Summary

Juan Domingo Perón (Lobos, October 8, 1895-Olivos, July 1, 1974) was an Argentine politician, military man and writer, three times president of the Argentine Nation, once de facto vice-president, and founder of Peronism, one of the most important popular movements in the history of Argentina. He was the only person to be elected three times president of his country and the first to be elected by universal male and female suffrage.

He participated in the Revolution of 1943, which ended the so-called Década Infame. After establishing an alliance with the socialist and revolutionary syndicalist currents, he was head of the National Department of Labor, the Secretariat of Labor and Social Security, the Ministry of War and the Vice-Presidency of the Nation. From the first two positions, he took measures to favor the working class sectors and to make labor laws effective: he promoted collective bargaining agreements, the Statute of the Farm Laborer, the labor courts and the extension of pensions to trade employees. These measures won him the support of a large part of the workers' movement and the repudiation of the business and high-income sectors and of the United States Ambassador, Spruille Braden, which led to a broad movement against him in 1945. In October of that year, a military palace coup forced him to resign and then ordered his arrest, which triggered, on October 17, 1945, a great workers' mobilization that demanded his release until he obtained it. That same year he married María Eva Duarte, who played an important political role during Perón's presidency.

He ran for president in the 1946 elections and was triumphant. Some time later, he merged the three parties that had supported his candidacy to create first the Partido Único de la Revolución and then the Partido Peronista; after the Constitutional Reform of 1949, he was reelected in 1951 in the first elections held in Argentina with the participation of both men and women. In addition to continuing with his policies in favor of the most underprivileged sectors, his government was characterized by implementing a nationalist and industrialist line, especially in the textile, iron and steel, military, transportation and foreign trade industries. In international politics he maintained a third position before the Soviet Union and the United States, within the framework of the Cold War. In his last year of government he clashed with the Catholic Church, increasing the confrontation between Peronists and anti-Peronists, for which reason the government hardened its persecution of the opposition and the opposing media. After a series of violent acts by anti-Peronist civilian and military groups, and especially the bombing of the Plaza de Mayo in mid 1955, Perón was overthrown in September of that same year.

The subsequent dictatorship banned Peronism from political life and repealed the constitutional reform, which included measures to protect the lower social sectors and the legal equality of men and women. After his overthrow, Perón went into exile in Paraguay, Panama, Nicaragua, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic and finally Spain. A widower since 1952, during his exile he married María Estela Martínez, known as Isabel. In his absence, a movement known as the Peronist resistance arose in Argentina, made up of various trade union, youth, student, neighborhood, religious, cultural and guerrilla groups, whose common goal was the return of Perón and the call for free elections without proscriptions.

He tried to return to the country in 1964, but President Arturo Illía prevented him from doing so by requesting the military dictatorship in power in Brazil to detain him and send him back to Spain. He finally returned to the country in 1972 to settle permanently in 1973. With Perón still banned, Peronism won the elections in March 1973, opening the period known as third Peronism. Internal sectors of the movement clashed politically and through acts of violence: after the so-called Ezeiza massacre, Perón gave broad support to the "orthodox" sectors of his party, some of which in turn created the para-police commando known as the Triple A, aimed at persecuting and assassinating "leftist" militants, Peronists and non-Peronists. A month and a half after taking office, President Cámpora resigned and new elections were called without proscriptions. Perón ran with his wife as candidates for president and vice-president respectively in September 1973 and achieved a wide victory, taking office in October of the same year. He died in mid-1974, leaving the Presidency in the hands of the Vice-President, who was overthrown without having finished her term. Peronism continued to exist and has achieved several electoral triumphs.

Juan Domingo Perón was born at the end of the 19th century in the town of Lobos, Province of Buenos Aires as a "natural son", because his mother and father were not married at the time of his birth, which they did later.

Due to the documentary inadequacies of the time and the high degree of miscegenation in Argentine society, Juan Domingo Perón's family and ethnic background, as well as the precise date and place of his birth, have been subject to historical debate. In 2000, Hipólito Barreiro published his research on Perón's birth and childhood in a book entitled Juancito Sosa: el indio que cambió la historia (Juancito Sosa: the Indian who changed history). while in 2010 and 2011 the lawyer-historian Ignacio Cloppet published his on the related genealogical records of Perón and Eva Duarte, tracing them in some cases back hundreds of years. The two investigations do not appear to be mutually exclusive, as Barreiro's focuses on the facts not officially recorded and Cloppet's on the official records.

Father, mother and siblings

His father was Mario Tomás Perón (1867-1928), an Argentine born in Lobos (province of Buenos Aires) who worked as a justice officer. His mother was Juana Salvadora Sosa (1874-1953), a Tehuelche Argentinian born in the Lobos area (Buenos Aires province). She had her first son, Mario Avelino, at the age of 17, when she was still single. The two had three children together without being married:

Juan Domingo was registered with that name on October 8, 1895 in the civil registry of Lobos by his father and in his birth certificate it is indicated that he was born the previous day and was "natural son of the declarant", without mentioning the name of the mother. In 1898 he was baptized in the Catholic Church without indicating the name of the father and being registered under the name of Juan Domingo Sosa. Juan Domingo's mother and father were married in Buenos Aires on September 25, 1901.

Paternal branch

His paternal grandparents were Tomás Liberato Perón (1839-1889), a physician born in Buenos Aires who served a term as a Mitrist provincial deputy, professor of chemistry and legal medicine, member of the Council of Public Hygiene and advisor to the Faculty of Physical and Natural Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires; and Dominga Dutey Bergouignan (1844-1930), an Uruguayan born in Paysandú.

His paternal grandfather's parents were Tomás Mario Perón (1803-1856), a Genoese born in Sardinia who arrived in Argentina in 1831, and Ana Hughes McKenzie (1815-1877), a British born in London. His paternal grandmother's parents were Jean Dutey and Vicenta Bergouignan, both Basque-French, natives of Baigorry.

Maternal branch

His maternal grandparents were Juan Ireneo Sosa Martínez, a bricklayer born in the province of Buenos Aires, and María de las Mercedes Toledo Gaona, born in Azul (province of Buenos Aires).

The official position established by law no. 25 518 of 2001, considers that Juan Domingo was born on October 8, 1895, even though the birth certificate issued on that day indicates that the birth took place the day before. The official place of birth is Lobos. a small town in the center-north of the province of Buenos Aires, and in turn, in the center-east of the Argentine Republic, but which until shortly before his birth had been a military stronghold on the border line between the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata and the territory of the Tehuelche, Ranquel and Mapuche peoples. The possible belonging of Juan Domingo Perón to the Tehuelche people through his mother's line is a matter of debate among historians.

Beyond the debates, he himself referred several times to his ethnicity in private and in public:

In 2000, historian Hipólito Barreiro published his research on Perón's birth, according to which his entry in the civil registry could have been made two years after his birth and that the exact place could have been the area of Roque Pérez, near Lobos and Saladillo. With similar results, historians Óscar Domínguez Soler, Alberto Gómez Farías and Liliana Silva from the National University of La Matanza published their research in 2007 in the book Perón ¿cuándo y dónde nació? On the contrary and based on his registry research in 2010 and 2011, attorney Ignacio Cloppet has argued that his research on the legal records related to Perón's birth indicates that he was born on October 8, 1895, in the town of Lobos. But the two lines of investigation do not seem to be mutually exclusive, since the former refers to facts not officially recorded, and the latter to the official records.

Juan Domingo will grow up during his first five years in the rural areas of Lobos and Roque Pérez: "I am one of those who learned to ride a horse before walking", he will tell his friend and biographer Enrique Pavón Pereyra. About his mother, Juana, he says:

In 1900, when Juan Domingo was five years old, the Perón-Sosa family embarked on the steamship Santa Cruz bound for the sea coast of Argentine Patagonia, to some estancias in the surroundings of Río Gallegos: Chaok-Aike, Kamesa-Aike and Coy-Aike, that is, the beginnings of a hamlet located in ancient Tehuelche settlements.

In 1902 they moved further north, first to the Chubut town of Cabo Raso, where their distant relatives surnamed Maupás had properties in La Masiega, and later, in February 1904 they moved to the town of Camarones, on the occasion of the appointment of Mario Tomás to act as Justice of the Peace on December 19, 1906. Shortly afterwards they moved again, this time to the farm they called La Porteña, located in the Sierra Cuadrada, 175 km from the city of Comodoro Rivadavia, and later they founded another farm called El Mallín.

In 1904 Juan and Mario's parents decided to send their children to live in Buenos Aires so that they could begin formal studies, being cared for by their paternal grandmother, Dominga Dutey, and their father's two half-sisters, Vicenta and Baldomera Martirena, who were teachers. The two children were seeing the big city for the first time and would only see their parents during the summers. The children's paternal grandmother's house was located in the center of the city, at 580 San Martín St. He studied first at the school next to his house, where his aunts were teachers, and then in different schools until he completed his primary education, and then he attended the polytechnic secondary school at the International School of Olivos, directed by Professor Francisco Chelía.

Juan Domingo was called "Pocho" in his inner circle, a nickname that later spread and was the nickname by which he was mentioned in different environments.

Perón had three wives: on January 5, 1929 he married Aurelia Gabriela Tizón (March 18, 1902-September 10, 1938), daughter of Cipriano Tizón and Tomasa Erostarbe, who died of uterine cancer. Her remains rest in the Olivos Cemetery, province of Buenos Aires, in the Tizón family vault.

On October 22, 1945 he married actress Eva Duarte (1919-1952) in Junín.

According to witnesses of the time, it was precisely while she was in captivity that she would have thought of getting married. Once free, in an informal meeting, Eva Duarte introduced him to Friar Pedro Errecart, who surprised Perón for his ability to relate to one of his dogs that nobody approached him, and for the sincerity with which he told her: "if you do not marry in church, you cannot be president".

The phrase was one more impulse for Perón and Friar Errecart, who already had the sympathy of Eva Duarte, in a short time gained her confidence. They had scheduled for the end of November an austere ceremony with no more than a dozen people, but the information was leaked and when they arrived in La Plata they found a crowd waiting for them and that made them give up the idea until two weeks later.

Finally, on December 10, 1945, they were able to get married in a private ceremony that was registered in folio 2397 of the book of Marriages of the San Francisco parish. Juan Domingo Perón was 50 years old and Eva Duarte 26 years old. After the ceremony the guests shared a meal with them in a large house located a few blocks from the church.

The oldest neighbors of the neighborhood remember that the General was so grateful to him that he even proposed to build a new church in the Saavedra Park, but when the priest refused, he allocated the funds to renovate the parish, which was finished in 1946.

Known as Evita, Eva Perón collaborated in her husband's administration with a policy of social aid and support for the political rights of women, who were granted the right to vote for the first time. On July 26, 1952, while Perón was in office for the second time, Evita died after a long struggle with uterine cancer.

On November 15, 1961, in Spain, he married María Estela Martínez Cartas, known as Isabelita, who later accompanied him as vice-president in the September 1973 elections and succeeded him in office upon his death, until March 24, 1976, when she was overthrown by a military coup.

Juan Perón had no children, so his closest descendants were his nine nephews and nieces, children of his brother Avelino Mario and Eufemia Jáuregui: Dora Alicia, Eufemia Mercedes, María Juana (born in 1921), Mario Alberto, Olinda Argentina, Lía Vicenta, Amalia Josefa, Antonio Avelino and Tomás.

On March 1, 1911 he entered the Colegio Militar de la Nación, thanks to the scholarship obtained by Antonio M. Silva, a close friend of his paternal grandfather, who assisted him in his illness until his death. He graduated on December 18, 1913 as second lieutenant of infantry.

In 1914 he was assigned to the 12th Infantry Regiment based in Paraná, Entre Ríos, where he remained until 1919. In 1915 he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant.

In 1916 she publicly evidenced for the first time a political stance. In that year, elections were held in Argentina for the first time with universal and secret voting, although only for men, in which Hipólito Yrigoyen of the Radical Civic Union triumphed, in what is considered the first democratic government. Perón voted in that election for the first time, opting for Yrigoyen and the UCR, in open confrontation with the conservative and oligarchic sectors organized in the National Autonomist Party of Rocío ideology, which had governed without alternation for the previous 36 years. During the Radical governments (1916-1930) Perón would assume a position close to the legalistic nationalist military (as exemplified by Enrique Mosconi or Manuel Savio). and at the same time critical of the radical government, mainly because of the workers' massacre known as the Tragic Week of 1919 and what he considered "ineffectiveness" in the face of the country's serious social problems.

As a lieutenant Perón joined the 12th Infantry Regiment based in Paraná under the command of General Oliveira Cézar, who was sent in 1917 and 1919 by the Yrigoyen government to intervene militarily in the workers' strikes that took place in the forestry works that the English company La Forestal had in the north of the province of Santa Fe. His position and that of other military officers of the time was that in no case should the Army repress the strikers.

He gave great importance to sports: he practiced boxing, athletics and fencing. In 1918 he became a military and national fencing champion and wrote several sports texts for military training. On December 31, 1919 he was promoted to the rank of first lieutenant and in 1924 to the rank of captain. In 1926 he entered the War College.

During those years he wrote several texts that were printed as study materials in military academies, such as Higiene militar (1924), Moral militar (1925), Campaña del Alto Perú (1925), El frente oriental en la guerra mundial de 1914. Estudios estratégicos (1928), among other works. On January 12, 1929 he obtained his diploma as General Staff officer and on February 26 he was assigned to the Army General Staff as assistant to Colonel Francisco Fasola Castaño, Deputy Chief of Staff.

His time at the Escuela de Suboficiales would bring him into contact with the school's humble aspirants and cadets. During this time Perón educated the cadets in the strictest military discipline, but he also taught them everything from manners of coexistence to morals and ethics. During this stage Perón also stood out as a sportsman, being an army and national sword champion between 1918 and 1928, receiving widespread recognition from superiors and subordinates for the task he developed in the practice of sports.

In 1920 he was transferred to the NCO School "Sargento Cabral" in Campo de Mayo, where he excelled as a troop instructor. Already then he distinguished himself among his colleagues for his special interest and treatment of his men, which soon turned him into a charismatic military man. In those years he published his first works in the form of graphic contributions to the translation from German of an exercise book for soldiers and some chapters of a manual for aspiring non-commissioned officers.

At the beginning of 1930 he was appointed substitute professor of Military History at the War College, and took up the post at the end of the year. That year saw the coup d'état of September 6, led by General José Félix Uriburu, which overthrew the constitutional president Hipólito Yrigoyen. The coup was supported by a broad spectrum that included radicals, socialists, conservatives, employers' and students' organizations, the Judiciary, as well as the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom.

Perón did not hold any position in Uriburu's dictatorial government, but he participated marginally in the preparation of the coup as part of an autonomous group, with a "legalist nationalist" tendency, led by lieutenant colonels Bartolomé Descalzo and José María Sarobe. This group intended to give a broad popular support to the movement and to avoid the installation of a military dictatorship, which finally happened. Perón was part of a column that peacefully evacuated the Casa Rosada, where civilian groups were looting and vandalizing.

After the coup, the military group of lieutenant colonels Descalzo and Sarobe, in which Perón participated, was dismantled by the military dictatorship, sending its members abroad or to distant positions in the interior of the country. Perón himself would be assigned to the Boundary Commission, having to move to the northern border.

The Uriburu dictatorship (1930-1932) organized elections in which it banned Hipólito Yrigoyen and restricted the possibilities of action of Yrigoyenist radicalism, thus facilitating the electoral triumph of a coalition of anti-Yrigoyenist radicals, conservatives and socialists, called the Concordancia, which would govern in successive fraudulent electoral turns until 1943. This period is known in Argentine history as the Infamous Decade.

On December 31, 1931 Perón was promoted to the rank of major. In 1932 he was appointed aide-de-camp to the Minister of War and published the book Apuntes de historia militar, awarded the following year with a medal and diploma of honor in Brazil. He made new publications such as Apuntes de historia militar. The Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 (1933) and Toponimia araucana (1935).

On January 26, 1936 he was appointed military attaché at the Argentine embassy in Chile, a position to which a few months later he was appointed aeronautical attaché. He returned to Argentina at the beginning of 1938, being assigned to the General Staff of the Army.

After the death of his wife in September 1938, Perón tried to distract himself by helping his friend, Father Antonio D'Alessio, organize athletic competitions for the neighborhood children. Shortly thereafter, he embarked on a trip to Patagonia. He traveled thousands of miles by car and returned in early 1939. The result of that trip and of long talks with the Mapuche chiefs Manuel Llauquín and Pedro Curruhuinca, was his Patagonian Toponymy of Araucanian etymology.

At the beginning of 1939 he was sent to Italy to follow training courses in various disciplines, such as economics, mountaineering, skiing and high mountains. He also visited Germany, France, Spain, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Albania and the Soviet Union, and returned to Argentina two years later, on January 8, 1941. He gave a series of lectures on the state of the war situation in Europe -in the framework of the Second World War (1939-1945)-, after which he was promoted to the rank of colonel at the end of the year.

On January 8, 1941, Perón was assigned to a mountain unit in the province of Mendoza, to keep him away from the Buenos Aires conspirators, who had been too active since the beginning of the war and had accelerated their activities when the terminal illness of President Roberto M. Ortiz became known. There he published an article and instructions on the mountain commandos. On May 18, 1942, Perón and Domingo Mercante were transferred to the Federal Capital.

In 1942 and 1943, the two main leaders of Argentina during the Infamous Decade, former President Marcelo T. de Alvear (leader of the main popular opposition party, the Radical Civic Union) and former President Agustín P. Justo (leader of the Armed Forces and of the parties that were part of the ruling Concordance) died. The sudden absence of leaders, both in the political and military spheres, would have a great influence on the military and political events that would take place the following year, in which Perón would play an increasingly important role.

On May 31, 1946, President Edelmiro Farrell reinstated him in the Army and promoted him to brigadier general. On May 1, 1950, the National Congress passed Law 13896 by which it promoted Perón to major general -despite his opposition- effective December 31, 1949; the law was de facto enacted.

On October 6, 1950, he was promoted to the rank of General of the Army (later renamed "Lieutenant General"). On November 10, 1955, Decree Law No. 2034 was published in the Official Gazette of the Argentine Republic.

During his military career he received numerous decorations and badges:

On June 4, 1943, a coup d'état overthrew the government of conservative President Ramón Castillo. Castillo's government was the last of a series of governments known in Argentine history as the Infamous Decade, imposed by the dictatorship of General José Félix Uriburu (1930-1931) and sustained by electoral fraud. In 1943, General Arturo Rawson took office, but three days later he was removed by General Pedro Pablo Ramírez.

Several historians link Perón to the GOU, an acronym for a military lodge that could correspond to Grupo Obra de Unificación or Grupo de Oficiales Unidos, or to the ATE (Asociación de Tenientes del Ejército), made up of medium and low ranking Army officers. This group or these groups are attributed to have had a great influence on the coup and the military government. However, several important historians, such as Rogelio García Lupo and Robert Potash, have argued that the GOU never existed as such or that if it had existed it had little power. Historian Roberto Ferrero argues that the Farrell-Perón duo was trying to form a "popular nationalist" pole that would lead to a democratic exit from the regime, confronting the non-democratic "elitist nationalist" sector that had supported Ramírez as president.

Perón did not hold any position in Rawson's government nor initially in Ramírez's government. On October 27, 1943, he took over as head of the National Labor Department, at that time a small state agency of little political importance.

Perón's beginnings in the new government: the alliance with the trade unions

Perón served as private secretary to General Edelmiro Farrell, who had been in charge of the Ministry of War since June 4, 1943. A few days after the coup, the CGT No. 2 led by the socialist sector of Francisco Pérez Leirós and Ángel Borlenghi and the communists, met with the Minister of the Interior of the dictatorship to offer him trade union support by means of a march to the Casa Rosada. The government rejected the offer and shortly afterwards dissolved the CGT No. 2, imprisoning several of its leaders.

In August 1943, the labor movement tried a new rapprochement with the military dictatorship, this time as a result of an initiative of the powerful union Unión Ferroviaria of the CGT No. 1, after learning that one of its leaders was the brother of Lieutenant Colonel Domingo Mercante. These conversations prospered and little by little other union leaders joined them and, at Mercante's request, Colonel Juan Domingo Perón. Up to that time the unions had played a minor role in the political life of the country and were led by four currents: socialism, revolutionary syndicalism, communism and anarchism. The two main unions were the Unión Ferroviaria, led by José Domenech, and the Confederación de Empleados de Comercio, led by Ángel Borlenghi.

In the first meetings, characterized by mistrust, the trade unionists proposed to Mercante and Perón to form an alliance that would be installed in the small National Labor Department, in order to promote from there the sanction and above all the effective application of the labor laws long demanded by the workers' movement, as well as the strengthening of the unions and of the Labor Department itself. Perón's growing power and influence came from his alliance with a sector of Argentine trade unionism, mainly with the socialist and revolutionary trade unionist currents.

In 1944, he created the National Health Directorate, under the Ministry of the Interior, which began to administer the Federal Aid Fund aimed at compensating for the imbalances in the jurisdictions in health matters, and through the Regional Delegations, he exercised influence over the public health of the provinces and governorships of the country. By means of Resolution 30 655

Based on this alliance and seconded by Mercante, Perón maneuvered within the government to be appointed as head of the National Labor Department, which was not very influential at that time, which took place on October 27, 1943. Perón appointed the union leaders to the main positions in the department and from there they set the union plan in motion, initially adopting a policy of pressure on the companies to resolve labor conflicts through collective bargaining agreements. The vertiginous activity of the Labor Department caused the growing support to its management by union leaders of all currents: socialists, revolutionary unionists, communists and anarchists, and in turn incorporating other socialists like José Domenech (railroad workers), David Diskin (revolutionary unionists coming from the Argentine Union of Trade Unions, like Luis Gay (even some communists like René Stordeur (graphics) and Aurelio Hernández (health) and even Trotskyists like Ángel Perelman (metallurgist).

Secretary of Labor and Social Security

On November 27, 1943, a decree -drafted by José Figuerola and Juan Atilio Bramuglia- created the Secretariat of Labor and Social Security of the Nation; the same decree named Perón Secretary of Labor.

The new agency incorporated in its organizational chart the functions of the Department of Labor and other agencies, such as the National Retirement and Pension Fund, the National Directorate of Public Health and Social Assistance, the National Board to Combat Unemployment, the Chamber of Rents, among others. It depended directly on the President, so that it had all the powers of a ministry; its function was to centralize all the social action of the State and to supervise compliance with labor laws, for which purpose it had regional delegations throughout the country. It also transferred to the Secretariat the conciliatory and arbitration services and powers, as well as the functions of labor police, industrial hygiene services, inspection of mutual associations and those related to maritime, fluvial and port work.

As a reflection of the administrative hierarchy of the new Secretariat, Perón moved the offices of the old Department -which were located in a small building on the corner of Perú and Victoria, now Hipólito Yrigoyen- to the headquarters of the Deliberating Council of the City of Buenos Aires.

At the end of 1943, the socialist trade unionist José Domenech, general secretary of the powerful Unión Ferroviaria, proposed Perón to personally participate in the workers' assemblies. The first union assembly he attended was on December 9, 1943 in the city of Rosario, where Domenech introduced him as "the First Worker of Argentina". Domenech's presentation would have historical consequences, since that title would be one of the arguments for Perón's acceptance of his affiliation to the new Labor Party two years later, and it would also appear as one of the most outstanding verses of the Peronist March.

Secretary of Labor, Minister of War and Vice President

In February 1944 the Farrell-Perón duo displaced Ramírez from the presidency; Perón was appointed to the strategic position of Minister of War on February 24, 1944 and the following day Farrell was appointed to the Presidency of the Nation, first as interim and definitively as of March 9 of that year.

As Secretary of Labor, Perón carried out a remarkable work, passing the labor laws that had been historically demanded by the Argentine labor movement, among them, generalization of severance pay, which had existed since 1934 for trade employees, retirement for trade employees, Statute of the Farm Laborer, creation of labor justice, Christmas bonus, real effectiveness of the already existing labor police to guarantee its application, and for the first time collective bargaining, which was generalized as a basic regulation of the relationship between capital and labor. It also left without effect the decree-law of trade union associations sanctioned by Ramírez in the first weeks of the revolution, which was criticized by the whole labor movement.

Hand in hand with this activity, Perón, Mercante and the initial group of trade unionists who formed the alliance (mainly the socialists Borlenghi and Bramuglia), began to organize a new trade union current that would gradually assume a labor-nationalist identity.

During 1944, Farrell strongly promoted the labor reforms proposed by the Secretary of Labor. That year, the government summoned unions and employers to negotiate collective bargaining agreements, a process that was unprecedented in the country. That year 123 collective bargaining agreements were signed, covering more than 1.4 million workers and employees, and the following year (1945) another 347 agreements were signed, covering 2.2 million workers.

The Secretary of Labor and Social Security began to implement the historic program of Argentine trade unionism: Decree 33,302 was enacted.

On November 18, 1944, the enactment of the Estatuto del Peón de Campo (Decree-Law No. 28,194), passed the previous month, was announced, modernizing the semi-feudal situation in which rural workers still found themselves, alarming the large ranchers (latifundistas) who controlled Argentine exports. On November 30 the labor courts were established, resisted by the employers' sector and conservative groups. This regulation established for the first time, for the whole territory of the republic, humane working conditions for non-transitory rural wage earners, among them: minimum wages, Sunday rest, paid vacations, stability, hygiene and lodging conditions. This decree was ratified by Law 12,921 and regulated by Decree 34,147 of 1949. This strengthened the bargaining power of the rural unions, established the Statute of the Tambero-Mediero, publicly supported and committed to maintain the mandatory reduction of the price of leases and the suspension of evictions, and transferred the National Agrarian Council to the Secretariat of Labor and Social Security, from where some expropriations were carried out. Perón would maintain: "Land should not be a rental good, but a work good".

On December 4, the retirement regime for commerce employees was approved, which was followed by a union demonstration in support of Perón, the first in his support and in which he spoke in a public act, organized by the socialist Ángel Borlenghi, secretary general of the union, gathering a huge crowd estimated at 200,000 people.

At the same time, the unionization of workers increased: while in 1941 there were 356 unions with 441,412 members, in 1945 that number had risen to 969 unions with 528,523 members. most of them "new" workers, ethnically different from the immigrants of the previous decades, coming from the massive migration that was taking place from the interior of the country and neighboring countries to the cities, especially to Greater Buenos Aires. They began to be derogatorily called "morochos", "grasas", "negros", "negras" and "cabecitas negras" by the middle and upper classes, and also by some of the "old" industrial workers, descendants of European immigration.

The Secretary of Labor, with the support of an increasingly important sector of trade unionism, was massively reshaping the culture that sustained labor relations, characterized up to that moment by the predominance of the paternalism typical of the estancia. An exponent of the employers' sector opposed to the "Peronist" labor reforms argued at the time that the most serious aspect of these reforms was that the workers had "begun to look their employers in the eye".

In this context of cultural transformation referring to the place of workers in society, the working class was constantly expanding due to the accelerated industrialization of the country. This great socio-economic transformation was the basis of the labor nationalism that took shape between the second half of 1944 and the first half of 1945 and that would adopt the name of Peronism. It played a central role in the enactment of Decree-Law 1740.

1945 was one of the most transcendental years in the history of Argentina.

It began with the obvious intention of Farrell and Perón to prepare the environment to declare war on Germany and Japan, Perón's role in this decision should be pointed out. On January 26, 1944, the Argentine Government had broken off diplomatic relations with Germany and Japan -Italy was occupied by the Allies-: "A state of war is declared between the Argentine Republic and the Empire of Japan", and only in Article 3 war was declared against Germany. On March 20, the British Chargé d'Affaires Alfred Noble met with Perón to stress the need to take that step. But there was opposition within the Army and public opinion was divided on whether to declare war or not, however, he took measures to improve his image: total cessation of trade with the Axis countries, closure of pro-Nazi publications, intervention of German companies, arrest of a significant number of Nazi spies or suspected of being Nazis.

Already in October of the previous year, Argentina had requested a meeting of the Pan American Union to consider a common course of action. Subsequently, Perón's alliance with the trade unions was displacing the right-wing nationalist sector that had been installed in the Government since the coup of 1943: the Minister of Foreign Affairs Orlando L. Peluffo, the interventor of Corrientes David Uriburu, and above all General Juan Sanguinetti, displaced from the crucial position of interventor of the province of Buenos Aires which, after a brief interregnum, was taken over by Juan Atilio Bramuglia, the socialist lawyer of the Unión Ferroviaria, a member of the trade union sector that initiated the rapprochement of the labor movement with Perón.

In February, Perón made a secret trip to the United States to agree on the declaration of war, the end of the blockade, the recognition of the Argentine government and its adhesion to the Inter-American Conference of Chapultepec, which was scheduled for February 21 of that year. Shortly after, the right-wing nationalist Rómulo Etcheverry Boneo resigned from the Ministry of Education and was replaced by Antonio J. Benítez, a man of the Farrel-Perón group.

On March 27, at the same time as most of the Latin American countries, Argentina declared war on Germany and Japan and a week later signed the Act of Chapultepec, thus becoming eligible to participate in the San Francisco Conference that founded the United Nations on June 26, 1945, integrating the group of 51 founding countries.

Simultaneously, the government began a move to hold elections. On January 4, the Minister of the Interior, Admiral Tessaire, announced the legalization of the Communist Party. The pro-Nazi newspapers Cabildo and El Pampero were banned, and the university auditors were ordered to cease their duties in order to return to the reformist system of university autonomy, while the dismissed professors were reinstated.

Antiperonism and Peronism

The main characteristic of 1945 in Argentina would be the radicalization of the political situation between Peronism and anti-Peronism, largely promoted by the United States, through its ambassador, Spruille Braden. From then on, the Argentine population would be divided into two opposing camps: Perón's supporters, who were in the majority in the working class, and the non-Peronists, who were in the majority in the middle class (especially in Buenos Aires) and the upper class.

On May 19, Spruille Braden, the new U.S. Ambassador, arrived in Buenos Aires and would serve in the post until November of the same year. Braden was one of the owners of the mining company Braden Copper Company of Chile, a supporter of the hard imperialist policy of the "Big Stick"; he had an openly anti-union position and was opposed to the industrialization of Argentina. He had previously played a relevant role in the Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay, preserving the interests of Standard Oil and in Cuba (1942) operating to break off relations with Spain. He later served as Under Secretary of Latin American Affairs of the United States and began working as a paid lobbyist for the United Fruit Company, promoting the coup d'état against Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954.

According to the British ambassador, Braden had "the fixed idea that he had been chosen by Providence to overthrow the Farrell-Perón regime". From the very beginning, Braden publicly began to organize and coordinate the opposition, exacerbating the internal conflict. The radical historian Félix Luna says that the appearance of anti-Peronism was prior to the appearance of Peronism. The Stock Exchange and the Argentine Chamber of Commerce launched a Manifesto of Commerce and Industry together with 321 employers' organizations, criticizing the labor policy of the Secretary of Labor, since it was creating "a climate of suspicion, provocation and rebellion, which stimulates resentment, and a permanent spirit of hostility and vindictiveness".

The trade union movement, in which open support for Perón was not yet predominant, reacted quickly in defense of the labor policy and on July 12 the CGT organized a multitudinous act under the slogan "Against capitalist reaction". According to Félix Luna, this was the first time that workers began to identify themselves as "Peronists".

Anti-Peronism adopted the banner of democracy and harshly criticized what it called the anti-democratic attitudes of Peronism; Peronism, for its part, took up the banner of social justice and harshly criticized the contempt for the workers of its adversaries. The student movement expressed its opposition with the slogan "no to the dictatorship of the espadrilles" and the trade union movement responded with the slogan "no to the dictatorship of the espadrilles". The labor movement responded with "espadrilles yes, books no" and the workers' demonstrations that supported the labor laws that Perón was promoting answered "espadrilles yes, books no".

On September 19, 1945, the opposition appeared united in a huge demonstration of more than 200,000 people, called the March of the Constitution and Freedom, which went from the Congress to the Recoleta neighborhood, led by fifty personalities of the opposition, among them the radicals José P. Tamborini, Enrique Mosca, Ernesto Sammartino and Gabriel Oddone, the socialist Nicolás Repetto, the anti-personalist radicals José M. Cantilo and Diógenes Taboada. Tamborini, Enrique Mosca, Ernesto Sammartino and Gabriel Oddone, the socialist Nicolás Repetto, the anti-personalist radicals José M. Cantilo and Diógenes Taboada, the conservative (PDN) Laureano Landaburu, the Christian democrats Manuel Ordóñez and Rodolfo Martínez, the philocommunist Luis Reissig, the progressive democrat Juan José Díaz Arana, and the rector of the UBA Horacio Rivarola.

It has been said that the demonstration was mostly made up of middle and upper class people, which is historically indisputable. but this does not invalidate the historical significance of its social breadth and political plurality. The march had a full impact on the Farrell-Perón power and unleashed a succession of military proposals against Perón's permanence in the government, which came to fruition on October 8, when in the face of an adverse vote by the officers of Campo de Mayo, which was commanded by General Eduardo J. Ávalos -one of the leaders of the GOU-, with the support of radicalism through Amadeo Sabattini, Perón resigned from all his posts. On October 11, the United States asked Great Britain to stop buying Argentine goods for two weeks in order to bring about the fall of the government.

On October 12, Perón was arrested and taken to Martín García Island. At that moment, the leaders of the opposition movement had the country and the government at their disposal. "Perón was a political corpse" and the government, formally presided over by Farrell, was actually in the hands of General Ávalos, who took over as Minister of War from Perón and only intended to hand over power to civilians as soon as possible.

Perón was replaced in the vice-presidency by the Minister of Public Works General Juan Pistarini, who kept both positions, while the head of the Navy Rear Admiral Héctor Vernengo Lima took over the Ministry of the Navy. Tension reached such a point that the radical leader Amadeo Sabattini was booed as a Nazi in the Radical House, a gigantic civil act attacked the Military Circle (October 12) and a paramilitary commando went so far as to plan Perón's assassination.

The Radical House on Tucumán Street in Buenos Aires had become the center of deliberations of the opposition. But the days went by without any resolution being taken, and many times the bosses' revanchism was encouraged. Tuesday, October 16 was payday:

Organizations such as the University Federation of Buenos Aires, the Argentine University Federation and the Bar Association participated in some cases in coup and terrorist activities.

October 17th

On Wednesday, October 17, 1945, there was a massive mobilization of between 300,000 (according to Félix Luna's calculations) and 500,000 people, mostly workers from very humble sectors, who occupied the Plaza de Mayo demanding Perón's freedom. The union leaders played a decisive role, the metallurgists Ángel Perelman and Patricio Montes de Oca, Alcides Montiel of the brewers' union, Cipriano Reyes of the meat union, CGT grassroots leaders, who went around the factories inciting the workers to leave work to march chanting slogans in favor of Perón through the main streets towards the center of the Federal Capital, and activists such as the Uruguayan writer Blanca Luz Brum. Previously, in the early morning of the 17th, a mobilization of workers from La Boca, Barracas, Parque Patricios and the popular neighborhoods of the west of the Federal Capital as well as the surrounding industrial zones began. The number of workers who came from Berisso, a town near La Plata, was also very important. The action was barely coordinated by some union leaders who had been agitating the previous days, and the main driving force came from those same columns which, while marching, fed back into the movement.

President Edelmiro J. Farrell maintained a stand-off attitude. The most anti-Peronist sectors of the government, such as Admiral Vernengo Lima, proposed to open fire against the demonstrators. The new strong man of the military government, General Eduardo Ávalos, remained passive, hoping that the demonstration would dissolve itself, and refused to mobilize the troops. Finally, faced with the forcefulness of the popular pressure, they negotiated with Perón and agreed on the conditions: Perón would speak to the demonstrators to calm them down, he would not refer to his arrest and would get them to withdraw and on the other hand the cabinet would resign in its entirety and Ávalos would request his retirement; Perón would also withdraw and would not hold any office again but in exchange he would demand that the government call free elections for the first months of 1946.

At 11:10 p.m. Perón went out to a balcony of the Government House and spoke to the workers while they were celebrating the triumph. He announced his retirement from the Army, celebrated the "fiesta of democracy" and before asking them to return peacefully to their homes taking care not to harm the women present he said:

Five days later, Perón married Evita and his friend Mercante assumed the leadership of the Secretariat of Labor and Welfare, finally being elected president in the elections of February 24, 1946.

1946 Elections

After a short period of rest, during which he married Eva Duarte in Junín (province of Buenos Aires), on October 22, Perón began his political campaign. The sector of the Unión Cívica Radical, which supported him, formed the UCR Junta Renovadora, which was joined by the Partido Laborista and the Partido Independiente; for its part, the radical organization FORJA dissolved to join the Peronist movement.

The Argentine Rural Society (SRA) played an active role in the campaign, with the active support of Spruille Braden, U.S. Ambassador in Argentina. During the campaign, two events took place that deeply affected the result, on the one hand, the discovery of an important check delivered by an employers' organization as a contribution to the Unión Democrática campaign. The second was the involvement of the U.S. State Department -at the request of Ambassador Braden- in the electoral campaign in favor of the Tamborini-Mosca ticket.

At the same time, it came to light that Raúl Lamuraglia, a businessman, had financed the campaign of the Unión Democrática, through millionaire checks from the Bank of New York that had been destined to support the National Committee of the Unión Cívica Radical and its candidates José Tamborini and Enrique Mosca. Later, in 1951, the businessman would contribute resources to support the failed coup d'état of General Benjamín Menéndez against Perón, and in June 1955 he would finance the bombing of Plaza de Mayo.

In 1945, the U.S. Embassy led by Spruille Braden promoted the unification of the opposition into an anti-Peronist front, which included the Communist, Socialist, Radical Civic Union, Progressive Democrat, Conservative, Argentine University Federation (FUA), Rural Society (landowners), Industrial Union (big business), Stock Exchange, and opposition unions. During his brief tenure as ambassador, and taking advantage of his excellent command of the Spanish language, Braden acted as a political leader of the opposition, in a clear violation of the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of a foreign country. In 1946, just a few days before the elections, Braden promoted the publication of a report called "The Blue Book", accusing the military government as well as the previous one -the Castillo presidency- of collaborating with the Axis powers, according to documents compiled by the U.S. State Department. In response, the political parties supporting Perón's presidential candidacy published a book in response entitled "The Blue and White Book", which skillfully installed the slogan Braden or Perón.

In the middle of the 1946 election campaign, sectors linked to the Argentine Rural Society, the local section of the Radical Civic Union and the Liberal Party of Corrientes, planned an attempt on his life in Corrientes. On February 3, 1946, this group, before Perón's march through the streets of Goya, positioned themselves on the rooftops with weapons. From a vehicle in which the liberals Bernabé Marambio Ballesteros, Gerardo Speroni, Juan Reynoldi and Ovidio Robar were traveling, they shot with firearms at the people who from the port, having heard the news, marched towards the center to repudiate the assassination attempt.

The Democratic Union supported the Blue Book and the immediate occupation of Argentina by military forces led by the United States; additionally, it demanded the legal disqualification of Perón to be a candidate. This, however, did not happen and only served to destroy the Democratic Union's chances of victory. Perón in turn published the Blue and White Book and made public a slogan that established a strong disjunctive, "Braden or Perón", which had a strong influence on public opinion at the time of voting.

Popular support, organized by the Labor Party and the UCR Junta Renovadora, gave the presidency to Perón. In the elections of February 24, 1946, being defeated only in Córdoba, Corrientes, San Juan and San Luis, Perón won with 52.84% of the votes, while Tamborini came in second place, with 42.87% of the votes, ten points behind Peronism. In the Electoral College (there was no direct vote), Perón received 299 electoral votes against only 66 for Tamborini. The Democratic Union collapsed upon its defeat and never rejoined, while Perón's allied parties unified in the Peronist Party at the end of that year.

Unlike the elections held during the "Infamous Decade", the February 1946 elections were recognized as absolutely clean by the opposition leaders and newspapers themselves.

Some opposition media refused to publish the results after the presidential elections were held. The newspaper La Prensa did not publish the news that Perón had been elected president. It took more than a month to print the news, indirectly, by publishing a quote from the New York Times which assumed that Perón had won the presidential elections. When power was handed over, the newspaper reported the event without mentioning Perón at all.

Juan Domingo Perón's first presidential term lasted from June 4, 1946 to June 4, 1952. Among the most outstanding actions were the creation of an extensive Welfare State, centered on the creation of the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare and the Eva Perón Foundation, a broad redistribution of wealth in favor of the most underprivileged sectors, the recognition of women's political rights, an economic policy that promoted industrialization and the nationalization of basic sectors of the economy, and a foreign policy of South American alliances based on the principle of the third position. During the same period, a constitutional reform was carried out which sanctioned the so-called Constitution of 1949.

At the party level, she unified the three parties that had supported her candidacy -Labor, UCR-JR and Independent- into the Peronist Party and supported the founding of the Peronist Women's Party in 1949.

Economic policy

During Perón's government, the policy of import substitution was deepened through the development of light industry that had been promoted since the previous decade. Perón also invested heavily in agriculture, especially in the planting of wheat. During this period, the agricultural sector was modernized through the development of the steel and petrochemical industries, the technification and supply of fertilizers, pesticides and machinery, thus increasing agricultural production and efficiency.

The four pillars of the first Peronist economic discourse were: "internal market", "economic nationalism", "preponderant role of the State" and "central role of industry". The State became increasingly important as a regulator of the economy in all its markets, including that of goods, and also as a provider of services.

In 1946, with Perón already president-elect, the Central Bank of the Argentine Republic was nationalized by means of Decree Law 8503.

The value of the lending rate differed according to the destination of the credits and was the sole and discretionary resort of the National State. All deposits of public and private banks were nationalized. With this measure, added to the "absolute control of monetary issuance" (by virtue of the nationalization of the BCRA), the State obtained hegemony over the sources of money creation in the system. Likewise, and in return, it assumed the total guarantee of bank deposits.

The active participation of the State in the economic activity, added to the distributive wage policy and the recapitalization of the industry which, more due to supply problems than to regulations, had been unable to equip itself during the whole war period, put pressure on the global demand, which grew at a disproportionately higher rate than the supply, causing an explosive increase in imports. This fact would imply the birth of high inflation in Argentina.

The set of measures taken clearly shows a strong stimulus to consumption, to the detriment of savings, for this sub-period. Despite the appearance of incipient inflation, the demand for money remained high throughout the period, although with a declining trend from 1950 onwards.

Faced with the lack of foreign currency, as a result of the stagnation of the primary sector, with which capital goods and inputs necessary for the industrialization process were imported, in 1946 Perón nationalized foreign trade through the creation of the Argentine Institute for the Promotion of Exchange (IAPI), which meant the State monopoly of foreign trade. This allowed the State to obtain resources that it used to redistribute to industry. This intersectoral exchange from the agricultural sector to industry caused conflicts with some agricultural employers' associations, especially the Argentine Rural Society.

In 1947 he announced a Five-Year Plan to strengthen the new industries created, and to start with heavy industry (steel and electric power generation in San Nicolás and Jujuy). Perón stated that Argentina had obtained political freedom in 1810, but not economic independence. Industrialization would diversify and make the productive matrix more complex (Scalise, Iriarte, n.d) and this, in turn, would allow Argentina to transcend the role assigned to it in the International Division of Labor. The Plan sought to transform the socio-economic structure; reduce external vulnerability (to improve the standard of living (to accelerate industrial capitalization and to develop the local financial system (to stabilize the balance of payments). Thus, the State assumed an active participation in the economy.

That same year he created the Sociedad Mixta Siderúrgica Argentina (Somisa), appointing General Manuel Savio as its head, and the company Agua y Energía Eléctrica. In 1948, the State nationalized the railroads, mostly owned by English capital, and created the company Ferrocarriles Argentinos. Also in 1948 it created the National Telecommunications Company (ENTel). In 1950 it created Aerolíneas Argentinas, the first Argentine aviation company.

In the area of science and technology development, he initiated the development of nuclear energy with the creation of the National Atomic Energy Commission in 1950, with scientists such as José Antonio Balseiro and Mario Báncora, who thwarted Ronald Richter's fraud and later laid the foundations of the Argentine nuclear plan.

In the aeronautical sector, great impulse was given to national production through the Fábrica Militar de Aviones, created in 1927 by the radical president Marcelo T. de Alvear, highlighting the development of jet airplanes through the Pulqui Project directed by the German engineer Kurt Tank. About 750 specialized workers were hired in Europe, two teams of German designers Reimar Horten, an Italian team (in charge of Pallavecino) and the French engineer Emile Dewoitine. These teams, together with Argentine engineers and technicians, would be in charge of designing the Pulqui I and Pulqui II jet airplanes, the twin-engine Justicialista del Aire, later renamed I.Ae. 35 Huanquero, Horten flying wings, etc. Likewise, San Martin managed the entry to the country of an important group of professors from the Politecnico of Turin, with whom the Engineering School of the Argentine Air Force was created. This academic staff was also part of the faculty of the School of Engineering of the University of Cordoba. The I.Ae. 22 DL advanced training aircraft, the I.Ae. 24 Calquín bombing and attack aircraft, the I.Ae. 23 primary training aircraft, the twin-engine fighter I.Ae. 30 Ñancú were also manufactured. Completing this period were the I.Ae. 25 Mañque assault glider, the "El Gaucho" aviation engine, the AM-1 Tábano remote-controlled rocket and elementary and civilian training aircraft: the Colibrí, the Chingolo, and the F.M.A. 20 Boyero. The completion of these aeronautical projects motivated the formation of an important network of high quality parts suppliers, and as a consequence, the creation of the industrial park that was the basis for the subsequent development and industrial take-off of Cordoba.

After the first three years of government, the classic phase of the import substitution process came to an end and the expansive phase of the economic policy based on the growth of global demand and income redistribution came to an end. The political crisis would last until 1952, the year in which the government decided to adopt a new political-economic course.

The political crisis that began in this period has its origins in the external sector, with a 33% drop in imports and exports, and supported by the sharp fall in reserves, which dropped to 150 million dollars when at the beginning of the administration they had reached levels of 1.5 billion dollars. This scenario had a great mitigating factor: "The strangulation of the productive capacity" as a result of the insufficient capitalization of the productive structure in a long period, which added to the lower availability of goods due to the contraction in imports. In addition, it is important to highlight the drop in agricultural production in the years 1951-1952 caused by the effects of droughts.

The Government sustained its expansive monetary, fiscal and wage policies, but the pressure of global demand on an economy with a lower quantity of available goods and services increased inflationary pressures until 1951, when inflation reached an inflationary record in our country for the twentieth century. The cost of living rose by 37% and wholesale prices by 48%.

Education policy

During the Peronist government the number of students enrolled in primary and secondary schools grew at higher rates than in previous years, while in 1946 there were 2,049,737 students enrolled in primary schools and 217,817 in secondary schools, by 1955 there were 2,735,026 and 467,199 respectively.

Access to secondary education for most of the children of the middle class and a significant part of the upper strata of the working class occurred, especially in commercial and technical education.

Religious instruction in primary and secondary schools, which had been in place since the Ramírez presidency, was abolished on December 16, 1954 in the context of the conflict with the Catholic Church.

One of the reasons for the irritation of the opponents was the introduction in school textbooks of drawings, photographs and laudatory texts of Perón and Evita such as "Viva Perón! Perón is a good ruler. Perón and Evita love us" and the like. In high school, the subject "Citizen Culture" was introduced, which in practice was a means of propaganda of the government, its protagonists and its achievements, the book The reason for my life by Eva Perón was compulsory at primary and secondary level.

The more rapid growth of the secondary school compared to the former indicates that access to secondary education occurred for most of the children of the middle class and a significant part of the upper strata of the working class, which is confirmed by the fact that the greatest increase occurred in commercial and technical education. In 1954, the Congress, with a Peronist majority, abolished religious instruction in public schools (but not in private schools). The Congress approved the Statute for the Teaching Staff of Private Teaching Establishments and the Private Teaching Guild Council, which equalized the rights of private school teachers to those enjoyed by public school teachers.

Regarding kindergartens, the Simini Law was approved in 1946, which established the guidelines for preschool education for infants from three to five years of age. In 1951, Law 5651 on Stability and Staging was passed, which was approved by all sectors. Regarding teachers' salaries, it established that they would be determined by the budget law and that periodic bonuses would correspond to both regular and substitute teachers. Regarding promotions, it specified that positions higher than first category vice-principal would be appointed through a competitive examination. At the same time, the teachers were able to become members of the teachers' classification tribunal.

In terms of university policy, during his first presidency Perón promoted measures to bring the popular sectors closer to the public university. In 1948 he sent to Congress a bill to create the National Workers' University -nowadays called UTN-, which was created by Law 13 229 and put into operation in 1952, with centers in Buenos Aires, La Plata, Bahía Blanca and Avellaneda. The objective of the Universidad Obrera was to orient it towards productive engineering with free study regimes that would facilitate the access of young workers, and the main measures of his government were unrestricted admission, free admission and scholarships, in order to open the University to the people, which represented a socio-cultural revolution for that time. Free admission was included in decree 29337 of 1949 (Broches, 2009). During Perón's first government, the study plans were coordinated, the conditions for admission to the University were unified, 14 new universities were created, and the budget was increased from 48 million (1946) to 256 million (1950). Free university education made it possible to increase the number of students from 49,000 in 1946 to 96,000 in 1950. Exclusive dedication was established to allow professionals to do research. In addition, for the first time, a system of scholarships was established for low-income students based on a 2% tax on salaries established in Articles 87 and 107 of Law No. 13.013. This made it possible for Argentina to be the country with the largest number of university students in Latin America by 1956.

In 1949 he decreed free public university education (by 1955 the number of university students tripled).

In announcing the decree Perón declared:

During his term of office, the new Law School was also built and the Architecture and Dentistry Schools of the University of Buenos Aires were created. During his second presidency, Perón created the National Council of Technical and Scientific Research (CONITYC), the immediate antecedent of the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET), and a new regional headquarters of the Universidad Obrera was opened in Tucumán. The creation of the Institute of Mining and Geology of the UNT in the Province of Jujuy, which would be followed by the creation of institutes in the fields of arts, law, economics and scientific research. In this way, he also planned the construction of the University City in the Sierra de San Javier, whose works began in 1949. In the north, he expanded the University in the region, creating the Institute of Geology and Mining, the Institute of High Altitude Biology and the Institute of Popular Medicine, in Jujuy; the Technical School of Vespucio and the Institute of Humanities, in Salta; the School of Agriculture in El Zanjón, in Santiago del Estero, for example. He incorporated the Salesian Labor University to the UNT and created the University Medical Service.

After 15 years of restricted democracies and military interventions on civilian governments, in 1946 the Congress passed a new Higher Education Law that placed universities under the rules of a democracy without proscription. To this end, and marking a milestone in the history of legislation on higher education, in 1947 Peronism passed Law No. 13 031, known as the Guardo Law, in honor of the Justicialist deputy who created its articles. This legislation put an end to the long validity of the four articles of the reduced Law No. 1597 of 1885, "Avellaneda Law", which served as legal framework until then.

In 1949, with the intention of attending to some of the proposals of the university students and incorporating advances of the law passed in 1947 and laying the foundations for a new law, an article was incorporated in the Argentine Constitution of 1949. In 1954, a new law was passed, Law 14 297. It incorporated some other postulates of the University Reform, such as the definition of extension and the direct participation of students; this law deepened student participation in the government of the Faculties, granting them the right to vote. The National University of Tucumán underwent a profound transformation, through multiple creations and a vast regional expansion, such as the construction of the University City, in San Javier Hill; the foundation of the University Gymnasium, in 1948. The creation in 194 of the Institute of Mining and Geology of the UNT in the Province of Jujuy. Planned the construction of the University City in the Sierra de San Javier, whose works began in 1949. He expanded the University in the region, creating the Institute of Geology and Mining, the Institute of High Altitude Biology and the Institute of Popular Medicine, in Jujuy; the Technical School of Vespucio and the Institute of Humanities, in Salta; the School of Agriculture in El Zanjón, in Santiago del Estero, for example. He incorporated the Salesian Labor University to the UNT and created the Medical Service. In 1946, under Perón's presidency, and due to the growing industrialization of Argentina during the Second World War, the National Commission of Apprenticeship and Professional Orientation (CNAOP) was created and schools-factories were founded for the training of workers. Thus, by means of Law 13 229 of 1948, the Universidad Obrera Nacional (UON) was created. By 1955 it already had institutes in the Federal Capital, Córdoba, Mendoza, Santa Fe, Rosario, Bahía Blanca, La Plata and Tucumán. The study plans favored specialties such as mechanical constructions, automobiles, textile industry, and electrical installations.

Health policy

In 1946 Ramón Carrillo was appointed Secretary of Public Health and in 1949, when new ministries were created, he became Minister of Public Health. From his position, he tried to carry out a sanitary program aimed at the creation of a unified system of preventive, curative and social assistance of universal character in which the State would play a preponderant role. In terms of health policy, it was characterized by the expansion of hospital centers and the implementation of nationwide health strategies directed by the Secretariat of Public Health. Carrillo decided to attack the causes of diseases from the public power at his disposal. Under an ideological conception that privileged social issues over individual profit, he made progress in areas such as infant mortality, which dropped from 90 per thousand in 1943 to 56 per thousand in 1955. Tuberculosis went from 130 per hundred thousand in 1946 to 36 per hundred thousand in 1951. Since the administration began to comply with sanitary norms incorporated in the Argentine society, such as massive vaccination campaigns and the obligatory nature of the certificate for school and to carry out formalities. Massive campaigns against yellow fever, venereal diseases and other scourges were implemented nationwide. As head of the Secretariat of Health, he carried out a successful campaign to eradicate malaria, led by doctors Carlos Alberto Alvarado and Héctor Argentino Coll; the creation of EMESTA, the first national medicine factory; and the support to national laboratories by means of economic incentives so that medicines would be available for the entire population. During his administration, almost five hundred new health establishments and hospitals were inaugurated.

Governmental action led to a substantial improvement in public health conditions. The period was also characterized by the constitution or strengthening of the social welfare programs of the unions, especially those with the largest number of members, such as the railroad and banking unions. The number of hospital beds increased from 66,300 in 1946 (4 per 1000 inhabitants) to 131,440 in 1954 (7 per 1000 inhabitants). Campaigns were carried out to combat endemic diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and syphilis using on a large scale the resources of DDT for the former and penicillin for the latter, and the health policy in schools was accentuated by making vaccination compulsory in their area. He increased the number of existing beds in the country from 66,300 in 1946 to 132,000 in 1954. He eradicated, in only two years, endemic diseases such as malaria, with extremely aggressive campaigns. He made syphilis and venereal diseases practically disappear. He created 234 free hospitals or polyclinics. He reduced the tuberculosis mortality rate from 130 per 100,000 to 36 per 100,000. Ended epidemics such as typhus and brucellosis. Drastically reduced the infant mortality rate from 90 per thousand to 56 per thousand.

In 1942 some 6.5 million inhabitants were provided with running water and 4 million with sewage services, and in 1955 the beneficiaries were 10 million and 5.5 million respectively. Infant mortality which was 80.1 per thousand in 1943 dropped to 66.5 per thousand in 1953 and life expectancy which was 61.7 years in 1947 rose to 66.5 years in 1953.

Sports policy

During his government, sports reached a high level of development, the National Evita Tournaments were launched, the unification in 1947 of the Argentine Sports Confederation (CAD) with the Argentine Olympic Committee (COA), the presence of hundreds of athletes abroad competing in different disciplines, the promotion of non-traditional sports, the organization of the 1950 World Basketball Championship, the 1951 Pan American Games, the state sponsorship of Juan Manuel Fangio, were the first links of a national sports policy. The driver Juan Manuel Fangio won five world championships in Formula 1. The Argentine men's basketball team won the first World Championship and boxer Pascual Pérez became the first Argentine world champion, starting a long saga of champions that would make Argentina a power in professional boxing. At the same time, the Argentine Pelota Pelota won the two gold medals in that specialty in the first Pelota Vasca World Championship, dominating the discipline since then until today. The Olympic Games of Helsinki 1952 marked the greatest period of splendor of the Olympic Games for Argentina, after these games Argentina would not win so many gold medals again until the Olympic Games of Athens 2004, for 1956 the delegation presented only 28 athletes, the smallest number in the history of the country and they were the first games that Argentina did not win any gold medal.

Communications policy

Perón's government was the first to implement a media policy.

In Sergio Arribas' opinion, the State formed a monopoly of information and a monopoly of the media to consolidate its influence on the masses, favored an oligopolistic conformation of the broadcasting media system based on an articulated set of norms and restricted three basic freedoms of the individual: (a) freedom of expression and its two variants, freedom of thought and freedom of opinion. b) freedom of the press. c) freedom of the press. And on the other hand, the government made possible the oligopolistic conformation of the broadcasting media system based on an articulated set of norms" This process took place in a context of manipulation and distortion of information used both by the media supporting the government and by the media condemning Perón. Between January 27 and March 19, Evita made six radio speeches demanding the enactment of the women's suffrage law; with the exception of Clarín newspaper, these speeches were silenced by the main newspapers of the time, such as La Prensa and La Nación, both of which were anti-Peronist.

The film industry benefited from the implementation of three measures: the compulsory screening of Argentine films throughout the country (Law 1299, Law 1299, Law 1299, Law 1299, Law 1299, Law 1299, Law 1299, Law 1299, Law 1299, Law 1299, Law 1299 and Law 1299).

The printing press benefited from the ratification of the Statute of the Professional Journalist Law declared in 1946.

As for television, the first transmission was made from Channel 7 on October 17, 1951 with the broadcast of a political event, the "Day of Loyalty", held in Plaza de Mayo.

The country's first Broadcasting Law (14241) was enacted.

In June 1954, by means of Decree 9967

Foreign policy

In 1946, a few months after the end of World War II, which made the United States the world's leading power. Among the causes of the U.S. confrontation with Argentina during Perón's government were the historical priority that Argentina gave to relations with Great Britain, the traditional policy of neutrality that Argentina maintained for almost the entire Second World War and the competitive economies of both countries, to which were added the nationalist policy and the strong trade union influence in the Peronist government. As a consequence of these signs of the Argentine government's compliance with its inter-American commitments, the United States, in July 1946, released the gold and Argentine funds of Banco Nación and Banco Provincia, which had been blocked since 1944. In addition, the invitation to Argentina to participate in the Rio de Janeiro Conference held in 1947 was accompanied by a change of diplomatic actors related to U.S. foreign policy towards our country. Truman announced Braden's resignation, in order to bring positions closer to Argentina.

On the other hand, bilateral relations improved thanks to a new cabinet change in the U.S. government, where President Truman appointed General Marshall as Secretary of State. With Marshall, the consolidation in the U.S. bureaucracy of officials in favor of cooperation and military balance throughout the continent was achieved.

Regarding the definition of the security zone, the Argentine delegate, Pascual La Rosa, requested the inclusion of the Malvinas Islands and Antarctica within this zone, perhaps yielding to the pressures of the nationalist civilian and military sectors. The special military committee formed by Argentina, Chile and the United States accepted the Argentine proposal to include the Malvinas Islands and Antarctica within the security zone of the TIAR treaty.

Diplomatic relations between Argentina and the Soviet Union were interrupted for more than thirty years since the Russian Revolution of 1917. Already during 1945, when Perón was Vice-President, and as President, diplomatic, consular and commercial relations between Argentina and the Soviet Union were officially established.

The first Foreign Minister appointed by Perón was the socialist trade union lawyer Juan Atilio Bramuglia, one of the founders of Peronism, and it was in this context that the third Justicialist position was developed, a philosophical, political and international stance that distanced itself from both the capitalist and communist worlds. Perón himself first outlined the content of the third Justicialist position in a Message to All the Peoples of the World delivered on July 16, 1947, when Argentina was called upon to preside over the Security Council during the first crisis of the Cold War (Berlin Blockade). Perón's message was broadcast by more than a thousand radio stations around the world, including the BBC in London:

Later, in his opening message to the National Congress on May 1, 1952, he would expand on this concept:

The third Argentine position was taken forward by Bramuglia first and later foreign ministers with a pragmatic sense, avoiding confrontation with the United States.

In 1946 Argentina refused to support the independence of Indonesia and condemn the Dutch intervention, did not support the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, although it would do so on February 14, 1949, and immediately established diplomatic relations. Argentina repeatedly refused to vote on India's proposal on South African racism (it voted against all resolutions censuring the annexation of the territory of South West Africa by South Africa (second, fourth and seventh sessions), voted against the motion to investigate the action of French colonialism in Morocco (abstained to investigate the action of French colonialism in Morocco (voted in favor of Chiang-Kai-Shek (voted for all American projects in relation to the Korean War (abstained on motions in favor of Puerto Rico (abstained when the independence of some Dutch colonies was demanded (tenth period). On the other hand, at the tenth Pan-American conference held in Caracas, it abstained from voting on the condemnation of the Jacobo Arbenz regime that ruled Guatemala: at that point.

Shortly after taking office, Perón sent to Congress for ratification the Act of Chapultepec (Pan-American alliance, direct antecedent of the OAS) and the treaty creating the United Nations Organization. The Senate unanimously approved the ratification. but in the Chamber of Deputies the radical opposition proposed to reject both treaties, abstaining in the vote as well as seven deputies of the ruling party, being strongly criticized by Ernesto Sanmartino, Luis Dellepiane and Arturo Frondizi.

At the United Nations, Argentina presented 28 reservations in defense of its sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands. Likewise, declarations in favor of sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands, South Georgia, South Sandwich Islands and the lands of the Antarctic sector were repeated in the framework of the Inter-American Conferences in Rio de Janeiro in 1947 and Bogota in 1948. At the latter, the American Commission on Dependent Territories was created. It distinguished between territories "under colonial trusteeship" -Greenland, the Antilles, the Bahamas, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago, among others- and "occupied" territories. Among the latter were the Falkland Islands, South Sandwich Islands, South Georgia, the American zone of Antarctica and Belize (Lanús, 1984 (b): 190).

In 1950 Argentina formally declared its sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands. Meanwhile, the British crown expanded the limits of its sovereignty over the islands, by including that same year under its dominion the submarine platform, the seabed and the subsoil adjacent to the islands.

Especially from 1953 onwards, Argentina sought and succeeded in signing numerous South American integration agreements. First of all, in February 1953, Perón visited Chilean President Ibáñez and signed the Santiago Act. On this occasion, both countries established the foundations of economic complementation. They committed themselves to the expansion of commercial exchange, to the gradual elimination of customs duties, and to promote the industrialization of both nations, among other things. Four months later, Ibáñez returned Perón's visit, and both signed the Chilean-Argentine Economic Union treaty, later Perón invited Brazil to participate in the economic union.

Argentina would soon sign other economic union agreements with Chile, Paraguay, Ecuador and Bolivia, in which the opening of borders was proposed. In 1946, agreements were signed with Brazil for the exploitation of the Uruguay River, with Chile on economic, financial and cultural cooperation and with Bolivia on commercial and financial matters. This trend was later reinforced with several complementary initiatives, such as the signing of an Act of Union with Chile in February 1953, with the aim of coordinating the development policy of both countries; the proposals for Latin American integration made by the Argentine delegation at the V meeting of ECLAC in April 1953; the Treaty of Economic Union signed with Chile, in February 1953, with the aim of coordinating the development policy of both countries; and the proposals for Latin American integration made by the Argentine delegation at the V meeting of ECLAC in April 1953; the Economic Union Treaty signed with Paraguay in August 1953; d) the Complementation Agreement with Nicaragua, in December of the same year; the Argentine-Ecuadorian Union Act, agreed on the same date as the previous one; the Economic Union Agreement with Bolivia signed in September 1954; the agreements on commercial exchange and payment system reached with Colombia and Brazil.

In 1947 Argentina signed the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR). In 1947 Argentina achieved international success when it was elected to the UN Security Council for two years, and in 1948 it even assumed the presidency of the Council to deal with the conflict generated by the Berlin Blockade, which was managed by Bramuglia, who took an active mediating role between the two sides. On June 3, 1947, in an unprecedented gesture, President Truman invited Argentine Ambassador Oscar Ivanissevich to attend the White House, where he had a friendly conversation in the visible absence of Braden, who resigned two days later. Argentina immediately established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and then began trade negotiations and closed trade agreements with Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary.

Latin America played a very important role in Perón's foreign policy, because it was seen as a bargaining chip in the world. It was necessary to improve and perfect ties in the subcontinent in order to have a better negotiating position. Perón contributed to improve and consolidate relations with neighboring countries.

In spite of all this, the United States continued to act to the detriment of Argentina, even prohibiting the use of Marshall Plan foreign currency to buy Argentine grains and meat. The US ambassador in Argentina Bruc sent President Truman a letter in which he revealed part of this plan against the country...: "Fitzgerald... declared that he was going to use the ECA to 'bring the Argentines to their knees'... Fitzgerald instructed the army to buy meat in any country but Argentina, no matter how much higher the price.

The third position adopted by Argentina was considered "unfavorable" to U.S. interests. A U.S. State Department memorandum of March 21, 1950 states:

Another controversy was the entry into Argentina and other South American countries of numerous Nazi fugitives during and after World War II, among them Adolf Eichmann, Joseph Mengele, Erich Priebke, Dinko Sakic, Josef Schwammberger, Gerhard Bohne, Walter Kutschmann, Ante Pavelic.

The Jewish Virtual Library wrote that "Perón also expressed sympathy for Jewish rights and established diplomatic relations with Israel in 1949. Since then, more than 45,000 Jews emigrated to Israel from Argentina."

During that period, Argentina welcomed several political exiles from Bolivia after the overthrow of Colonel Gualberto Villarroel in July 1946, such as Víctor Paz Estenssoro, Augusto Céspedes, Carlos Montenegro and General Alfredo Pacheco Iturri.

Through the Eva Perón Foundation, the country also provided assistance to other countries, such as Bolivia, Bolivia, Bolivia, Bolivia, Bolivia, Bolivia, Bolivia, Bolivia, Bolivia, Bolivia, Bolivia, Bolivia, Bolivia, Bolivia, Bolivia and Bolivia. Bolivia, Chile, Croatia, Egypt, Spain, France, Honduras, Israel, Japan, Paraguay and Uruguay,

Equal rights for men and women

During Perón's first government, a historic change took place regarding the recognition of women's rights. The new social rights were incorporated into the highest legal text, as well as women's suffrage, which had been approved in 1947, and which vindicated women who until then had been marginalized from Argentine political life.

Perón was the first Argentine head of state to put women's issues on the table. Perón and Evita opened the way for women's political participation. Progress was rapid. In the 1950s, no country had the number of women in Congress that Argentina had.

In 1947 a law was passed recognizing the right of all women over 18 years of age to vote and be voted for (women's suffrage), and universal suffrage only existed in Argentina at that time. The right had already been recognized in San Juan by the constitutional reform of 1927. At the national level, the right to vote had been demanded by women since 1907, when Alicia Moreau and other women founded the Comité Pro Sufragio Femenino (Committee for Women's Suffrage). However, neither the Radical Civic Union nor the conservatives institutionally supported the demand and the projects presented were systematically rejected. In 1945 Juan Domingo Perón promoted women's suffrage and it was said that it would be enabled by decree, but the initiative was rejected by several groups and finally it did not happen. During the campaign for the 1946 elections, the Peronist coalition included in its platforms the recognition of women's suffrage.

Eva Perón (Evita) played an important role. After October 17, 1945, at Evita's proposal, Perón -from his position as vice-president-, tried to pass the Women's Voting Law. However, resistance both within the Armed Forces in the government and from the opposition, which alleged electoral intentions, frustrated the attempt. It was also influenced by the fact that Evita's influence within Peronism was relatively weak before February 24, 1946. Between January 27 and March 19, Evita made six radio speeches demanding the enactment of the women's suffrage law. which, with the exception of Clarín newspaper, were silenced by the main newspapers of the time, such as La Prensa and La Nación, both of which were anti-Peronist.

After the 1946 elections, Evita began to campaign openly for women's suffrage, through women's rallies and radio speeches, at the same time that her influence within Peronism was growing. The bill was presented immediately after the constitutional government took office (May 1, 1946). In spite of the fact that it was a very brief text in three articles, which practically could not give rise to discussions, the Senate gave the bill half sanction on August 21, 1946, and finally it was approved in the Chamber of Deputies on September 9, 1947 as Law 13.010, establishing equal political rights between men and women. The Partido Peronista Femenino obtained 23 female deputies, three delegates from national territories and 6 female senators -the only women present in the National Congress-. and 80 provincial legislators.

The political equality of men and women was complemented by the "legal equality of spouses and shared parental authority" guaranteed by Article 37 (II.1) of the 1949 Constitution.

In 1955 the Constitution was repealed, and with it the guarantee of legal equality between men and women in marriage and with respect to parental authority, and the priority of men over women reappeared.

The constitutional reform of 1957 did not reincorporate this constitutional guarantee either, and Argentine women remained legally discriminated against until the law of shared parental authority was passed in 1985, during the government of Raúl Alfonsín. The Constitution was a constitution included in the current of social constitutionalism that incorporated the rights of workers (decalogue of the worker), the rights of the family, of the elderly, of education and culture; state protection for science and art; compulsory and free primary education. In addition to equality of men and women in family relations; university autonomy; the social function of property; election by direct vote for deputies, senators and president; and the immediate reelection of the president.

Social policy

Among other social and political reforms, during his first administration Perón repealed the law establishing discrimination between legitimate and illegitimate children and developed an extensive housing plan for workers. In 1951, LR3 Televisión Radio Belgrano, now called Channel 7, began broadcasting.

Labor policy

During the first Peronist government, the wage component of national income exceeded, for the first time in history, the remuneration obtained from profits, interest and land rent; in 1948, the former amounted to 53% against 47% of the latter, which compared favorably with the situation prevailing only five years earlier, when workers received 44.4% and businessmen, capitalists and rentiers received 55.6%". The pension system was expanded, benefiting independent workers, businessmen and professionals. In 1948, a pension fund was established for people without resources who were not included in the pension system, and a pension for widows was legislated. In 1946, Law 12,921 ratified the decrees of the dictatorship of the previous year, which incorporated the payment of Christmas bonus as a right, created and put into operation the first labor courts, established the Statute of the Rural Laborer, the regime of collective bargaining agreements and the National Institute of Remunerations, which was never put into operation.

In the 1950s, independence and autonomy in the management of resources made growth possible and placed the unions in a privileged position. The OSS (trade union social works) represented a majority of the economically active population (between 70 and 80% of the total). Health insurance was born in Argentina with contributions from the salary, on a voluntary basis, by branch of activity and with criteria of equity and solidarity. In this way, the best salaries collaborated with their contributions with those of lower income in a solidarity fund administered by the workers through their own organizations.

In 1947, he proclaimed the 10 basic rights of workers and got the National Congress to sanction them with the force of law: the right to work, to a fair distribution, to training, to decent working and living conditions, to health, to welfare, to social security, to family protection, to economic improvement and to the defense of professional interests. These rights were formalized through a decree of the National Executive Power, under number 4865, and were later incorporated in article 37 of the Constitution of the Argentine Nation, sanctioned by the Constituent Convention, on March 11, 1949.

On November 15, 1950, a railroad strike began in Argentina over wage claims. It ended eight days later with a "gentlemen's agreement" between strikers and Juan Francisco Castro (Minister of Labor), under which it was decided that they would return to work the following day. They would be granted a wage increase and the sanctions applied to the strikers would be rescinded.

In the first week of December 1950, the government rescinded the agreement reached. On January 16, 1951, Perón made Minister Castro resign. A new strike then began to demand the freedom of the imprisoned leaders; the government declared the conflict illegal. In a speech delivered on January 24, 1951, Perón stated, referring to the railroad workers: "Whoever goes to work will be mobilized, and whoever does not go will be prosecuted and will go to the barracks to be tried by military justice, in accordance with the code of military justice". Nearly two thousand workers were arrested and some three hundred were imprisoned, and the strikers returned to work three days later. On June 20, 1951, Perón pardoned 611 workers prosecuted, leaving about 24 in prison.

Between 1945 and 1948, the real wages of public employees rose by 35%, and those of industrial workers rose by an average of 50%. In the same period, consumption -both in the public and private sectors- rose by about 20%. The pension funds went from having 300,000 members in 1944 to 3,500,000 in 1949. A fund was established by law to grant pensions to all low-income people over 60 years of age who were not covered by any pension system.

The benefits of the indirect wage were added to this reality:

Energy policy

Juan Domingo Perón resumed the nationalist energy policy promoted by Yrigoyen with the creation of YPF, through the nationalization of hydrocarbons, which was supported by Article 40 of the 1949 Constitution. In six years of government, oil production increased by 50%, reaching 84% of total oil extraction, with a policy of consumption subsidies. However, self-sufficiency was not achieved. ANSEC, which had the exploitation of the electric service in most of the interior of the country, was nationalized. He created the state-owned company Agua y Energía Eléctrica and encouraged the development of popular cooperative power plants. The plan approved by Perón in energy matters also included rural electrification -abandoned by international trusts-, and the prohibition of new energy and gas concessions, which would remain in charge of the State, except for exceptional reasons. Since January 1, 1946, the mechanism of the National Energy Directorate had been structured, giving birth to four entities: State Gas, Solid and Mineral Fuels, State Power Plants and Vegetable and Derivative Fuels. In 1943, the country had an installed capacity in hydroelectric power plants of 45,000 kW; by 1952, the national company Agua y Energía had seven times more: 350,000 kW. To this must be added a portfolio of studies and projects worth 6 million kilowatts. In this way, the government consolidated an integrated energy system which, together with the production of fuels by YPF, was strategically articulated. In this model, the State companies were the spearhead of an integrated and centralized energy system, in which the production of energy and water were consolidated as a "public good" and the production of oil and steel as strategic goods to supply the industrial framework. In the 1950s, the CNEA (National Atomic Energy Commission) was also created.

During Perón's government, within the framework of the First Five-Year Plan (1947-1952), major infrastructure works were carried out throughout the country: the Puerto Nuevo (CADE) and Nuevo Puerto (CIADE) power plants were interconnected, thus achieving an interconnected generation system in the area of the Federal Capital and Greater Buenos Aires, to which 14 provinces would be added. In addition, through the First Five-Year Plan, a series of important public works were carried out in the energy area and in the heavy and mining industries, accompanied by an improvement in the infrastructure, that is to say, in transportation, roads and hydroelectric works, aimed at modernizing the country's infrastructure, necessary for the accelerated industrialization process that his developmentalist government promoted. The production of electric energy between 1946 and 1955 (in million kWh and considering self-production) went from 3.84 in 1946 to 7.20 million in 1952.

The First Five-Year Plan (1947-1952) had resulted in the initiation of 41 hydroelectric power plants throughout the country. The most important ones in terms of installed capacity were.

With regard to transmission lines, important sections had been completed, such as Río Tercero-Córdoba (100 km), Escaba-Tucumán (100 km) and Concepción del Uruguay-Rosario (92 km). Concepción del Uruguay-Rosario (92 km), and there were several lines under construction in different parts of Argentina.

There was also a vertiginous increase in the production of accumulators, electric lamps, electric motors, batteries and phonograph records. The sale of refrigerators between 1950 and 1955 increased more than 4 times and sewing machines in the same years grew 50 times.

For the Second Five-Year Plan (1952-1957), the construction of 11 thermal power plants and 45 hydroelectric plants was initiated. Also for the distribution of water for irrigation purposes, the construction of 29 reservoirs, 59 dams and other works began. (In 1955, the dictatorship of Pedro Eugenio Aramburu -the Liberating Revolution- discontinued all the public works of the Second Five Year Plan, which had only been in effect for three years).

Perón also promoted energy diversification. In 1948, the Peronist government planned the development of biofuels. This innovative energy vision was completed in 1950 with the creation of the National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA). The Puerto Nuevo (CADE) and Nuevo Puerto (CIAE) power plants were interconnected.

Forty-one hydroelectric power plants were built throughout the country, increasing the installed hydroelectric power from 45,000 kW (kilowatts) in 1943 to 350,000 kW in 1952. He signed a contract on December 11, 1947 between YPF and the American oil company Drilexco, for the exploration of forty oil wells, since the resources the State had were not enough to achieve self-sufficiency on its own. The President sent to Congress a law for investments in the oil sector. The law was successfully passed in 1953.

At the beginning of Perón's second term in 1952, Argentina was in an acute energy crisis: YPF was far from self-supplying the country with fuel, it imported 60% and in 1954 it had its first crisis in the balance of payments. In view of this situation, Perón decided to go all out with the objective of self-supply and proposed the signing of a contract with Standard Oil of California, recognizing the operational impossibility of YPF to reach this objective, the company would exploit an extensive area of southern Argentina with oilfields. The contract established a joint venture, whereby California would jointly produce with YPF the 9,000,000 cubic meters of oil that Argentina imported, cancelling an extra expense of almost 300 million dollars for fuel imports. By means of this agreement, Perón sought to increase oil production in the following years in order to maintain the internal supply and even begin to export oil and its derivatives, thus increasing the availability of foreign currency.

There were fears of abusive concessions to foreign oil companies under the new regulation, legislator John William Cooke was a notable opponent of it. and it was rendered ineffective after the coup d'état that overthrew Perón in 1955. The future President Frondizi would also strongly oppose it.

The distribution company Gas del Estado was created for the distribution of that resource. The first gas pipeline connecting the city of Comodoro Rivadavia with the City of Buenos Aires, with a length of 1,600 km, was put into operation. It was inaugurated on December 29, 1949. It was the first of its kind in South America and the longest in the world at that time, and it was built without external financing. But after the coup d'état of 1955, the valves and terminals for the pipeline to be able to transport gas to homes were never built. At the same time, the constitutional reform nationalized the oil fields, thus making YPF a state monopoly.

During his years in exile, Perón said about YPF:

In this sense, by 1946, YPF's refining capacity was 2,435,000 m³ per year, while by the end of the second Peronist government, it had increased to 6,083,054 m³: the drilling of wells would be multiplied by three. During the years of the Peronist government, the important deposits of Campo Durán and Madrejones were discovered, as well as others in Mendoza, Plaza Huincul, Río Gallegos and Tierra del Fuego.

Acts of violence

Perón's first two presidencies were characterized by increasing political violence. The Peronists questioned the racist, classist, coup-plotting and terrorist actions of the anti-Peronists, which took the form of assassinations, massacres and coups d'état. while the latter questioned police torture, arbitrary detentions, violation of freedom of the press and expression and political assassinations produced by the action or omission of the government.

Among the acts of violence against the government that have been most questioned are: the arrest and conviction of the trade unionist Cipriano Reyes accused of being part of a coup plot; the tortures caused by the Federal Police to Ernesto Mario Bravo, Luis Vila Ayres, Juan Ovidio Zavala, Roque Carranza, Yolanda J. V. de Uzal, the brothers María Teresa and Jorge Alfredo González Dogliotti; the resignation and dismissal of a large number of university professors; the arrest of opposition deputies such as Ricardo Balbín, Ernesto Sanmartino and Alfredo Palacios; the restrictions on freedom of speech and press; the expropriation of the newspapers La Prensa and La Nueva Provincia; the conviction for contempt of court and imprisonment of Michel Torino, owner of the newspaper El Intransigente de Salta; the burning of the main office and library of the Socialist Party and other premises of non-Peronist parties and the Jockey Club; the burning of churches on June 16, 1955; the torture, murder and disappearance of the physician Juan Ingallinella. at the same time he took control of all the radio stations and promoted the creation of Peronist media.

Among the acts of violence most questioned to the anti-Peronists are: the arrest and assassination plan of Perón in October 1945; the coup d'état plan of February 1946; the generalization of public expressions of hatred and discrimination such as "zoological alluvium", "fats", "little black heads", "populist measles", "Long live cancer! "when Eva Perón was dying of that disease; the creation of civilian terrorist commandos; the coup d'état of September 28, 1951, the terrorist attack of April 15, 1953 in Plaza de Mayo; the bombing and machine-gunning of Plaza de Mayo on June 16, 1955, which caused more than 350 deaths and 800 wounded; the coup d'état of September 16, 1955, which overthrew Perón; the humiliation, kidnapping and disappearance of Eva Perón's corpse; the 1956 shootings and assassinations of Peronists that caused the death of Lieutenant Colonel José Albino Yrigoyen, Captain Jorge Miguel Costales, Dante Hipólito Lugo, Clemente Braulio Ros, Norberto Ros, Osvaldo Alberto Albedro, Carlos Lizaso, Nicolás Carranza, Francisco Garibotti, Vicente Rodríguez, Mario Brión, Carlos Irigoyen, Ramón R. Videla, Rolando Zanetta, lieutenant colonel Oscar Lorenzo Cogorno, reserve second lieutenant Alberto Abadie, colonel Eduardo Alcibíades Cortines, captain Néstor Dardo Cano, colonel Ricardo Salomón Ibazeta, captain Eloy Luis Caro, first lieutenant Jorge Leopoldo Noriega, non-commissioned officer Néstor Marcelo Videla, chief warrant officer Ernesto Gareca; warrant officer Miguel Ángel Paolini; corporal musician José Miguel Rodríguez; sergeant Hugo Eladio Quiroga, Miguel Ángel Maurino, assistant sergeant Isauro Costa, sergeant carpenter Luis Pugnetti, sergeant musician Luciano Isaías Rojas, major general Juan José Valle and Aldo Emil Jofré; the illegalization of Peronism in 1956 and the thousands of arrests and dismissals of militants, artists, sportsmen, public employees and teachers sympathetic to Peronism; the military intervention of the trade unions in 1956; the repeal by military proclamation of the 1949 Constitution; the restrictions on freedom of expression and of the press; the annulment of the 1962 elections; the disappearance and cover-up of the assassination of trade unionist Felipe Vallese in 1962; the detention of the plane in which Perón intended to return to Argentina in 1964 by the Brazilian military dictatorship at the request of the Argentine government of Arturo Illia; the proscription of the Peronist Party between 1955 and 1972 and of Perón until 1973.

The mutual hatred between Peronists and anti-Peronists would last for many years. In 1973 Perón and the radical leader Ricardo Balbín, publicly embraced each other in order to convey to the population the need to put an end to this hatred, with a limited result. Among many other people involved, Peronist Antonio Cafiero - who was Perón's Minister of Economy - and historian and radical politician Félix Luna, have reflected on the mutual political violence between Peronists and anti-Peronists:

The military dictatorship installed in 1976, with an anti-Peronist ideology, took political violence to the paroxysm of genocide and systematic state terrorism. After democracy was restored on December 10, 1983, political violence between Peronists and anti-Peronists was substantially reduced.

Constitutional reform

In 1949, during the first Perón administration, the National Constitution was reformed, incorporating the labor and social rights (Art. 37) that characterized social constitutionalism and the legal basis for expropriating large monopolistic companies (Art. 40). At the same time, indefinite presidential reelection was established (Art. 78). This Constitution would be repealed by a proclamation of the military regime that overthrew the Peronist government.

Political rights of the inhabitants of national territories

During his first presidency, Perón would initiate a policy of recognition of political rights in the national territories -Chaco, Chubut, Formosa, La Pampa, Misiones, Neuquén, Río Negro, Santa Cruz and Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica and South Atlantic Islands- whose inhabitants could not elect their own authorities, nor elect the national authorities. At that time, only citizens living in the fourteen existing provinces -Buenos Aires, Catamarca, Córdoba, Corrientes, Entre Ríos, Jujuy, La Rioja, Mendoza, Salta, San Juan, San Luis, Santa Fe, Santiago del Estero and Tucumán- and the Federal Capital had political rights.

Article 82 of the 1949 Constitution had established that the election of the President and Vice-President was to be carried out by direct vote of all citizens living in the provinces, the Federal Capital and the federal territories. Until then, the election was carried out by the provincial electoral colleges, which could only be elected by those living in the provinces and the Federal Capital. In order to regulate this right, Perón issued Decree No. 17,821 of September 10, 1951, enabling for the first time the participation of the inhabitants of the national territories in the 1951 presidential elections, in which women also voted for the first time.

In the same decree Perón established the position of delegate of each national territory to the Chamber of Deputies of the Nation, elected by the citizens of each of the territories. The delegates had voice and vote in the commissions, but in the plenary sessions they only had voice and were not part of the quorum. Finally, it was established that as from 1951 the authorities of the municipalities located in the national territories would be elected by popular vote.

The policy of extending political rights was completed with the process of provincialization of these territories, so that their authorities could be elected by the inhabitants of the national territories themselves. By Law 14 037 of August 8, 1951, the first two provincialized territories were provincialized: Chaco and La Pampa. The new provinces were constituted a few months later by democratically elected constituent assemblies, which approved their respective constitutions and the names they would bear, deciding to call them Juan Perón and Eva Perón, respectively. During his second presidency, laws were passed provincializing all the other national territories, although the dictatorship that overthrew him would partially reverse the decision, reestablishing the national territory of Tierra del Fuego. The reestablishment of indirect voting prevented the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego from voting in presidential elections until 1973.

Cabinet

The reform of the Argentine National Constitution allowed the reelection of the president; Perón ran again as a candidate -in the first national elections in which women voted- and won with 62% of the votes.

When the constitutional reform of 1949 was approved, the main opposition party, the Unión Cívica Radical, debated whether its representatives in Congress should swear on the 1949 Constitution or refuse to do so; the Unionist sector, headed by Miguel Ángel Zavala Ortiz, with a coupist position, argued that the UCR should not recognize the legitimacy of the 1949 Constitution; The head of the radical bench, Ricardo Balbín, who argued that the UCR should swear by the Constitution of 1949, spoke against it; Balbín's position was in the majority and the radical bench swore by the Constitution of 1949. Some contemporary opposition deputies considered the reform, and therefore the reelection, illegitimate, but they were not allowed to challenge the candidacy; and specialists in law, sustain this same illegitimacy, while other historians and jurists sustain its full legitimacy, and precisely, the constitutional reform of 1949 was never applied again, after it was abolished in 1956 by the dictator Pedro Eugenio Aramburu. After Peronism had replaced four of the five members of the Supreme Court in 1947, it considered the Constitution of 1853 legitimate; when the constitutional reform of 1949 was sanctioned, it upheld its legitimacy and applied it in various rulings, even developing a jurisprudence organically interpreting the precepts of the 1949 reform. Years later, that Court was deposed by the dictatorship that usurped power in 1955, and the reform was delegitimized the following year by a proclamation of the dictator Pedro Eugenio Aramburu. Never again would this reform be legitimized by the Supreme Court, in its validity after it was abolished by the dictatorship.

In the Constituent Convention of 1957 (in which Peronism was banned), the Labor Party and the Workers' Party demanded to respect the validity of the 1949 Constitution. The dictator Pedro Eugenio Aramburu had abolished the constitutional reform through the proclamation of April 27, 1956, arguing that Article 30 of the Constitution, since, at the time of voting the need for the constitutional reform, this law was approved without complying with the two thirds of the members of the Chamber of Deputies; The abolition was carried out by a de facto government without complying with the requirements of the Constitution. The changes made during this type of administration are later approved or reverted in democracy (as, for example, happened with the 1945 Christmas bonus decree approved by Edelmiro Julián Farrell, and then legitimized in democracy), which did not happen with the 1949 constitutional reform, which continues to be unenforced to this day. In 1994, Peronists and Radicals made a pact to carry out a new constitutional reform in which both parties made compatible their historical constitutional proposals, among them the possibility of presidential reelection and direct voting.

Political rights of the inhabitants of national territories

In his second presidency, Perón continued his plan to expand the political rights of the inhabitants of the national territories, promoting the provincialization of all the remaining territories: Chubut, Formosa, Misiones, Neuquén, Río Negro, Santa Cruz and Tierra del Fuego -the latter two merged into a single province. These measures were partially annulled by the dictatorship that overthrew Perón in 1955, re-establishing the national territory of Tierra del Fuego, whose inhabitants would thus lose the rights granted by the provincialization.

On December 21, 1953, an economic union agreement was signed between Argentina and Ecuador, and on September 9, 1954, another economic union agreement was signed with Bolivia. The distribution company Gas del Estado was created for the distribution of that resource. The first gas pipeline connecting the city of Comodoro Rivadavia with the City of Buenos Aires, with a length of 1600 km, was started up. It was inaugurated on December 29, 1949, being the first of its kind in South America and the longest in the world at that time, and it was built without external financing. Also from 1953 to 1955 the Justicialist cars were built. In his second term Perón continued his plan to expand industry. In 1955 the government founded the Balseiro Institute which trains professionals in Physics, Nuclear Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Telecommunications Engineering and postgraduates in Physics, Medical Physics and Engineering.

Economy

The IAPI started again to subsidize the agrarian sector and a "Conjuncture Economic Plan" was carried out, in addition to initiating the search for foreign capital investments in the oil sector with the purpose of developing heavy industry. It was a source of controversy and attracted criticism from opponents, among them Frondizi. Argentine products had been deliberately excluded from the European markets that participated in the Marshall Plan due to political differences between the United States and the Perón government; leading to a crisis in 1952. This would damage Argentina's agricultural sector, dependent on Europe for its agricultural exports, and help precipitate the deterioration of the country's economy, the source of genuine income for the Argentine state was severely curtailed. which became evident from the end of Perón's first presidency. Wages, which had risen considerably up to that time, were frozen - as were prices - by means of biannual contracts. The government responded by raising interest rates on bank loans, easing inflationary pressure but slowing the rapid growth in the share of wages in total output.

In 1952, the Peronist government decided to completely pay off the foreign debt, the debtor country of m$n 12,500 million became a creditor for more than m$n 5,000 million. The State was in charge of the sale of the exportable balances of the national production and the purchase of fuels, raw materials and capital goods required for the agricultural, industrial and mining development of the country.

Regional trade: the State should approach negotiations with Latin American nations taking into account the need for complementarity between national economies and the joint defense of their interests. Likewise, in all trade relations with countries of the same region and others and before international economic organizations, the State should defend the following principles: international economic relations could only be fully carried out between free nations; international trade should contribute to economic independence within the framework of cooperation. The development of economically less developed countries should be achieved through progressive industrialization, under equitable terms of trade and conditions of less external vulnerability; international trade should be carried out through the general acceptance of parity between the prices of manufactured goods and raw materials; the adoption of a universal and permanent counter-cyclical policy would protect the less developed nations from the depressive tendencies that could be generated in the developed economies; discriminatory measures that threatened the stability, development and economic independence of countries should be condemned; the aims, structure and decisions of international economic organizations should be brought into line with the fundamental principles and objectives set forth in the plan.

The industrial branches privileged in this second stage of the import substitution process of the Second Five-Year Plan (1952-1957) were the automotive, oil and petrochemical, chemical, metallurgical and electrical and non-electrical machinery industries, which were oriented towards being basic industries for the country. The agricultural sector was modernized: with the development of the iron and steel and petrochemical industries, technification and the supply of fertilizers, pesticides and machinery were promoted, thus increasing agricultural production and productivity.

The diesel electric locomotive No. 1, CM1 Justicialista, was built in 1952 and began to operate during the summer of 1952-1953, covering the 400 km route between Constitución and Mar del Plata in 3 hours and 45 minutes. In the following year it made periodic trips to Bariloche and Mendoza, with an average speed of 150 km.

In 1953, Law No. 14,122 was enacted, which sought to grant legal guarantees to the owners; its main purpose was to attract companies to metal-mechanic production in Córdoba in association with the Military Aircraft Factory. An automobile factory called Industrias Kaiser Argentina was also set up in Córdoba. Both companies obtained generous credits from the Industrial Bank, reserve guarantees from the domestic market and facilities, equipment and qualified personnel, thus making profits from the first year of activity. These were the major fruits of industrial expansion associated with foreign capital, creating the first and largest metal-mechanic pole of the country so far. Large factories were set up for the production of engines, automobiles, locomotives and airplanes, in addition to the creation of the Military Aircraft Factory in IAME (Industrias Aeronáuticas y Mecánicas del Estado) and later in DINFIA (Dirección Nacional de Fabricaciones e Investigaciones Aeronáuticas). The industrial branches privileged in this second stage of the import substitution process of the Second Five Year Plan (1952-1957) were the automotive, oil and petrochemical, chemical, metallurgical and electrical and non-electrical machinery industries, oriented to be basic industries for the country. Investments were oriented towards taking advantage of the possibilities offered by a protected domestic market. The agricultural sector was modernized: with the development of the iron and steel and petrochemical industries, technification and the supply of fertilizers, pesticides and machinery were promoted. From 1953 onwards, there was a rapprochement between the United States and Argentina, and the incorporation of foreign capital into the national economy was encouraged.

He achieved a series of important economic agreements with Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Bolivia, Nicaragua and finally with Brazil, the Economic Union. These agreements stipulated the reduction of customs barriers, tax exemptions for certain products and the opening of a line of credit between the signatory countries.

By 1953, the inflationary process was brought under control, and the economy returned to rapid growth from the beginning of 1955.

Social crisis and conflict with the Church

On July 26, 1952, the first lady Eva Perón died, which produced a crisis in Perón, who began to take certain measures that deteriorated the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Peronist government, which worsened with time.

From then on, Eva was designated as "spiritual head of the nation", an honorary title she had received days before. From then on, every day at 8:25 p.m. all radio stations had to report that at that hour Evita "passed to immortality".

During this period, the irritation of groups that until then had supported the government converged with that of the opposition, which considered Peronism a type of populism based on the social resentment of the popular classes against what it generically called "the oligarchy", which includes the Argentine upper-middle and upper classes, attributing to them a position of promoting social inequality.

At the end of 1954, a complex escalation of confrontations began between the government and the Catholic Church, which until that year had actively supported Peronism. Based on relatively modest opposition gestures by the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the government reacted by sanctioning Law No. 14 394, Article 31 of which included divorce. Shortly thereafter, the municipality of Buenos Aires, then directly controlled by the president, prohibited merchants from displaying nativity scenes or other religious figures in commemoration of Christmas. In an escalation of a few months, the government suppressed the character of non-working days for certain Catholic religious festivities. allowed the opening of establishments for prostitution. banned religious demonstrations in public places. and expelled two bishops - Manuel Tato and Ramón Novoa - from the country.

The Overthrow (1955)

Since 1951, anti-Peronist civil-military sectors had been carrying out terrorist acts through the so-called civilian commandos.

On June 16, 1955, civilian commandos, made up of conservatives, radicals and socialists, together with the Navy and sectors of the Catholic Church, attempted a coup d'état. and socialists, together with the Navy and sectors of the Catholic Church attempted a coup d'état that included the bombing of the Plaza de Mayo and the center of the city of Buenos Aires with more than 364 dead and hundreds of wounded. The attack was carried out with about twenty planes of the Naval Aviation over the crowd that was in a demonstration. The attacks continued until 6 p.m. The Army installed tanks and anti-aircraft batteries to protect the president, so the insurgents were ordered to attack members of the Army and civilians supporting Perón. Finally, the attackers requested political asylum in Uruguay.

Then Perón asked the population for calm in a public speech on the radio, but several churches were burned - attributed to Peronists or Communists - while the police did not act and the firemen limited themselves to prevent the fire from spreading to neighboring buildings.

Perón then declared that the so-called Peronist revolution was over, and called on the opposing political parties to establish a process of dialogue that would avoid civil war. On July 15 Perón in a speech insisted on the call for pacification; the opposing political parties again asked for the use of the radio and this time it was granted. For the first time in ten years the opponents were able to use the state broadcasting media. In his speech of July 27, 1955, Arturo Frondizi accepted pacification in exchange for a concrete plan ranging from the reestablishment of constitutional guarantees to the industrialization of the country. The speech had to be delivered in advance and when it was read it was recorded and transmitted on the air with a 10 second delay, during which time a colonel of the Information Service controlled that it did not deviate from the text previously sent. On August 9 and 22 the leaders of the Democratic Party and the Democratic Progressive Party spoke on the radio.

The news about the assassination of the communist leader Ingallinella had a tremendous impact and was spread in Catholic newspapers. Perón replaced Alberto Teisaire as president of the Peronist Party with Alejandro Leloir. On August 31, 1955, Perón concluded the talks in the famous five-for-one speech.

Finally, on September 16, 1955, the coup d'état that would overthrow the constitutional president Juan Domingo Perón, the National Congress and the provincial governors began. It began in Córdoba, was led by General Eduardo Lonardi and lasted until September 23. On September 16, 1955, after entering the Artillery School in Cordoba, Lonardi went to the unit chief's dormitory, and when the latter threatened to resist, he shot him with a bullet. The slogan was: be brutal and proceed with maximum energy. An investigation on the number of people killed in the coup documented at least 156 fatalities. Faced with this, sectors of Peronism and even opposition sectors went to demand arms to prevent the military from taking power, but the president refused and went into temporary exile in Paraguay, delegating power to a military junta that would later surrender to the rebels.

Presidential Cabinet

After the Liberating Revolution that overthrew Perón in 1955, the de facto President Eduardo Lonardi kept the Constitution unchanged and tried to achieve "national reconciliation", without "winners or losers", maintaining the political and social changes that had previously taken place. Shortly after, he was forced to resign by the most hard-line sectors of the Army and the Navy, and General Pedro Eugenio Aramburu took over, who banned Peronism and Perón himself, whose mere mention was considered a crime. The proscription of Peronism would continue -with short exceptions, which never included allowing Perón to act- until the early 1970s.

On October 12, 1955, a court of honor was formed in the Army, presided over by General Carlos von der Becke and composed of Generals Juan Carlos Bassi, Víctor Jaime Majó, Juan Carlos Sanguinetti and Basilio Pertiné, to judge Perón's conduct, some of whose members had served with loyalty to the Army. Days later, the Tribunal ruled that Perón had committed a wide range of crimes including incitement to violence, burning of the national flag, attacks on the Catholic religion and statutory rape - accusing him of having a relationship with Nelly Rivas, then a minor - and recommended that he be demoted and banned from wearing the uniform. Subsequently, General Lonardi signed a decree approving and implementing these recommendations.

After leaving for Paraguay, President Alfredo Stroessner advised him to leave the country, because he could not guarantee his safety in case of possible attempts on his life. Stroessner gave him a safe-conduct to go to Nicaragua, but on the way he decided to seek asylum in Panama; he stayed at the Washington Hotel, in the city of Colon -at the Caribbean end of the Canal- where he concluded the book he had begun to write in Asuncion: La fuerza es el derecho de las bestias (Strength is the right of the beasts). The book could not be published in Argentina, since everything related to Perón was forbidden, even mentioning his name. He had to leave Panama, because a Pan-American conference was to be held with the attendance of U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, so he spent a few days in Nicaragua, where he was received by President Anastasio Somoza, and in August 1956 he decided with his entourage to go to Venezuela, which was ruled by the dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez; during his stay in Caracas he enjoyed official protection from the National Security Directorate, although the Venezuelan dictator never received the former Argentinean president, who was not to his liking due to political differences. However, after the overthrow of Pérez Jiménez on January 23, 1958, Perón had to take refuge in the embassy of the Dominican Republic and from there he left for that country. and from there he left for that country, where he was received by the dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo.

He moved from the Dominican Republic to Spain, arriving in Seville on January 26, 1960, and settled in Madrid, where he married the dancer María Estela Martínez de Perón, Isabelita, whom he had met in Panama in 1956. After living for some time in two rented houses, he settled in the residential area of Puerta de Hierro. where he built a house known as "Quinta 17 de Octubre", at number 6, Navalmanzano Street. According to the Freemason leader Licio Gelli, Perón was also initiated in his lodge Propaganda Due (P2) by Gelli himself, in a ceremony in Puerta de Hierro.

During the Liberating Revolution, groups of trade unionists and Peronist militants carried out acts of sabotage in factories and public offices, detonated explosives on railroad tracks and blocked streets and avenues, among other acts. These actions, known as the Peronist Resistance, were organized by former congressman John William Cooke, whom Perón appointed as his personal delegate in Argentina and to whom he delegated the leadership of Peronism. The former president supported these actions, and even supported Cooke's intention to turn Peronism into a left or center-left revolutionary movement.

There were also some military conspiracies, among which the military uprising of June 9, 1956, under the command of General Juan José Valle, stood out: a group of military and Peronist militants attempted an uprising against the de facto government. The attempt failed and both Valle and several of his military and civilian followers were shot. Repression extended to non-Peronist sectors of the working class. However, the union leaders retained their enormous influence over the industrial and service unions. In a letter that Perón sent to Cooke -the same day of the Valle uprising- he did not show the slightest compassion for the military rebels: the leader criticized their haste and lack of prudence, and assured that only their anger for having had to suffer involuntary retirement had motivated them to act.

During his years of exile Perón published several books: Los vendepatria (1956), La fuerza es el derecho de las bestias (1958), La hora de los pueblos (1968), etc.

In 1958, in view of the imminence of the presidential elections, it is presumed that Perón made a pact with Arturo Frondizi, candidate of the UCRI, the support of the Peronists to his presidential candidacy, in exchange for the return of the trade union membership to the unions and the end of the electoral proscription of the general and his movement. Frondizi obtained the presidency, but only partially fulfilled the agreement. Most of the unions were once again controlled by Peronism. The circumstances in which the pact was carried out, as well as its existence, is a matter of debate among historians. On the one hand, Enrique Escobar Cello in his book Arturo Frondizi el mito del pacto con Perón denies the pact, arguing that until today there are no true copies or records where Frondizi's signature appears, it should be noted that Frondizi himself always denied the pact. Historian Félix Luna has also questioned the pact for the same reasons as Cello. Albino Gómez, in his book Arturo Frondizi, el último estadista, also questions the existence of the pact and suggests that the Peronist support for Frondizi could be the result of the coincidence of ideas between Perón and Frondizi on the measures to be adopted in the country, it should be noted that the General was a reader of the magazine Qué! directed by Rogelio Frigerio. In 2015 Juan Bautista Yofre affirmed in the book Puerta de Hierro that Perón received half a million dollars for making the pact with Frondizi. Against this, the historian Felipe Pigna, who says that his followers denied that he had accepted money for it.

Between March 17 and April 17, 1964 Perón reportedly met with Che Guevara at his home in Madrid. The meeting was kept in the greatest secrecy and has been made known thanks to journalist Rogelio García Lupo. Ché gave Perón funds to support the operation to return to Argentina that he was preparing. In that meeting Perón would have committed himself to support the guerrilla initiatives against Latin American dictatorships, which he actually did until 1973.

In December 1964, during the government of Arturo Illia, Perón tried to return to Argentina by plane. But the government ratified the decision taken by the dictatorship of 1955 to prohibit him from settling in the country and requested the military dictatorship ruling in Brazil to detain him when he made a technical stopover in that country and to send him back to Spain.

1966-1972

In Argentina, the 1950s and 1960s were marked by frequent changes of government, almost always as a result of coups d'état. These governments were marked by continuous social and labor demands. Peronists alternated frontal opposition with negotiation to participate in politics through neo-Peronist parties.

After the dictatorship installed in 1955 and especially after the dictatorship installed in 1966, which abolished political parties, several armed groups appeared in Argentina with the aim of fighting the dictatorship and insurrectionary uprisings took place in various parts of the country, the best known of which was the Cordobazo. Most of these armed groups adhered to Peronism, such as Montoneros, the Marxist-Peronist FAR (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias), the FAP (Fuerzas Armadas Peronistas) and the FAL (Fuerzas Argentinas de Liberación).

A few months after Onganía's dictatorship was installed, between September and October 1966, Perón met in Madrid for the second time with Che Guevara, who asked him for Peronist support for his guerrilla project in Bolivia. Perón promised not to prevent those Peronists who wanted to accompany Guevara from doing so, but he did not accept to involve the Peronist movement as such in a guerrilla action in Bolivia, although he did commit the support of Peronism when Che's guerrilla moved its action to Argentine territory.

Perón publicly supported revolutionary Peronism and its guerrilla organizations -which he called "special formations"- and justified the armed struggle against the dictatorship. Even without having pronounced it verbatim, one of the best-known phrases attributed to Perón is "Violence from above engenders violence from below". He also developed a "political and doctrinal updating" of Peronism, adapting it to the Third World revolutionary struggles that were taking place at the time, defining Peronism in the 1970s as a "national socialism". To express the socialist content assumed by Peronism in the 1970s, the Tendencia would adopt the slogan "Perón, Evita, the socialist fatherland". In 1970 Perón stated his adherence to socialism in these terms:

Among the most outstanding actions of the Peronist guerrillas during the dictatorship that called itself the Argentine Revolution were the assassinations of former dictator Pedro Eugenio Aramburu, a key figure in the coup d'état against Perón in 1955. of the trade unionists Augusto Timoteo Vandor and José Alonso and José Alonso. the seizure of La Calera, and the escape from Rawson prison.

A week after the assassination of Aramburu by the Montoneros -June 1, 1970-, the dictator Onganía was forced to resign, collapsing the project of installing a permanent corporate dictatorship. The military regime was then forced to initiate a process of exit towards an elected government, which included Peronism, but which would be led and controlled by the military. The ideologist of this project was the dictator General Alejandro Agustín Lanusse, who called the plan Gran Acuerdo Nacional (GAN).

Perón then made contact with the leader of the anti-Peronist wing of radicalism, Ricardo Balbín, who had been disqualified as a deputy and arrested during his presidency. Perón and Balbín began a relationship of historical reconciliation, which was expressed in La Hora del Pueblo and the appointment as personal delegate of Héctor J. Cámpora, who would thwart the dictatorship's plans to impose a government of "national agreement" under military tutelage.

In 1971 and especially in 1972, Perón would support his actions in four fields:

"Perón returns".

In the second half of 1972, the center of the political situation was occupied by a frontal struggle between Perón and the dictator Alejandro Agustín Lanusse, head of the Great National Accord, who expected to be elected president with the support of Peronism and Radicalism. In July, Lanusse pronounced a public message to the country, in which he called Perón a coward - "he did not have the courage"- and challenged him to return to Argentina in a month, if he wanted to run as a candidate in the elections. On August 22, the most anti-Peronist sector of the Navy, opposed to the holding of elections, murdered 16 guerrilla detainees in what is known as the Trelew Massacre, a crime that several historians consider as one of the antecedents of the State terrorism that would be deployed in Argentina in the following years.

Perón surprised public opinion by announcing his return on November 17, 1972. The Operativo Retorno was led by the recently appointed Secretary General of the Peronist Movement, Juan Manuel Abal Medina, and strongly supported by revolutionary Peronism under the slogan "Luche y Vuelve", on which the organizational weight fell. Perón returned in an Alitalia plane that landed at Ezeiza, accompanied by dozens of personalities from the most diverse areas. That day hundreds of thousands of people mobilized to welcome Perón, in spite of the repression carried out by the dictatorship to prevent it, which is why November 17 is considered by Peronism as Militancy Day.

Perón took up residence in the house at 1075 Gaspar Campos Avenue, in Vicente López and remained in Argentina for almost a month, until December 14. During that time he completely disrupted the project of Lanusse and the dictatorship to hold elections under the tutelage of the military power. His first gesture was to meet with Balbín, his most bitter adversary, and publicly embrace each other as a symbol of the "national unity" that both proposed as the axis of their political proposals. Perón and Balbín examined at that time the possibility of forming a Peronist-Radical front that would raise the Perón-Balbín candidacy, but internal struggles within their own parties prevented it. In any case, Perón concreted in those days the organization of a broad political coalition, called Frente Justicialista de Liberación (Frejuli), integrated with several sectors that had been historically anti-Peronist: the Frondizismo, the Christian Democracy of José Antonio Allende and the Partido Conservador Popular of Vicente Solano Lima, who would be the candidate for vice-president of the Frente.

During this period, Perón reached another agreement of great importance: the Programmatic Coincidences of the Plenary of Social Organizations and Political Parties, signed or endorsed on December 7 by almost all political parties, the labor movement through the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) and the national business community through the General Economic Confederation (CGE) and the Argentine Agrarian Federation (FAA). This agreement would be the basis of the 1973 Social Pact, which would be the axis of democratic government until Perón's death in 1974.

Despite the fact that Perón was evidently one of the political figures with the greatest popular support in the country, the dictatorship decided not to allow him to run in the elections scheduled for March 11, 1973, because he was not domiciled in Argentina when the elections were called. In spite of the alliances established, Perón found himself without sufficient strength to force the dictatorship to revert his proscription, which is why he had to choose a person who represented his political significance to head the presidential ticket. Perón's last act, before leaving again for Madrid -passing first through Paraguay and Peru-, was to designate Héctor J. Cámpora, a man close to revolutionary Peronism and the Peronist guerrilla organizations. This was announced at the Justicialist Party Congress of December 16 and resisted for several hours by the neo-Vandorist trade unionism led by Rogelio Coria, until he received the direct order from Perón, via telephone. The electoral campaign would adopt the slogan: "Cámpora to the government, Perón to power".

On March 11, 1973, Argentina held a general election. Héctor José Cámpora, with the approval of Perón in exile, won the elections with 49.5 % of the votes, the radical leader, Ricardo Balbín, had come second with 21.3 %, and, as the FreJuLi had not obtained more than 50 % of the votes, a ballotage had to be held between the first and the second force. However, Balbín recognized Cámpora's victory and gave up the ballotage. Perón's delegate took office on May 25, 1973, thus ending the dictatorial period of the self-proclaimed Argentine Revolution.

Perón returned to the country on June 20, 1973. On that day, during the ceremony prepared to receive him, a shooting took place involving sectors of "orthodox" Peronism located in the stage -among which was a large part of the trade union movement- and youth sectors linked to Montoneros. The event is known as the Ezeiza Massacre and resulted in 13 dead and 365 wounded. The circumstances of the massacre vary according to different testimonies: Miguel Bonasso, who belonged to Montoneros, maintains that there was no confrontation and there was only a massacre. Historian Felipe Pigna maintains that the youth columns were attacked from the stage. Horacio Verbitsky maintains that it was an ambush carried out from the stage by the "old trade union and political apparatus of Peronism". In the trial investigating the Triple A, two investigations carried out by Marcelo Larraquy (López Rega: la biografía) and Juan Gasparini (La fuga del Brujo) have been added, which coincide in pointing out the ultra-right-wing sectors as the perpetrators of the massacre.

Cámpora resigned on July 13, 1973, leaving the way clear for Perón to run in the new elections.

In the elections of September 23 Perón won with 62% of the votes against the radical candidate Ricardo Balbín. He became president for the third time on October 12, 1973 with his wife María Estela Martínez de Perón as vice-president. General Perón together with Jorge Abelardo Ramos agreed that the Frente de Izquierda Popular (FIP) would carry together with the Frente Justicialista de Liberación (FREJULI) the same formula: Perón - Perón. This option from the national left added one million votes to the popular triumph. Several prominent figures such as Arturo Jauretche or Cristina Fernández de Kirchner voted for this alternative.

Perón assumed his third presidency in a very complicated international situation. Shortly before, on August 23, 1973, the oil crisis had begun worldwide, which completely changed the conditions under which capitalism and the welfare state had been developing since the 1930s. Almost simultaneously, on September 11, a military coup d'état with the support of the U.S. CIA had overthrown the socialist president Salvador Allende in Chile, aggravating the possibilities of establishing democratic governments in Latin America. At that time, only Argentina had a democratically elected government in the Southern Cone, while Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay were under U.S.-backed military dictatorships, within the broader framework of the Cold War.

In October 1973 a parapolice group known as Triple A -Alianza Anticomunista Argentina- began to operate, assassinating left-wing militants, Peronists and non-Peronists. The group was financed by the government and led by Social Welfare Minister José López Rega. In the following two years it would assassinate 683 people, some 1100 according to other sources. Perón's knowledge of the activities of the Triple A is a matter of debate among researchers. According to historian Marina Franco, from that moment on, "a state of growing juridical exceptionality linked to a political-repressive logic centered on the elimination of the internal enemy" began to take shape.

On January 19, 1974 the ERP guerrilla organization attacked the military garrison of Azul, the best armed military unit in the country. The attempted assault, led by Enrique Gorriarán Merlo, failed and during it the ERP killed conscript Daniel González, colonel Camilo Gay and his wife, and took prisoner lieutenant colonel Jorge Ibarzábal, who would be killed ten months later. For its part, the ERP had three casualties while two guerrillas captured by the military disappeared.

Perón responded by strongly condemning "terrorism" on national television and blamed, without mentioning it, the governor of the province of Buenos Aires, Oscar Bidegain, one of the five governors allied to revolutionary Peronism. He also ordered to speed up in the National Congress a reform of the Penal Code to toughen the crimes committed by guerrilla groups, aggravating the norms of the deposed dictatorship. The thirteen deputies of revolutionary Peronism opposed the reform: Armando Croatto, Santiago Díaz Ortiz, Nilda Garré, Nicolás Giménez, Jorge Glellel, Aníbal Iturrieta, Carlos Kunkel, Diego Muñiz Barreto, Juan Manual Ramírez, Juana Romero, Enrique Svrsek, Roberto Vidaña and Rodolfo Vittar, all of them linked to Montoneros and the JP.

On January 22 Bidegain resigned, being replaced by Victorio Calabró, a trade unionist of the UOM, belonging to the orthodox sector. On January 25, Perón summoned the dissident deputies to a meeting which he had broadcast directly on television. Tension was high and Perón said that if they did not agree, they had to leave Peronism:

That same day, January 25, the penal reform was approved and eight deputies of revolutionary Peronism resigned from their seats. Four days later Perón appointed Commissioner Alberto Villar, one of the heads of the Triple A, as Deputy Chief of the Federal Police.

On February 28, a police coup d'état known as the Navarrazo, overthrew the governor of the province of Córdoba, Ricardo Obregón Cano, the second of the five governors close to revolutionary Peronism to be ousted. Perón would intervene the province without reinstating the constitutional authorities.

On May 1, 1974 a large demonstration was held in Plaza de Mayo on the occasion of International Workers' Day, during which Perón would speak. Sectors of revolutionary Peronism attended in large numbers, questioning the government with the slogan "What is it General, that the popular government is full of gorillas?" Perón responded by calling them "imbebes", "stupid" and "infiltrators", and immediately afterwards, in the middle of the speech a huge sector of demonstrators withdrew from the square in open rupture.

On June 6, Alberto Martínez Baca, governor of Mendoza, would be deposed by an impeachment trial, the third of the five governors close to revolutionary Peronism to be deposed that year. In the six months following Perón's death, the remaining two governors, Miguel Ragone of Salta and Jorge Cepernic of Santa Cruz, would be deposed.

On June 12, a new rally was held in Plaza de Mayo called by the CGT. It was the last time Perón spoke at a mass rally. By then his health was seriously threatened and his doctors had recommended him to resign in order to be treated properly. He had refused, saying "I prefer to die with my boots on". Aware of his condition, Perón took advantage of that day to say goodbye in public. He asked the demonstrators to take care of the labor conquests because difficult times were ahead and ended with the following words:

Four days later, on June 16, Perón fell ill with an infectious bronchopathy that complicated his chronic circulatory disease.

He died on July 1, 1974 and was succeeded by his wife, in her capacity as vice-president. The then Technical Secretary of the Presidency of the Nation, Gustavo Caraballo, affirms that Perón had asked him to modify the Law of Acephaly, to allow the radical leader Ricardo Balbín to assume as his successor, but the legal procedure to carry out that reform was never initiated. but the legal process to carry out this reform was never initiated. In the midst of growing political violence, María Estela Martínez was overthrown by the coup d'état of March 24, 1976, which started the dictatorship that called itself the National Reorganization Process (Proceso de Reorganización Nacional).

Cabinet of Ministers

Juan Domingo Perón died on July 1, 1974, at the presidential Quinta de Olivos. due to a cardiac arrest resulting from the aggravation of the chronic ischemic heart disease he was suffering from. The announcement to the country was made by his widow, Vice President María Estela Martínez, who shortly after assumed the presidency.

Funeral

After several days of national mourning, in which the body was watched over in the National Congress by hundreds of thousands of people, the remains were transferred to a crypt in the Presidential Quinta de Olivos. On November 17, 1974, Evita's remains, which had been left in Spain, were transferred by the government of María Estela Martínez de Perón and deposited in the same crypt. Meanwhile, the government began to plan the Altar de la Patria, a gigantic mausoleum that would house the remains of Juan Perón, Eva Duarte de Perón, and all the heroes of Argentina.

While the body was in the Congress, 135 thousand people paraded in front of the coffin; outside, more than one million Argentines were left without paying their last farewell to their leader. Two thousand foreign journalists reported all the details of the funeral.

With the flight of López Rega from the country and the fall of Isabel's government, the work on the Altar de la Patria was suspended and the remains were transferred to the Chacarita Cemetery in Buenos Aires.

On October 17, 2006, his remains were transferred to the San Vicente farm, which belonged to him during his lifetime and later became a museum in his honor. During the transfer, riots broke out among sectors of the trade union movement.

Desecration of his remains

On June 10, 1987, the coffin was desecrated, when the hands of the corpse were removed. It is not known where it was taken or why it was desecrated. but there are several hypotheses about the motive. In the first place, it could have been an act of revenge: the desecration could have been an act of the famous Masonic lodge Propaganda Due (P2), in response to a breach by Perón, who had asked for their "help" before assuming his third mandate. The operation would have been carried out in complicity with members of the Army, within the framework of the destabilization plan against Argentine democracy. The second hypothesis pointed to the existence of a Swiss account: his fingerprints would be used to open his own safety deposit boxes in Swiss banks, where he would have kept several million dollars. This version was discarded because at that time there were no such accounts in Switzerland. The desecration has also been attributed to the Armed Forces: there were false informants related to that institution, many witnesses or dead informants suspiciously related to it, as well as threats with indications of coming from military sources. And finally, the opposition has been pointed out: anti-Peronist sectors, in allusion to a statement by Perón where he said that he would cut his hands off before borrowing money from the International Monetary Fund, would have carried out the hand-cutting.

Peronism after Perón

After the death of its founder, the government of his widow and successor, María Estela Martínez, continued the increasingly violent confrontation between the two sectors that claimed to represent Peronism, the right - led by Minister López Rega and supported by sectors of trade unionism - and the left, mainly identified with the armed organizations of that tendency, while the economic situation worsened rapidly and ministerial changes took place. The violent struggle and the lack of leadership were used as excuses by the Armed Forces, which overthrew the president.

The military dictatorship that followed, known as the National Reorganization Process, was based on the practice of State terrorism; all political parties were banned, and Justicialist militancy -as well as that of the left-wing parties- was severely punished by repression. This allowed the implementation of a liberal economic plan that was very burdensome for the national industry.

The Argentine defeat in the Falklands War in 1982 forced the dictatorship to call free elections in 1983, in which Raúl Alfonsín of the Radical Civic Union defeated Peronism, with a campaign in which the rejection and commitment to his repeal of the military's self-amnesty law, whose validity was accepted by the presidential candidate of the Justicialist Party, Ítalo Argentino Lúder, and the denunciation of an alleged union-military pact, stood out. A gradual recovery allowed the return to power of Justicialism, in 1989, with the Peronist government of Carlos Saúl Menem as president, with a marked neoliberal orientation.

Thanks to the application of the Acephaly Law, the Justicialist Eduardo Duhalde, became president in 2002 and remained in office until 2003. Duhalde decided to support another Justicialist, Néstor Kirchner, in the 2003 elections. When Néstor Kirchner became president, Peronism split, giving rise to the so-called Peronismo Federal, an opposition to the ruling Kirchnerism. The Kirchnerist Peronism governed uninterruptedly for twelve years, with President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner's two terms of office added to that of her husband Néstor Kirchner.

Perón wrote texts of various genres, but especially on politics and military strategy.

"San Martín and Bolívar as seen by Perón", a book that includes part of the original publication.

Documentaries

During his exile in Madrid, Perón was interviewed in two feature films produced between June and October 1971 by Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, in which Perón talks about the history, doctrine and practice of the Justicialist movement in Argentina.

Sources

1. Juan Perón
2. Juan Domingo Perón
3. Designado de forma interina el 11 de octubre de 1945[1]​ en sustitución de Perón; renunció el 19 de octubre y ese mismo día se designó a Domingo Mercante como secretario definitivo.[2]​
4. Vivió un tiempo en un dúplex del número 11 de la calle del Doctor Arce, donde coincidió con la actriz norteamericana Ava Gardner, a la que llegó a denunciar por el ruido de sus fiestas nocturnas.• Fernández-Santos, Elsa (25 de enero de 1991). «El Madrid de una actriz desenfrenada». El País.
5. Isabel Martínez de Perón assure l'intérim du 29 juin au 1er juillet 1974.
6. ^ "Perón". Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Retrieved 19 May 2019.
7. ^ Galasso, Norberto (2005). Galasso, Norberto. Perón: Formación, ascenso y caída, 1893–1955. p. 25. ISBN 978-9505813995.
8. ^ Come i sostenitori di Perón che si erano accampati davanti al palazzo presidenziale e in Plaza de Mayo senza camicia, a causa del gran caldo