Juan Perón

Patio inside the home in Lobos where Perón was born.

Juan Domingo Perón was born in Lobos, Buenos Aires Province, on 8 October 1895. He was the son of Juana Sosa Toledo and Mario Tomás Perón. The Perón branch of his family was originally Spanish, but settled in Spanish Sardinia,[4] from which his great-grandfather emigrated in the 1830s; in later life Perón would publicly express his pride in his Sardinian roots.[5] He also had Spanish,[6] British and French ancestry.[7]

Perón's great-grandfather became a successful shoe merchant in Buenos Aires, and his grandfather was a prosperous physician; his death in 1889 left his widow nearly destitute, however, and Perón's father moved to then-rural Lobos, where he administered an estancia and met his future wife. The couple had their two sons out of wedlock and married in 1901.[8]

His father moved to the Patagonia region that year, where he later purchased a sheep ranch. Juan himself was sent away in 1904 to a boarding school in Buenos Aires directed by his paternal grandmother, where he received a strict Catholic upbringing. His father's undertaking ultimately failed, and he died in Buenos Aires in 1928. The youth entered the National Military College in 1911 at age 16 and graduated in 1913. He excelled less in his studies than in athletics, particularly boxing and fencing.[5]

Lt. Perón (left) and General José Uriburu (middle), with whose right-wing coup in 1930 he collaborated. Perón backed the more moderate General Agustín Justo, however.

Perón began his military career in an Infantry post in Paraná, Entre Ríos. He went on to command the post, and in this capacity mediated a prolonged labour conflict in 1920 at La Forestal, then a leading firm in forestry in Argentina. He earned instructor's credentials at the Superior War School, and in 1929 was appointed to the Army General Staff Headquarters. Perón married his first wife, Aurelia Tizón (Potota, as Perón fondly called her), on 5 January 1929.[8]

Perón was recruited by supporters of the director of the War Academy, General José Félix Uriburu, to collaborate in the latter's plans for a military coup against President Hipólito Yrigoyen. Perón, who instead supported General Agustín Justo, was banished to a remote post in northwestern Argentina after Uriburu's successful coup in September 1930. He was promoted to the rank of Major the following year and named to the faculty at the Superior War School, however, where he taught military history and published a number of treatises on the subject. He served as military attaché in the Argentine Embassy in Chile from 1936 to 1938, and returned to his teaching post. His wife was diagnosed with uterine cancer that year, and died on 10 September at age 30; the couple had no children.[8]

Perón was assigned by the War Ministry to study mountain warfare in the Italian Alps in 1939. He also attended the University of Turin for a semester and served as a military observer in countries across Europe. He studied Benito Mussolini's Italian Fascism, Nazi Germany, and other European governments of the time, concluding in his summary, Apuntes de historia militar (Notes about military history), that social democracy could be a viable alternative to liberal democracy (which he viewed as a veiled plutocracy) or totalitarian regimes (which he viewed as oppressive).[8] He returned to Argentina in 1941, and served as an Army skiing instructor in Mendoza Province.[5]

Peron in 1940

President Edelmiro Farrell (left) and his benefactor, Vice President and Colonel Juan Perón, in April 1945.

In 1943 a coup d'état was led by General Arturo Rawson against democratically elected President Ramón Castillo.[9] The military was opposed to Governor Robustiano Patrón Costas, Castillo's hand-picked successor, who was the principal landowner in Salta Province, as well as a main stockholder in its sugar industry.

As a colonel, Perón took a significant part in the military coup by the GOU (United Officers' Group, a secret society) against the conservative civilian government of Castillo. At first an assistant to Secretary of War General Edelmiro Farrell, under the administration of General Pedro Ramírez, he later became the head of the then-insignificant Department of Labour. Perón's work in the Labour Department witnessed the passage of a broad range of progressive social reforms designed to improve working conditions,[10] and led to an alliance with the socialist and syndicalist movements in the Argentine labour unions, which increased his power and influence in the military government.[11]

After the coup, socialists from the CGT-Nº1 labour union, through mercantile labour leader Ángel Borlenghi and railway union lawyer Juan Atilio Bramuglia, made contact with Perón and fellow GOU Colonel Domingo Mercante. They established an alliance to promote labour laws that had long been demanded by the workers' movement, to strengthen the unions, and to transform the Department of Labour into a more significant government office. Perón had the Department of Labour elevated to a cabinet-level secretariat in November 1943.[12]

Demonstration for Perón's release on 17 October 1945

Following the devastating January 1944 San Juan earthquake, which claimed over 10,000 lives and leveled the Andes range city, Perón became nationally prominent in relief efforts. Junta leader Pedro Ramírez entrusted fundraising efforts to him, and Perón marshaled celebrities from Argentina's large film industry and other public figures. For months, a giant thermometer hung from the Buenos Aires Obelisk to track the fundraising. The effort's success and relief for earthquake victims earned Perón widespread public approval. At this time, he met a minor radio matinee star, Eva Duarte.[5]

Juan and Eva Perón

Following President Ramírez's January 1944 suspension of diplomatic relations with the Axis Powers (against whom the new junta would declare war in March 1945), the GOU junta unseated him in favor of General Edelmiro Farrell. For contributing to his success, Perón was appointed Vice President and Secretary of War, while retaining his Labour portfolio. As Minister of Labour, Perón established the INPS (the first national social insurance system in Argentina), settled industrial disputes in favour of labour unions (as long as their leaders pledged political allegiance to him), and introduced a wide range of social welfare benefits for unionised workers.[13]

Employers were forced to improve working conditions and to provide severance pay and accident compensation, the conditions under which workers could be dismissed were restricted, a system of labour courts to handle the grievances of workers was established, the working day was reduced in various industries, and paid holidays/vacations were generalised to the entire workforce. Perón also passed a law providing minimum wages, maximum hours and vacations for rural workers, froze rural rents, presided over a large increase in rural wages, and helped lumber, wine, sugar and migrant workers organize themselves. From 1943 to 1946, real wages grew by only 4%, but in 1945 Perón established two new institutions that would later increase wages: the “aguinaldo” (a bonus that provided each worker with a lump sum at the end of the year amounting to one-twelfth of the annual wage) and the National Institute of Compensation, which implemented a minimum wage and collected data on living standards, prices, and wages.[14] Leveraging his authority on behalf of striking abattoir workers and the right to unionise, Perón became increasingly thought of as presidential timber.[15]

On 18 September 1945, he delivered an address billed as "from work to home and from home to work". The speech, prefaced by an excoriation of the conservative opposition, provoked an ovation by declaring that "we've passed social reforms to make the Argentine people proud to live where they live, once again." This move fed growing rivalries against Perón and on 9 October 1945, he was forced to resign by opponents within the armed forces. Arrested four days later, he was released due to mass demonstrations organised by the CGT and other supporters; 17 October was later commemorated as Loyalty Day. His paramour, Eva Duarte, became hugely popular after helping organize the demonstration; known as "Evita", she helped Perón gain support with labour and women's groups. She and Perón were married on 22 October.[5]

The first to vocally oppose Peron rule were the Argentine intelligentsia and the middle-class. University students and professors were seen as particularly troublesome. Perón fired over 2000 university professors and faculty members from all major public education institutions.[19] These included Nobel laureate Bernardo Houssay, a physiologist, University of La Plata physicist Rafael Grinfeld, painter Emilio Pettoruti, art scholars Pío Collivadino and Jorge Romero Brest, and noted author Jorge Luis Borges who at the time was head of the National Library of Buenos Aires, was appointed "poultry inspector" at the Buenos Aires Municipal Wholesale Market (a post he refused).[45] Many left the country and migrated to Mexico, United States or Europe. Weiss recalls events in the universities:

As a young student in Buenos Aires in the early 1950s, I well remember the graffiti found on many an empty wall all over town: "Build the Fatherland. Kill a Student" (Haga patria, mate un estudiante). Perón opposed the universities, which questioned his methods and his goals. A well-remembered slogan was, Alpargatas sí, libros no ("Shoes? Yes! Books? No!"). Universities were then intervened, the faculty was pressured to get in line and those who resisted where blacklisted, fired or exiled from the country. In most public universities Peronist puppets were appointed as administrator. Others were closed altogether.

The labour movement that had brought Perón to power was not exempt from the iron fist. In the 1946 elections for the post of Secretary General of the CGT resulted in telephone workers' union leader Luis Gay's victory over Perón's nominee, former retail workers' leader Ángel Borlenghi—both central figures in Perón's famed 17 October comeback. The president had Luis Gay expelled from the CGT three months later, and replaced him with José Espejo, a little-known rank-and-filer who was close to the first lady.

Union leader Cipriano Reyes, jailed for years for turning against Perón

The meat-packers' union leader, Cipriano Reyes, turned against Perón when he replaced the Labour Party with the Peronist Party in 1947. Organizing a strike in protest, Reyes was arrested on the charge of plotting against the lives of the president and first lady, though the allegations were never substantiated. Tortured in prison, Reyes was denied parole five years later, and freed only after the regime's 1955 downfall.[46] Cipriano Reyes was one of hundreds of Perón's opponents held at Buenos Aires' Ramos Mejía General Hospital, one of whose basements was converted into a police detention center where torture became routine.[47]

The populist leader was intolerant of both left-wing and conservative opposition. Though he used violence, Perón preferred to deprive the opposition of their access to media. Interior Minister Borlenghi administered El Laborista, the leading official news daily. Carlos Aloe, a personal friend of Evita's, oversaw an array of leisure magazines published by Editorial Haynes, which the Peronist Party bought a majority stake in. Through the Secretary of the Media, Raúl Apold, socialist dailies such as La Vanguardia or Democracia, and conservative ones such as La Prensa or La Razón, were simply closed or expropriated in favor of the CGT or ALEA, the regime's new state media company.[18] Intimidation of the press increased: between 1943 and 1946, 110 publications were closed down; others such as La Nación and Roberto Noble's Clarín became more cautious and self-censoring.[48] Perón appeared more threatened by dissident artists than by opposition political figures (though UCR leader Ricardo Balbín spent most of 1950 in jail). Numerous prominent cultural and intellectual figures were imprisoned (publisher and critic Victoria Ocampo, for one) or forced into exile, among them comedian Niní Marshall, film maker Luis Saslavsky, pianist Osvaldo Pugliese and actress Libertad Lamarque, victim of a rivalry with Eva Perón.[49]

In 1938, Perón was sent on a diplomatic mission to Europe. During this time he became enamoured of the Italian fascist model. Perón's admiration for Benito Mussolini is well documented.[50] Likewise he took as model of inspiration the government of Ioannis Metaxas in Greece and Adolf Hitler in Germany, and his exact words in that respect were as follows:

Italian Fascism made people's organizations participate more on the country's political stage. Before Mussolini's rise to power, the state was separated from the workers, and the former had no involvement in the latter. [...] Exactly the same process happened in Germany, that is the state was organized [to serve] for a perfectly structured community, for a perfectly structured population: a community where the state was the tool of the people, whose representation was, in my opinion, effective.[51]

— Juan Perón

During his reign Perón and his administrators often resorted to organized violence and dictatorial rule. He often showed contempt for any opponents; and regularly characterized them as traitors and agents of foreign powers;[52] subverted freedom of speech and sought to crush any vocal dissidents through such actions as nationalizing the broadcasting system, centralizing the unions under his control and monopolizing the supply of newspaper print. At times, Perón also resorted to tactics such as illegally imprisoning opposition politicians and journalists, including Radical Civic Union leader Ricardo Balbin; and shutting down opposition papers, such as La Prensa.[50]

Most modern scholars categorise Peron as a fascist leader.[53] Carlos Fayt states that Peronism was just "an Argentine implementation of Italian fascism".[53] Paul M. Hayes, meanwhile, reaches the conclusion that "the Peronist movement produced a form of fascism that was distinctively Latin American".[53][54]

Revisionist and fervent peronist historian, Felipe Pigna believes that no researcher who has deeply studied Perón should consider him a fascist. Pigna believes Perón was only a pragmatist who took useful elements from all modern ideologies of the time, such as fascism, but also the "New Deal" policies of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.[55] And that Perón was neither fascist nor anti-fascist, simply realist, and that the active intervention of the working class in politics, as he saw in those countries, was a definitive phenomenon.[55]

Protection of Nazi war criminals

After World War II, Argentina became a haven for Nazi war criminals, with explicit protection from Perón, who even shortly before his death commented on the Nuremberg Trials:

In Nuremberg at that time something was taking place that I personally considered a disgrace and an unfortunate lesson for the future of humanity. I became certain that the Argentine people also considered the Nuremberg process a disgrace, unworthy of the victors, who behaved as if they hadn't been victorious. Now we realize that they [the Allies] deserved to lose the war.[56]

Author Uki Goñi alleges that Axis Power collaborators, including Pierre Daye, met with Perón at Casa Rosada, the President's official executive mansion.[57] In this meeting, a network would have been created with support by the Argentine Immigration Service and the Foreign Office. The Swiss Chief of Police Heinrich Rothmund[58] and the Croatian priest Krunoslav Draganović also helped organize the ratline.

An investigation of 22,000 documents by the DAIA in 1997 discovered that the network was managed by Rodolfo Freude who had an office in the Casa Rosada and was close to Eva Perón's brother, Juan Duarte. According to Ronald Newton, Ludwig Freude, Rodolfo's father, was probably the local representative of the Office Three secret service headed by Joachim von Ribbentrop, with probably more influence than the German ambassador Edmund von Thermann. He had met Perón in the 1930s, and had contacts with Generals Juan Pistarini, Domingo Martínez, and José Molina. Ludwig Freude's house became the meeting place for Nazis and Argentine military officers supporting the Axis. In 1943, he traveled with Perón to Europe to attempt an arms deal with Germany.[59]

Nazi exile network principal Rodolfo Freude (2nd from left) and President Perón (2nd from right), who appointed Freude Director of the Argentine Intelligence Secretariat

After the war, Ludwig Freude was investigated over his connection to possible looted Nazi art, cash and precious metals on deposit at two Argentine banks, Banco Germanico and Banco Tornquist. But on 6 September 1946, the Freude investigation was terminated by presidential decree.[60]

Examples of Nazis and collaborators who relocated to Argentina include Emile Dewoitine, who arrived in May 1946 and worked on the Pulqui jet; Erich Priebke, who arrived in 1947; Josef Mengele in 1949; Adolf Eichmann in 1950; Austrian representative of the Škoda arms manufacturer in Spain Reinhard Spitzy; Charles Lescat, editor of Je Suis Partout in Vichy France; SS functionary Ludwig Lienhardt; and SS-Hauptsturmführer Klaus Barbie.

Many members of the notorious Croatian Ustaše (including their leader, Ante Pavelić) took refuge in Argentina, as did Milan Stojadinović, the former Serbian Prime Minister of monarchist Yugoslavia.[61] In 1946 Stojadinović went to Rio de Janeiro, and then to Buenos Aires, where he was reunited with his family. Stojadinović spent the rest of his life as presidential advisor on economic and financial affairs to governments in Argentina and founded the financial newspaper El Economista in 1951, which still carries his name on its masthead.[62]

A Croatian priest, Krunoslav Draganović, organizer of the San Girolamo ratline, was authorized by Perón to assist Nazi operatives to come to Argentina and evade prosecution in Europe after World War II,[61] in particular the Ustaše. Ante Pavelić became a security advisor of Perón, before leaving for Francoist Spain in 1957.[63]

As in the United States (Operation Paperclip), Argentina also welcomed displaced German scientists such as Kurt Tank and Ronald Richter. Some of these refugees took important roles in Perón's Argentina, such as French collaborationist Jacques de Mahieu, who became an ideologue of the Peronist movement, before becoming mentor to a Roman Catholic nationalist youth group in the 1960s. Belgian collaborationist Pierre Daye became editor of a Peronist magazine. Rodolfo Freude, Ludwig's son, became Perón's chief of presidential intelligence in his first term.[61]

Recently, Goñi's research, drawing on investigations in Argentine, Swiss, American, British and Belgian government archives, as well as numerous interviews and other sources, was detailed in The Real ODESSA: Smuggling the Nazis to Perón's Argentina (2002), showing how escape routes known as ratlines were used by former NSDAP members and like-minded people to escape trial and judgment.[64] Goñi places particular emphasis on the part played by Perón's government in organizing the ratlines, as well as documenting the aid of Swiss and Vatican authorities in their flight. The Argentine consulate in Barcelona gave false passports to fleeing Nazi war criminals and collaborationists.

Tomás Eloy Martínez, writer and professor of Latin American studies at Rutgers University, wrote that Juan Perón allowed Nazis into the country in hopes of acquiring advanced German technology developed during the war. Martínez also noted that Eva Perón played no part in allowing Nazis into the country.[65] However, one of Eva's bodyguards was in fact an ex-Nazi commando named Otto Skorzeny, who had met Juan on occasion.[66]

Jewish and German communities of Argentina

Further information: History of the Jews in Argentina and German Argentine

The German Argentine community in Argentina is the fourth-largest immigrant group in the country, after the ethnic Spanish and the Italians. The German Argentine community predates Juan Perón's presidency, and began during the political unrest related to the 19th-century unification of Germany. Laurence Levine writes that Perón found 20th-century German civilization too "rigid" and had a "distaste" for it.[67] Crassweller writes that while Juan Perón preferred Argentine culture, with which he felt a spiritual affinity, he was "pragmatic" in dealing with the diverse populace of Argentina.[18]

While Juan Perón's Argentina allowed many Nazi criminals to take refuge in the country following World War II, the society also accepted more Jewish immigrants than any other country in Latin America. Today Argentina has a population of more than 200,000 Jewish citizens, the largest in Latin America, the third-largest in the Americas, and the sixth-largest in the world.[68][69][70][71] The Jewish Virtual Library writes that while Juan Perón had sympathized with the Axis powers, "Perón also expressed sympathy for Jewish rights and in 1949 established diplomatic relations with the State of Israel, the first Latin American government to do so. Since then, more than 45,000 Jews have immigrated to Israel from Argentina."[72]

Juan Perón and José Ber Gelbard

Evita and Juan Perón at the Plaza de Mayo, 1951. Raúl Apold is visible behind Perón.

Golda Meir talks with Evita Perón on Meir's visit to Argentina, 1951.

Fraser and Navarro write that Juan Perón was a complicated man who over the years stood for many different, often contradictory, things.[73] In the book Inside Argentina from Perón to Menem author Laurence Levine, former president of the US-Argentine Chamber of Commerce, writes, "although anti-Semitism existed in Argentina, Perón's own views and his political associations were not anti-Semitic...."[67] Perón appointed several Jewish Argentinians as government advisers, such as his economic advisor, José Ber Gelbard,[67] or the powerful Secretary of Media, Raúl Apold. Perón favoured the creation of institutions such as New Zion (Nueva Sión), the Argentine-Jewish Institute of Culture and Information, led by Simón Mirelman, and the Argentine-Israeli Chamber of Commerce. Also, he named Rabbi Amran Blum as the first Jewish professor of philosophy in the National University of Buenos Aires. Perón appointed Pablo Mangel, a Jew, as Argentina's first ambassador to that Israel.[74] In 1946 Perón's government allowed Jewish army privates to celebrate their holidays, which was intended to foster Jewish integration.

Argentina signed a generous commercial agreement with Israel that granted favourable terms for Israeli acquisitions of Argentine commodities, and the Eva Perón Foundation sent significant humanitarian aid. In 1951 during their visit to Buenos Aires, Chaim Weizmann and Golda Meir expressed their gratitude for this aid.

U.S. Ambassador George S. Messersmith visited Argentina in 1947 during the first term of Juan Perón. Messersmith noted, "There is not as much social discrimination against Jews here as there is right in New York or in most places at home..."[18] According to Raanan Rein, "Fewer anti-Semitic incidences took place in Argentina during Perón’s rule than during any other period in the 20th century.”[75]

Perón and the ailing Evita during his second inaugural parade, June 1952. Eva died the following month.

Facing only token UCR and Socialist Party opposition and despite being unable to field his popular wife, Eva, as a running mate, Perón was re-elected in 1951 by a margin of over 30%.[76] This election was the first to have extended suffrage to Argentine women and the first in Argentina to be televised: Perón was inaugurated on Channel 7 public television that October. He began his second term in June 1952 with serious economic problems, however, compounded by a severe drought that helped lead to a US$500 million trade deficit (depleting reserves).[8]

Perón called employers and unions to a Productivity Congress to regulate social conflict through dialogue, but the conference failed without reaching an agreement. Divisions among Peronists intensified, and the President's worsening mistrust led to the forced resignation of numerous valuable allies, notably Buenos Aires Province Governor Domingo Mercante.[5] Again on the defensive, Perón accelerated generals' promotions and extended them pay hikes and other benefits. He also accelerated landmark construction projects slated for the CGT or government agencies; among these was the 41-story and 141 m (463 ft) high Alas Building (transferred to the Air Force by a later regime).[77]

Opposition to Perón grew bolder following Eva Perón's death on 26 July 1952. On 15 April 1953, a terrorist group (never identified) detonated two bombs in a public rally at Plaza de Mayo, killing 7 and injuring 95. Amid the chaos, Perón exhorted the crowd to take reprisals; they made their way to their adversaries' gathering places, the Socialist Party headquarters and the aristocratic Jockey Club (both housed in magnificent turn-of-the-century Beaux-Arts buildings), and burned them to the ground.

Designed and manufactured in Argentina, the Justicialist was part of Perón's effort to develop a local auto industry.

A stalemate of sorts ensued between Perón and his opposition and, despite austerity measures taken late in 1952 to remedy the country's unsustainable trade deficit, the president remained generally popular. In March 1954, Perón called a vice-presidential election to replace the late Hortensio Quijano, which his candidate won by a nearly two-to-one margin. Given what he felt was as solid a mandate as ever and with inflation in single digits and the economy on a more secure footing, Perón ventured into a new policy: the creation of incentives designed to attract foreign investment.

The Alas Building under construction

Drawn to an economy with the highest standard of living in Latin America and a new steel mill in San Nicolás de los Arroyos, automakers FIAT and Kaiser Motors responded to the initiave by breaking ground on new facilities in the city of Córdoba, as did the freight truck division of Daimler-Benz, the first such investments since General Motors' Argentine assembly line opened in 1926. Perón also signed an important exploration contract with Standard Oil of California, in May 1955, consolidating his new policy of substituting the two largest sources of that era's chronic trade deficits (imported petroleum and motor vehicles) with local production brought in through foreign investment. Arturo Frondizi, who had been the centrist Radical Civic Union's 1951 vice-presidential nominee, publicly condemned what he considered to be an anti-patriotic decision; as president three years later, however, he himself signed exploration contracts with foreign oil companies.

As 1954 drew to a close, Perón unveiled reforms far more controversial to the normally conservative Argentine public, the legalization of divorce and of prostitution. The Roman Catholic Church's Argentine leaders, whose support of Perón's government had been steadily waning since the advent of the Eva Perón Foundation, were now open antagonists of the man they called "the tyrant." Though much of Argentina's media had, since 1950, been either controlled or monitored by the administration, lurid pieces on his ongoing relationship with an underage girl named Nélida Rivas (known as Nelly),[78] something Perón never denied, filled the gossip pages.[9] Pressed by reporters on whether his supposed new paramour was, as the magazines claimed, thirteen years of age, the fifty-nine-year-old Perón responded that he was "not superstitious."[79]

Before long, however, the president's humor on the subject ran out and, following the expulsion of two Catholic priests he believed to be behind his recent image problems, a 15 June 1955 declaration of the Sacred Consistorial Congregation[80] (not of Pope Pius XII himself, who alone had authority to excommunicate a head of state)[81] was interpreted as declaring Perón excommunicated.[82] The following day, Perón called for a rally of support on the Plaza de Mayo, a time-honored custom among Argentine presidents during a challenge. However, as he spoke before a crowd of thousands, Navy fighter jets flew overhead and dropped bombs into the crowded square below before seeking refuge in Uruguay.

Scene in the Plaza de Mayo following a failed coup attempt against Perón, 16 June 1955. He was deposed three months later.

The incident, part of a coup attempt against Perón, killed 364 people and was, from a historical perspective, the only air assault ever on Argentine soil, as well as a portent of the mayhem that Argentine society would suffer in the 1970s.[9] It moreover touched off a wave of reprisals on the part of Peronists. Reminiscent of the incidents in 1953, Peronist crowds ransacked eleven Buenos Aires churches, including the Metropolitan Cathedral. On 16 September 1955, a nationalist Catholic group from both the Army and Navy, led by General Eduardo Lonardi, General Pedro E. Aramburu, and Admiral Isaac Rojas, led a revolt from Córdoba. They took power in a coup three days later, which they named Revolución Libertadora (the "Liberating Revolution"). Perón barely escaped with his life, leaving Nelly Rivas behind,[83] and fleeing on the gunboat ARP Paraguay provided by Paraguayan leader Alfredo Stroessner, up the Paraná River.

At that point Argentina was more politically polarized than it had been since 1880. The landowning elites and other conservatives pointed to an exchange rate that had rocketed from 4 to 30 pesos per dollar and consumer prices that had risen nearly fivefold.[8][33] Employers and moderates generally agreed, qualifying that with the fact the economy had grown by over 40% (the best showing since the 1920s).[84] The underprivileged and humanitarians looked back upon the era as one in which real wages grew by over a third and better working conditions arrived alongside benefits like pensions, health care, paid vacations and the construction of record numbers of needed schools, hospitals, works of infrastructure and housing.[11]

The new military regime went to great lengths to destroy both Juan and Eva Perón's reputation, putting up public exhibits of what they maintained was the Peróns' scandalously sumptuous taste for antiques, jewelry, roadsters, yachts and other luxuries. They also accused other Peronist leaders of corruption; but, ultimately, though many were prosecuted, none was convicted. The junta's first leader, Eduardo Lonardi, appointed a Civilian Advisory Board. However, its preference for a gradual approach to de-Perónization helped lead to Lonardi's ousting, though most of the board's recommendations withstood the new president's scrutiny.

Lonardi's replacement, Lieutenant-General Pedro Aramburu, outlawed the mere mention of Juan or Eva Perón's names under Decree Law 4161/56. Throughout Argentina, Peronism and the very display of Peronist mementos was banned. Partly in response to these and other excesses, Peronists and moderates in the army organized a counter-coup against Aramburu, in June 1956. Possessing an efficient intelligence network, however, Aramburu foiled the plan, having the plot's leader, General Juan José Valle, and 26 others executed. Aramburu turned to similarly drastic means in trying to rid the country of the spectre of the Peróns, themselves. Eva Perón's corpse was removed from its display at CGT headquarters and ordered hidden under another name in a modest grave in Milan, Italy. Perón himself, for the time residing in Caracas, Venezuela at the kindness of ill-fated President Marcos Pérez Jiménez, suffered a number of attempted kidnappings and assassinations ordered by Aramburu.[85]

Continuing to exert considerable direct influence over Argentine politics despite the ongoing ban of the Justicialist Party as Argentina geared for the 1958 elections, Perón instructed his supporters to cast their ballots for the moderate Arturo Frondizi, a splinter candidate within the Peronists' largest opposition party, the Radical Civic Union (UCR). Frondizi went on to defeat the better-known (but, more anti-Peronist) UCR leader, Ricardo Balbín. Perón backed a "Popular Union" (UP) in 1962, and when its candidate for governor of Buenos Aires Province (Andrés Framini) was elected, Frondizi was forced to resign by the military. Unable to secure a new alliance, Perón advised his followers to cast blank ballots in the 1963 elections, demonstrating direct control over one fifth of the electorate.[19]

Perón's stay in Venezuela had been cut short by the 1958 ousting of General Pérez Jiménez. In Panama, he met the nightclub singer María Estela Martínez (known as "Isabel"). Eventually settling in Madrid, Spain under the protection of Francisco Franco, he married Isabel in 1961 and was admitted back into the Catholic Church in 1963.[86][87] Following a failed December 1964 attempt to return to Buenos Aires, he sent his wife to Argentina in 1965, to meet political dissidents and advance Perón's policy of confrontation and electoral boycotts. She organized a meeting in the house of Bernardo Alberte, Perón's delegate and sponsor of various left-wing Peronist movements such as the CGT de los Argentinos (CGTA), an offshoot of the umbrella CGT union. During Isabel's visit, adviser Raúl Lastiri introduced her to his father-in-law, José López Rega. A policeman with an interest in the occult, he won Isabel's trust through their common dislike of Jorge Antonio, a prominent Argentine industrialist and the Peronist movement's main financial backer during their perilous 1960s.[88] Accompanying her to Spain, López Rega worked for Perón's security before becoming the couple's personal secretary. A return of the Popular Union (UP) in 1965 and their victories in congressional elections that year helped lead to the overthrow of the moderate President Arturo Illia, and to the return of dictatorship.[19]

Perón became increasingly unable to control the CGT, itself. Though he had the support of its Secretary General, José Alonso, others in the union favored distancing the CGT from the exiled leader. Chief among them was Steel and Metalworkers Union head Augusto Vandor. Vandor challenged Perón from 1965 to 1968 by defying Perón's call for an electoral boycott (leading the UP to victories in the 1965 elections), and with mottos such as "Peronism without Perón" and "to save Perón, one has to be against Perón." Dictator Juan Carlos Onganía's continued repression of labour demands, however, helped lead to Vandor's rapproachment with Perón—a development cut short by Vandor's as-yet unsolved 1969 murder. Labour agitation increased; the CGTA, in particular, organized opposition to the dictatorship between 1968 and 1972, and it would have an important role in the May–June 1969 Cordobazo insurrection.[18]

Perón began courting the far left during Onganía's dictatorship. In his book La Hora de los Pueblos (1968), Perón enunciated the main principles of his purported new Tricontinental political vision:

Mao is at the head of Asia, Nasser of Africa, De Gaulle of the old Europe and Castro of Latin America.[89]

— Juan Perón, La Hora de los Pueblos

He supported the more militant unions and maintained close links with the Montoneros, a far-left Catholic Peronist group. On 1 June 1970, the Montoneros kidnapped and assassinated former anti-Peronist President Pedro Aramburu in retaliation for the June 1956 mass execution of a Peronist uprising against the junta. In 1971, he sent two letters to the film director Octavio Getino, one congratulating him for his work with Fernando Solanas and Gerardo Vallejo, in the Grupo Cine Liberación, and another concerning two film documentaries, La Revolución Justicialista and Actualización política y doctrinaria.[90]

He also cultivated ties with conservatives and the far right. He supported the leader of the conservative wing of the UCR, his erstwhile prisoner Ricardo Balbín, against competition from within the UCR itself. Members of the right-wing Tacuara Nationalist Movement, considered the first Argentine guerrilla group, also turned towards him. Founded in the early 1960s, the Tacuaras were a fascist, anti-Semitic and anti-conformist group founded on the model of Primo de Rivera's Falange, and at first strongly opposed Peronism. However, they split after the 1959 Cuban Revolution into three groups: the one most opposed to the Peronist alliance, led by Catholic priest Julio Meinvielle, retained the original hard-line stance; the New Argentina Movement (MNA), headed by Dardo Cabo, was founded on 9 June 1961, to commemorate General Valle's Peronist uprising on the same date in 1956, and became the precursor to all modern Catholic nationalist groups in Argentina; and the Revolutionary Nationalist Tacuara Movement (MNRT), formed by Joe Baxter and José Luis Nell, who joined Peronism believing in its capacity for revolution, and without forsaking nationalism, broke from the Church and abandoned anti-Semitism. Baxter's MNRT became progressively Marxist, and many of the Montoneros and of the ERP's leaders came from this group.[18]

Following Onganía's replacement in June 1970, General Roberto M. Levingston proposed the replacement of Argentina's myriad political parties with "four or five" (vetted by the Revolución Argentina regime). This attempt to govern indefinitely against the will of the different political parties united Peronists and their opposition in a joint declaration of 11 November 1970, billed as la Hora del Pueblo (The Hour of the People), which called for free and immediate democratic elections to put an end to the political crisis. The declaration was signed by the Radical Civic Union (UCRP), the Justicialist Party (Peronist Party), the Argentine Socialist Party (PSA), the Democratic Progressive Party (PCP) and the Partido Bloquista (PB).[19]

The opposition's call for elections led to Levingston's replacement by General Alejandro Lanusse, in March 1971. Faced with strong opposition and social conflicts, General Lanusse declared his intention to restore constitutional democracy by 1973, though without Peronist participation. Lanusse proposed the Gran Acuerdo Nacional (Great National Agreement) in July 1971, which was to find an honorable exit for the military junta without allowing Peronism to participate in the election. The proposal was rejected by Perón, who formed the FRECILINA alliance (Frente Cívico de Liberación Nacional, Civic Front of National Liberation), headed by his new delegate Héctor José Cámpora (a member of the Peronist Left). The alliance gathered his Justicialist Party and the Integration and Development Movement (MID), headed by Arturo Frondizi. FRECILINA pressed for free and unrestricted elections, which ultimately took place in March 1973.

• 
  The new leader, General Eduardo Lonardi, waves in a 1955 newsmagazine cover. His gradualist approach to "de-Perónization" led to his prompt ousting.
• 
  First meeting of the Junta's Civilian Advisory Board, 1955. Despite great pressure to the contrary, the board recommended that most of Perón's social reforms be kept in place.
• 
  Student unrest in Rosario, 1969 (the Rosariazo). Unable to return on his volition, Perón began rallying besieged leftist students (the very people he had repressed in office).
• 
  UCR leader Ricardo Balbín, Conservative Horacio Thedy and Perón's delegate, Daniel Paladino (middle three) find rare common cause after General Levingston's 1970 power grab. Their joint Hour of the People statement helped lead to elections in 1973 (and to Perón's return).

General elections were held on 11 March 1973. Perón was banned from running, but a stand-in, Dr. Héctor Cámpora, a left-wing Peronist and his personal representative, won the election and took office on 25 May. On 20 June 1973, Perón returned from Spain to end his 18-year exile. According to Página 12 newspaper, Licio Gelli, master of Propaganda Due, had provided an Alitalia plane to return Perón to his native country.[93] Gelli was part of a committee supporting Perón, along with Carlos Saúl Menem (future President of Argentina, 1989–1999).[93] The former Italian Premier Giulio Andreotti recalled an encounter between Perón, his wife Isabel Martínez and Gelli, saying that Perón knelt before Licio Gelli to salute him.[93]

On the day of Perón's return, a crowd of left-wing Peronists (estimated at 3.5 million according to police) gathered at the Ezeiza Airport in Buenos Aires to welcome him. Perón was accompanied by Cámpora, whose first measures were to grant amnesty to all political prisoners and re-establish relations with Cuba, helping Fidel Castro break the United States embargo against Cuba. This, along with his social policies, had earned him the opposition of right-wing Peronists, including the trade-unionist bureaucracy.

Camouflaged snipers opened fire on the crowd at the airport. The left-wing Peronist Youth Organization and the Montoneros had been trapped. At least 13 people were killed and 365 injured in this episode, which became known as the Ezeiza massacre.[94]

Cámpora and Vice President Vicente Solano Lima resigned in July 1973, paving the way for new elections, this time with Perón's participation as the Justicialist Party nominee. Argentina faced mounting political instability, and Perón was viewed by many as the country's only hope for prosperity and safety. UCR leader Ricardo Balbín and Perón contemplated a Peronist-Radical joint government, but opposition in both parties made this impossible. Besides opposition among Peronists, Ricardo Balbín had to consider opposition within the UCR itself, led by Raúl Alfonsín, a leader among the UCR's center-left. Perón received 62% of the vote, returning him to the presidency. He began his third term on 12 October 1973, with Isabel, his wife, as Vice President.

On Perón's advice, Cámpora had appointed José Ber Gelbard policy adviser to the critical Economy Ministry. Inheriting an economy that had doubled in output since 1955 with little indebtedness and only modest new foreign investment, inflation had become a fixture in daily life and was worsening: consumer prices rose by 80% in the year to May 1973 (triple the long-term average, up to then). Making this a policy priority, Ber Gelbard crafted a "social pact" in hopes of finding a happy median between the needs of management and labour. Providing a framework for negotiating price controls, guidelines for collective bargaining and a package of subsidies and credits, the pact was promptly signed by the CGT (then the largest labour union in South America) and management (represented by Julio Broner and the CGE). The measure was largely successful, initially: inflation slowed to 12% and real wages rose by over 20% during the first year. GDP growth accelerated from 3% in 1972 to over 6% in 1974. The plan also envisaged the paydown of Argentina's growing public external debt, then around US$8 billion, within four years.

The improving economic situation encouraged Perón to pursue interventionist social and economic policies similar to those he had carried out in the Forties: nationalizing banks and various industries, subsidizing native businesses and consumers, regulating and taxing the agricultural sector, reviving the IAPI, placing restrictions on foreign investment,[13] and funding a number of social welfare programs.[95] In addition, new rights for workers were introduced.[96]

The 1973 oil shock, however, forced Ber Gelbard to rethink the Central Bank's projected reserves and, accordingly, undid planned reductions in stubborn budget deficits, then around US$2 billion a year (4% of GDP). Increasingly frequent collective bargaining agreements in excess of Social Pact wage guidelines and a resurgence in inflation led to growing strain on the viability of the plan by mid-1974, however.[19]

Perón's third term was also marked by an escalating conflict between the Peronist left- and right-wing factions. This turmoil was fueled primarily by calls for repression against the left on the part of leading CGT figures, a growing segment of the armed forces (particularly the navy) and right-wing radicals within his own party, notably Perón's most fascist adviser, José López Rega. López Rega, appointed Minister of Social Welfare, was in practice given power far beyond his purview, soon controlling up to 30 percent of the federal budget.[19] Diverting increasing funds, he formed the Triple A, a death squad that soon began targeting not only the violent left; but moderate opposition, as well.[88] The Montoneros became marginalized in the Peronist movement and were mocked by Perón himself after the Ezeiza massacre. In his speech to the governors on 2 August 1973, Perón openly criticized radical Argentine youth for a lack of political maturity.

The rift between Perón and the far left became irreconcilable following 25 September 1973, murder of José Ignacio Rucci, the moderately conservative Secretary General of CGT.[88] Rucci was killed in a commando ambush in front of his residence. His murder was long attributed to the Montoneros (whose record of violence was well-established by then), but it is arguably Argentina's most prominent unsolved mystery.[97]

Enraged, Perón enlisted López Rega to target left-wing opponents. Shortly after Perón's attack on left-wing Peronism, the Montoneros went underground.

Another guerrilla group, the Guevarist ERP, also opposed the Peronist right-wing. They started engaging in armed struggle, assaulting an important Army barracks in Azul, Buenos Aires Province on 19 January, and creating a foco (insurrection) in Tucumán, a historically underdeveloped province in Argentina's largely rural northwest.[88] In May 1973 the ERP claimed to have extorted $1 million in goods from the Ford Motor Company, after murdering one executive and wounding another.[98] Five months after the payment, the guerrillas killed another Ford executive and his three bodyguards. Only after Ford threatened to close down their operation in Argentina altogether, did Perón agree to have his army protect the plant.[98]

Perón's failing health complicated matters. He suffered from an enlarged prostate and heart disease, and by at least one account, he may have been senile by the time he was sworn in for his third term. His wife frequently had to take over as Acting President over the course of the next year.[99] According to a CIA cable, Peron frequently alternated between lucidity and senility.[100]

Perón maintained a full schedule of policy meetings with both government officials and chief base of support, the CGT. He also presided over the inaugural of the Atucha I Nuclear Power Plant (Latin America's first) in April; the reactor, begun while he was in exile, was the fruition of work started in the 1950s by the National Atomic Energy Commission, his landmark bureau. His diminishing support from the far left (which believed Perón had come under the control of the right-wing entorno (entourage) led by López Rega, UOM head Lorenzo Miguel, and Perón's own wife) turned to open enmity following rallies on the Plaza de Mayo on 1 May and 12 June in which the president condemned their demands and increasingly violent activities.[5]

Perón was reunited with another friend from the 1950s – Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner – on 16 June to sign the bilateral treaty that broke ground on Yacyretá Hydroelectric Dam (the world's second-largest). Perón returned to Buenos Aires with clear signs of pneumonia and, on 28 June, he suffered a series of heart attacks. Isabel was on a trade mission to Europe, but returned urgently and was secretly sworn in on an interim basis on 29 June. Following a promising day at the official presidential residence of Quinta de Olivos in the Buenos Aires suburb of Olivos, Juan Perón suffered a final attack on Monday, 1 July 1974 and died at 13:15. He was 78 years old.[5]

Perón's corpse was first transported by hearse to Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral for a funeral mass the next day. Afterwards the body, dressed in full military uniform, was taken to the Palace of the National Congress, where it lay in state over the next 46 hours, during which more than 130,000 people filed past the coffin. Finally, at 09:30 on a rainy Thursday, 4 July the funeral procession commenced. Perón's Argentine flag-covered casket was placed on a limber towed by a small army truck (escorted by cavalry and a large motorcade of motorcycles and a few armored vehicles) through the capital's streets back to Olivos.[101] At least one million people turned out for Perón's funeral, some of whom threw flowers at the casket and chanted, "¡Perón! ¡Perón! ¡Perón!" as it passed by. Along the 10-mile route from the Palace to Olivos, hundreds of armed soldiers lining it were assigned to restrain the crowd. As many as 2,000 foreign journalists covered the ceremony. The funeral cortege reached its final destination two and a half hours later. There, the coffin was greeted by a 21-gun salute. Many international heads of state offered condolences to Argentina following the demise of President Perón.[102] Three days of official mourning were declared thereafter.[101] Perón had recommended that his wife, Isabel, rely on Balbín for support, and at the president's burial Balbín uttered an historic phrase: "The old adversary bids farewell to a friend."[5]

Isabel Perón succeeded her husband to the presidency, but proved incapable of managing the country's political and economic problems, including the left-wing insurgency and the reactions of the extreme right.[99] Ignoring her late husband's advice, Isabel gave Balbín no role in her new government, instead granting broad powers to López Rega, who started a "dirty war" against political opponents.

Isabel Perón's term ended abruptly on 24 March 1976, during a military coup d'état. A military junta, headed by General Jorge Videla, took control of the country, establishing the self-styled National Reorganization Process. The junta ramped up the "dirty war", combining widespread persecution of political dissidents with state terrorism. The death toll rose to thousands (at least 9,000, with human rights organizations claiming it was closer to 30,000). Many of these were "the disappeared" (desaparecidos), people kidnapped and executed without trial or record.

• 
  Perón hosts the head of the opposition UCR, Ricardo Balbín, at his home in preparations for the 1973 campaign.
• 
  José López Rega, Perón's personal secretary, proved a detrimental influence over the aging leader, leveraging this for corruption and revenge.
• 
  Perón greets supporters during a 12 June 1974 rally, his last.
• 
  Juan and Isabel Perón with Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu during their state visit to Argentina on 6 March 1974.
• 
  Perón's funeral cortège along the Avenida de Mayo.
• 
  Perón's stand-in, Héctor Cámpora, votes in the 1973 elections. Perón nominated Cámpora to placate the Left, but their support for Perón waned after the leader made them guilty by association for the growing wave of violence.

Relationship with Allende and Pinochet

Perón greeting Augusto Pinochet at Morón Airbase on 14 May 1974.

Salvador Allende had actively rejected Perón's attempts of establishing cooperation between Chile and Argentina during the 1940s and 1950s.[103] Allende received the election of Héctor Cámpora, who had previously lived in exile in Chile, as good news. Allende sent Aniceto Rodríguez to Buenos Aires to work on an alliance between the Socialist Party of Chile and the Justicialism. Later Allende attended the presidential inauguration of Campora. All of this was greeted favorably by Perón, who came to refer to Allende as "compañero". However, Perón also pointed to Allende as a cautionary example for the most radical of his followers. In September just a few days before the 1973 Chilean coup d'etat he addressed Tendencia Revolucionaria:

If you want to do as Allende, then look how it goes for Allende. One has to be calm.[103]

— Juan Perón

Perón condemned the coup as a "fatality for the continent" stating that the coup leader Augusto Pinochet represented interests "well known" to him. He praised Allende for his "valiant attitude" of committing suicide. He took note of the role of the United States in instigating the coup by recalling his familiarity with coup-making processes.[103]

On 14 May 1974 Perón received Augusto Pinochet at the Morón Airbase. Pinochet was heading to meet Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay so the encounter at Argentina was technically a stopover. Pinochet and Perón are both reported to have felt uncomfortable during the meeting. Perón expressed his wishes to settle the Beagle conflict and Pinochet his concerns about Chilean exiles in Argentina near the frontier with Chile. Perón would have conceded on moving these exiles from the frontiers to eastern Argentina, but he warned "Perón takes his time, but accomplishes" (Perón tarda, pero cumple). Perón justified his meeting with Pinochet stating that it was important to keep good relations with Chile under all circumstances and with whoever might be in government.[103]

Perón Street in midtown Buenos Aires, one of numerous streets and avenues named in his honor when democracy returned to Argentina in 1983. It refers to him as General and not President.

Perón was buried in La Chacarita Cemetery in Buenos Aires. On 10 June 1987, his tomb was desecrated, and his hands and some personal effects, including his sword, were stolen.[104] Perón's hands were cut off with a chainsaw. A ransom letter asking for US$8 million was sent to some Peronist members of Congress. This profanation was a ritualistic act to condemn Perón's spirit to eternal unrest, according to journalists David Cox and Damian Nabot in their book Second Death, who connected it to Licio Gelli and military officers involved during Argentina's Dirty War.[105] The bizarre incident remains unresolved.[106]

On 17 October 2006, his body was moved to a mausoleum at his former summer residence, rebuilt as a museum, in the Buenos Aires suburb of San Vicente. A few people were injured in incidents as Peronist trade unions fought over access to the ceremony, although police were able to contain the violence enough for the procession to complete its route to the mausoleum. The relocation of Perón's body offered his self-proclaimed illegitimate daughter, Martha Holgado, the opportunity to obtain a DNA sample from his corpse. She had attempted to have this DNA analysis performed for 15 years, and the test in November 2006 ultimately proved she was not his daughter.[107][108] Holgado died of liver cancer on 7 June 2007. Before her death, she vowed to continue the legal battle to prove she was Peron's biological child.

•  Argentina portal

• Gabriele Casula (2004). "Dove naciò Perón? un enigma sardo nella storia dell'Argentina". catalog listing official page
• Guareschi, Roberto (5 November 2005). "Not quite the Evita of Argentine legend". New Straits Times, p. 21.
• Hugo Gambini (1999). Historia del peronismo, Editorial Planeta. F2849 .G325 1999
• Nudelman, Santiago (Buenos Aires, 1960; Chiefly draft resolutions and declarations presented by Nudelman as a member of the Cámara de Diputados of the Argentine Republic during the Perón administration)
• Martínez, Tomás Eloy. La Novela de Perón. Vintage Books, 1997.
• Page, Joseph. Perón: a biography (Random House, 1983)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Juan Perón (category)

• Perón y el peronismo: un ensayo bibliográfico by Mariano Ben Plotkin. (in Spanish)
• Webpage of author Uki Goñi with extensive documentation on Perón's involvement in harboring Nazi fugitives
• Biography of Juan Peron a brief biography on About.com
• Casahistoria pages on Perón Les Fearns site, also links to Eva Perón pages
• "The Twenty Truths of the Peronist Movement (1940s): The Justicialist movement's core tenets". Archived from the original on 10 April 2004. Retrieved 13 November 2008.
• Juan Domingo Perón Argentine Presidential Messages Well indexed dating from 1946 onwards. The actual documents are shown as photocopied images. Note: Downloading can be slow. University of Texas.
• Newspaper clippings about Juan Perón in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW