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Revolucion_del_43.jpg - Diarios "La Razón" y "El Día"

Castillo was gone and with him, the Infamous Decade.

[Estrella]

Thank you so much for these, Argentina is a fascinating (if sometimes tragic) country.

Thank you!
Yeah, I feel Argentina is one of the few countries on Earth where you genuinely don't know whether you're writing a summary of history or a melodrama, for better or worse.

[RodPresident]

I can see the fun that Radicalism is also a very versatile movement that can be populist, progressive (when they formed Alianza or Intransigente phase), but somewhat conservative and even neoliberal (supporting Macri).

[Estrella]

I can see the fun that Radicalism is also a very versatile movement that can be populist, progressive (when they formed Alianza or Intransigente phase), but somewhat conservative and even neoliberal (supporting Macri).

Yeah, anti-Peronists tend to be a little more ideological, but it's not much better. It’s a huge contrast to the other side of the Andes and closer to the meaningless party labels in places like Brazil.

Now that I'm thinking of it... these kinds of cross-country comparisons are a bit silly, but it's superficially* similar to Ireland some decades ago:

Fianna Fáil and Peronists as the dominant political movement whose only ideology is nationalism and amorphous Muh Common People populism. Goes whichever way the wind is blowing on economic policy. Also, corrupt as f***.

Fine Gael and Radicals/Cambiemos etc. as the hopeless main opposition, tend to be more economically liberal except when they don't and not all that different.

Labour and Partido Socialista, far-left etc. as the even more hopeless party that tried to go after working class and got wind stolen from its sails by Perón and de Valera.

* I really, really need to stress this. This is just some #analysis done for fun. The underlying reasons for how the countries got where they are couldn’t be more different.

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

Thank you so much for these, Argentina is a fascinating (if sometimes tragic) country.

Thank you!
Yeah, I feel Argentina is one of the few countries on Earth where you genuinely don't know whether you're writing a summary of history or a melodrama, for better or worse.

Just stumbled upon those summaries! They’re really interesting! Are you planning on continuing them into the Peron era?

[Samof94]

There was a guy named Carlos Menem who was President in the 90’s who famously converted to Catholicism as their constitution required it at time. His Presidency is widely criticized for being tied to the country’s economic troubles at the turn of the millennium.