The legacy of Juan Perón

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

The government of Juan Perón was one of the most progressive in Latin
American history in the 20th century. Here is a list of its accomplishments:

1. Taking advantage of government leniency if not outright support, trade
unions were formed in every industry.
2. Social security was made universal.
3. Education was made free to all who qualified.
4. Vast low-income housing projects were created.
5. Paid vacations became standard.
6. A working student was given one paid week before every major examination.
7. All workers (including white-collar employees like bank tellers, etc.)
were guaranteed free medical care and half of their vacation-trip expenses.
8. A mother-to-be received 3 paid months off prior to and after giving birth.
9. Workers recreation centers were constructed all over Argentina,
including a vast resort in the lower Sierras that included 8 hotels, scores
of cabins, movies, swimming pools and riding stables. This resort was
available to workers for 15 days a year, at the cost of 15 cents per day,
all services included.

In order to strengthen Argentina's economy, Perón created the Argentina
Institute for Promotion of Exchange (AIPE), a monopoly that handled all
commodity exports. Cattle, wheat, etc. were sold at a high price overseas.
While not socialism, this measure was consistent with the traditional
Marxist demand for a monopoly on foreign trade. Perón also bought out the
local IT&T operation and the railroad and trolley system from Great
Britain. He paid off Argentina's foreign debt and launched a 5-year plan in
1946 that covered everything from the woman's right to vote to shipbuilding.

By 1954 Perón had initiated more than 45 major hydroelectric projects
designed to produce 2 billion kilowatt-hours of energy, 20 times the amount
that was available in 1936. While in hindsight we can say that these
projects had ecological drawbacks, they still represented an audacious step
in the direction of making every citizen's life more fulfilling. By 1947,
Argentina had launched its own iron and steel industry. It was also moving
forward in coal extraction and other raw materials using the most advanced
technology available at the time. It began to make farm machinery, planes
and cars in modest numbers. Ship-building had expanded by 500 percent under
Perón's regime.

But Perón failed to sustain these progressive changes over the long haul.
All of the gains of the Perón era have disappeared as workers' lives and
fortunes have gone downhill. What happened?

Basically Perón failed because his reforms were not radical enough. For
example, although he raised rural wages and forced landlords to sell cheap
to the AIPE, he refused to take the next step when they balked. He did not
nationalize the land. Thus, the amount of land under cultivation dropped
from nearly 22 million hectares in 1934-38 to just over 17 million in 1955.
What you had was a producer's strike, not that much different from the kind
Allende was confronted by.

His philosophy was not fascist at all, but a 'third way' called
"Justicialismo" that tried to steer clear between capitalism and socialism.
Although I have not made a systematic study of the ideological roots of
Perónism, it appears closely related to the APRA movement launched by Haya
de la Torre in Peru. Progressives associated with this movement, including
Alan Garcia, have a record of caving in to imperialism. The one thing that
they can do to keep imperialism at bay is impermissible: to arm the workers
and expropriate the expropriators. Despite their inadequacies, the workers
movement has an obligation to defend such governments under attack from
imperialism.

After Perón was overthrown by the military in 1955, the ruling class took
steps almost immediately to foster the development of democracy, which in
reality was a fig leaf for their brutality and greed. Arturo Frondizi was
groomed to take over as the first 'democratic' President.

In this venture he was backed by a millionaire ex-Communist named Rogelio
Frigerio, who defined democracy as "that system where money speaks louder
than principles." It was no accident that an ex-Communist would lend his
energy and resources to such a project. As a Communist, Frigerio--following
the party line--was for the overthrow of Perón. Now as a capitalist, he
could have his cake and eat it too.

Using funds from Frigerio, Frondizi launched a magazine titled "Qué" that
recruited both rightist and leftist talent. All you needed to get a job was
a facile pen and hatred for the Perónist legacy.

Meanwhile, Frigerio had no trouble making pals with the military, even
though his magazine was promoting 'democracy'. Paying heed to Mexico's
revolutionary President Alvaro Obregón, who once said, "I do not know of a
single general able to resist a cannonade of one million pesos," Frigerio
got no less than two hundred generals to serve on the boards of
corporations he either influenced, owned or controlled.

Once Frondizi was elected, he gave the oligarchy tax concessions and
lucrative contracts, all in the interests of the kind of 'development'
promoted by the likes of Walt Rostow and Brad DeLong. This went hand in
hand with opening up Argentina to aggressive foreign investment. To show
his sincerity, he agreed to pay American corporations $60 million for
twenty-two power plants expropriated by Perón.

Although some projects were successful (joint oil exploration with Standard
Oil in Patagonia), others were colossal flops. Steel production had ground
to a halt. By 1962 the country was only producing 600,000 tons when it
needed 3,000,000. Meat production dropped from a high of 145,000 metric
tons under Perón to 87,000 by the end of 1961.

With the drop off in production, a destructive trade imbalance ensued:

Year		Deficit (in millions)
1960		$237
1961		$450
1962		$$640

These imbalances, in turn, caused the money supply to tighten up and
inflation outran wage increases. In the period following the overthrow of
Perón, wages went up 400 percent while the price of food went up 750 percent.

The economic contradictions deepened. This led to a series of workers
revolts in cities like Cordoba where auto workers built barricades and
fought the army and police. Due to a combination of political immaturity
and sectarianism, a revolution did not occur in Argentina despite a clear
desire for fundamental change.

We are fortunate to have compañeros like Nestor on these mailing lists who
represent the collective memory of Argentina's working class. Now that
workers in Argentina have answered the military, the comprador bourgeoisie
and their friends in the United States with a general strike, we might once
again see a re-emergence of the old mole revolution. This time we are
pledged to strengthen the Marxist pole through all means available to us.
This is the meaning of proletarian internationalism.

(This post relied heavily on information contained in the chapter on
Argentina in the out-of-print "The Great Fear in Latin America" by John
Gerassi. Gerassi was Latin America bureau chief of Time Magazine.)

Louis Proyect

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