The Long Agony of Peronist Argentina

 

The Long Agony of Peronist Argentina by Tulio Halperin Donghi.

Publisher: Ariel. Year: 2006

I am not going to dwell on writing a detailed summary of the book. Instead, I will share my personal opinion about it. The book itself is brief. Brief, but not an easy read because it requires understanding many themes and events that the author mentions without detailing them. It is complex; the author has an extraordinary capacity for synthesis, yet at the same time, it becomes difficult to fully grasp. This is why it is not strictly a history book—even though it is written by a historian, and not just any historian, but a renowned one. The author presents his reflection from a very particular point of view; he is direct and heavily relies on sarcasm. Inexorable, rigorous, severe, and to some extent somewhat cruel, the author delivers his critique throughout this Peronist period—I say Peronist because he concludes it with hyperinflation and the times that followed.

On the back cover of the book, the end of this period seems to be the end of the "Peronist revolution," which would be giving way to the new days yet to come. These new days have already come and gone, twenty years ago, and it would be good to have a new reflection from the author.

I found an interview with the author conducted in 2008 for the La Nación newspaper (http://www.lanacion.com.ar/nota.asp?nota_id=1048747) and I will transcribe what I found interesting because it relates to the book:

·         However, in your book The Long Agony of Peronist Argentina, another outcome appeared. The 1989 hyperinflation seemed to be the end of a cycle, the end of that Peronist society.

·         Of course, there I was referring to the agony of Peronist society, which should have been the title of the book. Because I believe Peronism survived by undoing the Peronist revolution. That is what Carlos Menem did. This Argentina we live in today is a kind of anthology of the Peronist past with 1970s music and Frondizian prose.

·         It also contains some traits of what you recall of the Peronism of the 1950s, those ridiculous fringes of people performing swimming feats so that Perón would agree to be re-elected.

·         Yes, but that was a more legitimate absurdity; that is, people were inventing something. Whereas now, that dimension is missing.

It seems that he is no longer referring to Peronism as such, but to society itself—a critique of Argentine society, with the undeniable influence and interference that Peronism has had on it.

I highlight the fact that he discusses political violence extensively, describing it throughout the book as one of the observable characteristics of society.

It seems to me that a continuous core theme is the critique of the attacks on the democratic system. He places special emphasis on this throughout the book.

"The political experience inaugurated in 1955 inflicted blows upon those traditions that were all the more severe because those who struck them had begun by proclaiming themselves their avengers and restorers. Following the stage of systematic electoral falsification opened in 1931, and which from 1946 used the restored electoral system to give a plebiscitary basis to an authoritarianism whose style owed much to that of European totalitarians, the stage opened with the overthrow of Perón was yet to explore a third way of subverting representative democracy, this time through the continuous redefinition of the terms under which electoral competition was authorized." The Long Agony of Peronist Argentina. Tulio Halperin Donghi. Pages 49–50.

"Not only the political forces competing for citizen support, but society itself knew how to adapt with extreme rapidity to a situation that only assured political efficacy to the exercise of suffrage—whose unappealable verdict, according to the already dying inherited civic faith, opened the sole legitimate access to power—at the price of acknowledging that its role was now different and more modest." The Long Agony of Peronist Argentina. Tulio Halperin Donghi. Page 51.

From this last paragraph, the concept of civic faith as a political experience and its adaptation to reigning changes caught my attention. The concept of civic faith is revisited on other occasions later on.

To understand the book, one must finish reading it; an analysis cannot be made halfway through. For the author, the extinction of Peronism as a social revolution seems to begin with the 1975 dictatorship, after the supposed economic takeoff failed and the agony had begun. In a frank and highly caustic manner, the author describes the dismantling of the Peronist State. Trade unionism had less and less influence, and the Peronist working class had been so impoverished that it practically disappeared. The changes affected the middle class, which, having remained solid, had allowed the country to keep moving forward despite its ups and downs.

Another topic is suffrage, which with proscription caused restlessness and anguish, although Perón appears favored by the electoral issue, without detracting from the astuteness with which he handled that entire period.

In less than two pages, he explains this with utmost clarity; I will transcribe them:

"Although his rivals were never to forgive him that casual instrumentalization of the new rules of the political game, even then they did not renounce manipulating them more discreetly to their own advantage: thus, a fiercely anti-Peronist military administration could be seen momentarily abandoning direct repression of the overthrown movement for the benefit of its most intransigent militants, who found unexpected facilities to spread their message hostile to participation in elections where no legitimate access was granted to the party that had been the majority. Naturally, the tolerance occasionally granted to that defiantly subversive preaching was due to the hope that it would improve the electoral prospects of the Radical faction then closest to the military regime. It is not surprising then that while that faction, defined by its loyalty to a civic faith contradicted at every turn by the facts, seemed ever closer to transforming into a political fossil, Peronism—to whose detriment that labyrinthine system of manipulating the electoral system had been introduced—gradually recovered its lost freshness. Undoubtedly, one cannot ignore the contribution made to this by Perón’s resurrected tactical genius, which recovered and soon surpassed the already dazzling levels reached during his political irruption of 1943–46; if his performance after 1955 is not always recognized as masterful, it is due to the success achieved by his efforts to disguise a fact that he undoubtedly perceived very well: namely, that in this new context Peronism no longer commanded the absolute majority of voters." The Long Agony of Peronist Argentina. Tulio Halperin Donghi. Pages 52–53.

Despite these ups and downs, Peronism’s representativeness was not in trouble; it was never in trouble as long as Perón's figure existed. I would say this continues to be the case even though the Peronist leader is no longer here.

"Since that representativeness was not in question, any electoral result that failed to confirm it would hypothetically be defective." The Long Agony of Peronist Argentina. Tulio Halperin Donghi. Page 54.

This last phrase has lost none of its relevance, despite non-Peronist democratic governments.

Returning to the concept of civic faith, he seems to mark the beginning of its agony with the process opened around 1955 and later consolidated in 1966—at least it seemed to put an end to traditional civic faith, replacing it with another, more violent one.

The conclusion after reading the book is that it is very interesting, although rereading some of its pages may be necessary at times. It is a brief book, but a difficult read. Even though one does not leave with the best impression when reading about one's past within those pages—a past of which we are a part, one way or another, in this present—it communicates its ongoing intervention in our present.