I Cry for You Argentina!

by Anónimo Argentino (March 2015)

This crime and the response of the chief executive of the state is far worse than the trumped up charges against Captain Alfred Dreyfus in 1894 by rogue officers in the French High command – they acted to protect one of their own and cast the blame on the eternal scapegoat – the Jews. Evidence came to light as early as two years following his conviction through an investigation instigated by Georges Picquart, head of counter-espionage who correctly identified a French Army major, Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, as the real culprit. High-ranking military officials suppressed the new evidence and a military court unanimously acquitted Esterhazy after a trial lasting only two days.

The French government was not directly involved. The Argentinian case hid the Iranian culprits of the bombings of the Israeli Embassy and Jewish community Center in Buenos Aires for more than twenty years! French honor was ultimately restored due to the unceasing efforts of famed writer Émile Zola. There is no Argentinian Zola.

Juan Perón and his wife Eva Duarte Perón were the source of the political movement in the country that has dominated Argentine affairs for most of the past seventy years. The movement known as Justicialismo (embracing the ideal of social justice), but recognized more familiarly abroad simply as Peronism, created an economic, political, and social ideology that exalts the state, and by its own description attempts to accommodate the interests first and foremost of THE POOR as well as labor, and industry. This form of government highly controls and subsidizes many labor unions, strongly supports the military, private industry, and public works. This model of a Latin American Populism was followed in Cuba by Fulgencio Batista, ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier in Haiti and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. 

Argentina was pressured into declaring war on Germany and Japan in the closing weeks of the conflict. Both Juan and Eva Perón were instrumental in providing assistance to facilitate the escape of many Nazi war criminals and their establishment under hidden identities in Argentina. Nevertheless, the opportunistic Perón regime was on very good terms with elements within the Jewish community, and maintained friendly relations with the State of Israel even though it abstained on the issue of the partition of Palestine in the 1947 U.N. resolution. Even today, a strong supporter of President Kirchner and the impending deal with Iran (and a strong critic of Israel) is the Jewish Argentinian foreign minister Héctor Timerman.

Following World War II (which was economically extremely beneficial to Argentina), the Peronist regime’s inefficiency led to the decline of the country’s economy, the bankrupting of the civil services, profitless industries and the further strengthening control over labor unions. Subsequent military governments, however, that followed Perón’s death, were guilty of much greater and widespread abuse of human rights and led the country into ever worse difficulties and the adventurist war over the Falklands. 

railroads and some of the largest corporations and at the same time protected and won the support of major labor unions that agreed to relinquish the right to strike.

About the only certainty regarding Peronism is the identity of those elements of the population that came to regard Perón with contempt. They were the old landed aristocracy, the Roman Catholic Church, a free press and intellectuals who regarded themselves as “liberals” in the old fashioned sense of supporting individual rights and who admired the United States and Great Britain as models for a democratic society.

Judging by the nature of these “enemies,” most observers would brand Peronism as a form of a Leftwing fascism, however, Perón had served as a military attaché in Italy and expressed great admiration for the policies and personality of Benito Mussolini. It was there that he acquired a taste for the kind of authoritarian rule and a corporate economic system he believed would propel Argentina into the ranks of a great power. He supported the military coup of 1943 that placed a clique of generals in power with whom he shared the same political views but realized quickly that they lacked the ambition to become a truly popular national leadership and that they had failed to reach the broad sections of the lower classes, especially urban workers, women, and immigrants.

Perón became Minister of Labor in 1944 and supported legislation to raise wages and grant special privileges to favored unions. Suspicion of his policies led to an attempt by rivals to force him from power but loyal labor leaders rallied mass demonstrations to protest his imprisonment. This support engineered his release and success in national presidential elections in 1946. Perón’s appeal was also linked to policies that typified what many lower class Argentines defined as virtues such as national pride, resentment of snobs, intellectuals and aristocrats, success in football, the tango, and a contempt of homosexuality. 

During World War II, the Communist Party line from Moscow was to support the Allied cause after the German invasion of the USSR, a step that led to Perón posing as the benefactor of the working class. He intervened to support striking workers, including those working for British owned firms, a step criticized by the Communists as hurting the Allied war effort. Having come to power as a candidate of the Labor Movement, Perón proclaimed a new ideology of social justice that he argued was more in line with Argentine reality than the “class struggle.” In his ideology, all classes had to work in harmony for the common good.

The economic prosperity resulting from Argentina’s status as a neutral country and the demand for its meat and grain exports were cleverly used to increase real wages, making it appear that Perón was the true friend of the working class. This isolated the previously strong influence that Communist and Socialist parties had exercised within the unions. Perón used his influence and charisma to replace union leaders with communist or socialist sympathies with his cronies and by appealing to the workers that real bread and butter issues would be given more sympathy by a government in his hands. At the same time, he explained to employers that his policies ultimately benefitted them by ensuring future labor peace. His policies granted collective bargaining to the unions that increasingly became dependent on his good will.

He became professor of English literature at the University of Buenos Aires, and taught there from 1955 to 1970.  Borges never ceased his opposition while Perón remained in office, or after the coup which deposed him, nor during all the intervening years. Shortly after the success of the Peronists in the 1973 elections, he gave an interview to a Brazilian newspaper and stated “When I think of the cases of torture, I have the impression that my country is disintegrating morally as well as economically.”

Borges’ hatred of Perón stemmed not simply from the principles of opposition to a demagogue and dictator whose regime practiced torture and suppressed civil liberties. It was also part of the old struggle in Argentina between a populist appeal to the masses that downgraded respect for education, erudition, high culture and art that Borges had grown up with and which he felt had been prostituted by Perón and his wives. It is no accident that “popular Argentinian culture” which has elevated Eva Peron, Che Guevara and football star Diego Maradona as its most representative figures (judged by the sale of their images on postcards and memorabilia of all kinds at every kiosk appealing to tourists). appeals to the same populist mind-set that Juan Perón helped cultivate during his years as the head of state.

If any further proof were needed of the diverse, often contradictory nature of General Juan Perón and his bases of support in the country, it has to be his fall from power under the joint attack of The Catholic Church and a Free Press headed by the great Buenos Aires liberal journal La Prensa. This was followed by eighteen years of exile in the Spain of General Franco only to return and then win the presidency by a landslide victory in what all observers agree were free and honest elections. Even more remarkable was the growth of his wife Eva’s status as an adored icon of the masses symbolized so effectively in the musical Evita. Evita’s image on the new Argentinian 100 peso note and the placement of her portrait in mammoth size at the headquarters of a major workers’ union building in the center of Buenos Aries by the current president Christine Kirchner reinforced her image as the Peronist heir to the throne and idol of the “working classes.”

Although Perón himself did not encourage anti-Semitism, the Peronist legacy in Argentina has taken on this dimension with the popularity of Fidel Castro in Cuba and his pro-Soviet and pro-Arab foreign policy and the growing demonization of Israel so common now in many third world countries hungry for the attention of the oil rich Arab world as well as in the eyes of any in the Argentinian worker’s class for whom the Jews, like the English or the Americans symbolized “privileged” economic or cultural power.

Following the overthrow of Peron, exiled newspaper editor Alberto Gainza Paz returned to Argentina in February 1956 to take over La Prensa again and the first issue to appear under his control was numbered 29,476 ignoring the years Perón had controlled the paper. In a short time, it once again became the leading newspaper in the country and regained its prestige.

Eva Perón’s Growing Influence and Cult Status

Perón’s Fall

The growing dissatisfaction of the Catholic Church that had never fully endorsed Perón’s worship of the state as the source of all authority led to increased tensions. This was followed by the setting up of a rival Catholic trade union to which Perón responded with verbal threats against priests “meddling in politics.” Although frequently cast as a “rightwing dictator,” that many observers immediately and automatically assume means support for the established church, but Perón was largely undone by the conflict. Several priests were arrested and imprisoned followed by Perón shutting down Catholic newspapers and banning religious processions. Followers in the street demonstrations he organized in his support chanted the slogan of “Priests NO, Perón YES! (very much like the old slogan of Perón Si – Braden No!”) Hoping for support from liberals, he had Congress legalize divorce and remove religious instruction from the schools. Going even farther, Perón granted legitimacy to children born out of wedlock, and legalized prostitution.

Perón’s Long Shadow 1955-73

In spite of his humiliating fall from power, Argentina’s inability to solve its major economic problems and notably the ruinous runaway inflation that had been accelerated by Perón’s policies of generous welfare subsidies and protected national industries, contributed to a growing nostalgia for Peronism. Attempts to rein in these policies led to demonstrations and unstable governments with periodic military intervention. Because the government’s policies had tried to reverse some of the popular measures taken by Perón, much of the opposition focused on recalling and restoring his heritage. Thus arose the phenomenon of what has been called “Leftwing Peronism” (ignoring many anti-intellectual cultural elements) and calls for his return from exile to lead the nation again. Although opposed by a broad coalition of forces that could be defined as both Left and Right, the strong street based neighborhood and union cadres of the Peronista movement had considerable organizational strength and staying power and won handily, bringing Juan Perón back in triumph.

After receiving an “invitation” from the military government, Perón returned to Argentina in 1973. He was elected president in free and fair elections and his third wife, the unstable Isabel de Perón, was elected as his vice-president. She succeeded him after his death on July 1, 1974. During his short term and that of his wife’s, problems were exacerbated and the military found that it had no choice but to once again seize power in 1976.

The Power of Peronism Without Perón

More than any other country, Argentina’s political history over the past seventy years can be framed in terms of Peronism, a philosophy uniting many elements of both the Left and the Right against the Center. In its own words, Perón’s Party, still in existence today (but divided into antagonistic competing wings) and called El Partido Justicialista (PJ) describes itself as an “Argentine Political Party, a continuation of the Peronista Party, founded by General Juan Domingo Perón in 1947. Its original principal banner is The Defense of the Workers, remaining since then a deep attachment to the Working Class and the Unions.”

This declaration has provided it in the minds of many of those on the Marxist Left with a set of indulgences like those the church granted to sinners in the Middle Ages. Today, it is not only the President of Argentina but the entire movement that stands condemned for behind the scenes moves linking it to the Iranian mullahs and Hezbollah just as its sordid past in helping Nazi war criminals find refuge. Since Nisman’s death, the respected Jewish journalist of the English language Buenos Aires Herald, Damian Pachter fled the country for his life reaching Israel via Uruguay. Whether the President is in charge or “rogue elements” of the intelligence services, no Argentinians are safe and Jews must face the reality that they will continue to be the favorite scapegoat of the regime’s many failures under the still lengthy shadow of Juan and Eva Perón.

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Anónimo Argentino is long time commentator on Argentine affairs.

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