Juan Domingo Perón: The General Lives

Around the middle of October 2006, Juan Domingo Perón’s remains were transferred to a million-dollar mausoleum built for him in a small town outside of Buenos Aires. During the ceremonies for this event which would commemorate the 17th of October uprising of workers that freed Perón in 1945, violence broke out between rival Peronist factions. A man wtih a pistol was filmed by news crews shooting into a building. Newspapers reported 60 injuries and perhaps a few gunshot wounds. As is common with political violence in Argentina, the police were slow and reluctant to intervene.

The president of Argentina, Nelson Kirchner, himself a Peronist, cancelled his appearance and never arrived at the scene. Eduardo Duhalde, another prominent Peronist, former president and archenemy of the president, greeted supporters at a different location but did not appear at the mausoleum. However, other prominent Peronists did show up as did thousands of loyal supports of the General, whose memory is still very much alive amongst not only the media, but amongst those who still support him.

The movement of Peron’s remains was accompanied by a claim by a woman who says she is Perón’s daughter. The Argentine judiciary has processed the claim and samples of the General’s DNA were taken in order to establish proof. Peron had no natural children by his three wives, including the famous Eva Duarte, and the less famous María Estela Martínez de Perón, commonly known as Isabel. In the year 2006, Isabel is still alive and living in Spain. She is the one that gave permission for his body to be moved.

The violence at the mausoleum of Perón, sparked memories of his return from exile in 1972 after 17 years of living outside the country that, at one time, he dominated in heart and soul. At that time, thousands of his supporters gathered at Ezeiza Airport to greet him. Violence and gunplay broke out between rival Peronist factions. Scores of people were killed and injured, and Peron's plane was diverted to another airport, an inauspicious beginning for his return to power. .

That in the year 2006 the news of Perón’s body being moved—over 30 years after his death—could grab front-page headlines in Buenos Aires and appear in papers throughout the world is testament to the power of the General and the Peronist movement that still rules Argentine politics. The history and legacy of Juan Domingo Perón, primarily a phenomenon of the forties and fifties, provides an interesting perspective to present-day political philosophy. Perón known throughout Latin America for his third alternative or third way between capitalism and communism—or between classical liberalism and totalitarian collectivism—thought he had the natural solution to the Cold War battles between United States and Russia. He sought to correct what he saw as the inhuman aspects of the marketplace and the crushing aspects of Russian totalitarianism. Thinking that Argentina was a colony of British imperialism, Perón sought to make Argentina independent of foreign economic interests and believed that economic liberalism was nothing more than jungle anarchy. Commenting during the forties on economic liberalism, he defined liberty, "As the freedom to die from hunger." His wife Evita believed that capitalism was an unpatriotic system, "a system without a flag or fatherland." A key Peronist slogan for many years was: "Neither Marxism or capitalism."

The General Rises
The rise of Perón to power is not an unfamiliar story in Latin America. He grew up under humble circumstances, his father a farmer of Irish descent and his mother reported to be of Spanish and Indian roots. There were uncorroborated rumors, stemming from research by the author Tomas Eloy Martinez,. that Perón was born out of wedlock, a fact that could have severely hindered his political career.

Intelligent and quite amiable, Perón worked his way rapidly through the Argentine military system. He was ambitious and charismatic, and seemed to have a vision of where he wanted to go. At that time, during the thirties, the Argentine military and many of the high-ranking generals were influenced by the fascism engulfing Europe. The president of Argentina during the thirties, José Félix Uriburu was an ardent admirer of the European fascists as were many of his advisors.

Influenced by the intellectual breeding ground he lived in, Perón was a believer in the powerful and benevolent state controlling and directing social and economic affairs. Much of his political philosophy was influenced by Mussolini and his Doctrine of Fascism, where he extols the virtues of an all-powerful state and defines the evils of liberalism and individualism. Having spent a year in Italy and other parts of Europe at the behest of his superiors—ordered to report on the power and influence of Germany and Italy and their chances of triumphing against the allied powers—Perón had a chance to study El Duce and was said to admire him a great deal by his own word and that of his biographers. Mainly, his admiration centered on the early years of Mussolini’s rise to power, his ability to communicate a philosophical program as well as his emphasis on a powerful state as the guiding hand in all affairs, especially the economy. Perón never subscribed to the violent aspects of Mussolini’s fascism, the will to power and the desire for conquest as an expression of the national will to dominate others.

In the United States, the image of Perón is often tarnished by allegations of fascism or fascist sympathies. The fact that Argentina had a history of fascist associations prior to Perón and stayed neutral during the war only adds to this myth. Articles and books have appeared alleging his collusion with Nazi Germany, and later on with Nazi war criminals like Adolf Eichmann. An American government publication after the War, published by the then American ambassador, Spruille Braden, alleged that Perón aided the Axis cause. However, in defence of Perón, many of the charges in the publication were of dubious sources and seemed more a work of revenge than of scholarship given the fact that Perón and Braden were enemies.

Although no doubt influenced by Mussolini and Francisco Franco, Perón had his own political philosophy called Justicialismo. He could not be labeled a fascist, nor did he subscribe to the philosophical fundamentals of the fascist state—an all-powerful entity, totalitarian in nature and imposing fully on and dominating the life of the individual citizen—a domination that required service and self-sacrifice at all costs and the loss of individual autonomy. (In this sense, the word fascist is used to describe the original word coined by Mussolini to describe his ideology, as outlined in The Doctrine of Fascism. It is in no way used in the modern sense, as someone advocating racism, violence and brutality in order to achieve political means.)

Perón was never an advocate of war and the will to power so dominant in Mussolini's concept of fascism, nor did he believe in racial superiority or ever express anti-Jewish sentiments. On the whole, he was a cultured and educated advocate of the power of Justicialismo, his ideology of a benevolent state that would liberate the individual from economic want. In fact, much of his program was aimed toward liberating the individual from "economic slavery" that he saw as the dominating points of both capitalism and communism.

In the book, The Philosophy of Peronism, Perón has this to say about the totalitarianism of both fascism and communism: "It (totalitarianism) doesn't recognize in this manner the personality of man, his '"I,"' which makes him a person; in the final instance it denies his spirit, a position that is fundamental to the personality." He goes on to say: "In both forms, (fascism and communism) the liberty of man, that is part of his spirit, is absolutely unrecognized and the human being is converted into a slave of the State, in detriment of oneself and of the collective."

While independent in nature, Perón borrowed from the dominant philosophies of the world. In The Philosophy of Perón, he compares the great ideas of the world with his ideas for a Peronist State, and points out how his government will avoid the extreme collectivism of communism which "kills all incentive in the individual," and what he calls the "anarchy of capitalism" with its "heartless disregard for the underclass and its reliance on egoist self-interest at the expense of humanitarian concerns." (El capitalism es una fuerza de agloneración fría, internacional, sin patria y sin corazon." pg 125 Philosophy of Peron.)

Perhaps one could describe Juan Domingo Perón as a cultured and ideological caudillo or strongman, a charismatic man with a political vision for a country lost and on the brink of chaos. Surely, the ingredients for a rise to power were apparent in his personality—another talented and intelligent boy from the lower classes eager to work his way to the top. In the United States, these stories are legendary. In Argentina, also a country of immigrants, the rise to the top is blocked by barricades of institutionalized arrogance and aristocratic snobbery of the kind that rejects talent and ability in the name of one's bloodline. Many ambitious young people fall by the wayside; few will even try.

Joseph Page, a lawyer who taught at the University of Maryland, wrote a definitive biography of Perón published in English and available in Spanish translation. In his book, he rejects the fascist label in regards to his life, and also rejects the train of thought that Perón was sympathetic to Nazi criminals and harbored them in Argentina. Just like with the United States, Perón recruited many Nazi scientists in order to bolster science and technology in Argentina, thinking his new revolution would be a showplace of modern scientific development and technology. Page, also, rejects any comparison between Juan Perón and Hugo Chávez, stating that Perón was a cultured man, a student of history and philosophy. Chávez has his petrodollars.

Another biographer of Perón, Horacio Váquez-Rial who wrote a Spanish-language biography of him, also rejects the fascist label for Perón, who was a cultured and well-read man, disliked violence, allowed an opposition to exist and built his Peronist state around strong state-controlled unions and a benevolent welfare state. In contrast to the rigid and cold authoritarian personality engendered by fascism, Perón was a warm and intelligent man with tremendous confidence in his conception of the world.

In her book, Peron’s Women, Andrea Bellota points out that Perón had a great affinity for women, needed a woman in his life and had a great love for Evita, and some of the other women in his life. After the death of Evita, he had a young girl, Nellie Rivas, living at his house, an act of good will in where he acted as a father to a young girl who adored him. Accused by his enemies of "estupro" or undermining the morals of a minor, Nellie Rivas had only admirable things to say about the "General" calling him a perfect gentleman, someone who helped her advance in life without taking advantage of her in any way. At that time, it was believed Perón had no children of his own.

Unlike religious conservatives and fascist ideologies, that tend to relegate women to raising children and cooking, Perón respected the women in his life and relied deeply on them to advance his political agenda. One of the most crucial components of Perón’s power was his wife Eva Duarte, a powerful speaker who had a deep-rooted and binding relationship with the so-called shirtless people, the disenfranchised and powerless masses who were at the mercy of the conservative and elite classes of privilege and power.

They were an excellent team. Peron was the intelligence and the philosophy behind the revolution; Evita the emotion, the gut, the mystical chanteuse of the Argentine masses. The tone of her voice, filled with pain and emotion, had a hypnotic effect on large crowds. She spoke the language of the dispossessed and she spoke from hard experience. Although possessed of fine tastes and superior appetites, she had a binding link with the anonymous masses, the focal point of Peron’s political philosophy.

When I was in Buenos Aires in 2005, I spent an afternoon at the Institute of Perón, watching the documentary by Leonardo Flavio called: Perón: Symphony of a Feeling. What struck me more than anything was the charismatic power of both the General and Evita Perón. They radiated charisma, a feeling that seemed to engulf the crowd. Evita was even more magnetic. This was much more than a political act. It was a deep-seated pain, agony and affinity manifesting in political discourse.

When Evita died in 1952, many of the writers familiar with Peron, speculate that he lost much of the desire to continue his revolution. He retreated more to his private residence and seemed to lack the spark and vigor of previous times.

Tomas Eloy Martinez, the author of the The Novel of Perón and The Lives of the General is another author who paints a real-life portrait of Perón that goes much beyond the cheap myths and stereotypes one hears in the media. Of special interest is his The Novel of Perón set in 1973 the year of Perón's return to Argentina after 17 years in exile. In this book, one sees a diminished Perón absent his great powers, sick and close to death, surrounded by palace vultures ready to exploit the General's weakness, drunk with power lust and the thought of being at the top of the ladder of

Other authors who knew Perón talk about his great charm and intelligence, often winning over people with the power of his personality, captivating them with his intelligence and charisma. He was very much a man of philosophy and ideas, and was never reluctant to offer his point of view to doubters. In watching documentaries of him in action and giving speeches, I was struck by the great certainty of his demeanor, the intellectual certainty of great man. However, as with all great people, the General had his weaknesses. Felix Luna, a renowned Argentine historian and writer, describes Perón as a fabulador, or one given to create or make up stories. Luna goes on to say that Perón lived in his own world and perhaps never realized some of the consequences of his actions.

Once in power, Perón and Evita spent large sums of money on public works projects, hospitals, clinics, nurseries, schools and sports centers. They established a department of education, made education compulsory between six and fourteen, and built universities in all parts of Argentina. In many ways, Peron’s regime was similar to Roosevelt’s New Deal, a benevolent welfare state aimed at social justice and redistribution of wealth.

As part of his program for economic independence, Perón nationalized the central bank, the train lines, the telephone company, the gas companies and electric transmission facilities. He built a modern airport, dams, chemical plants, introduced atomic energy, strived to build fighter planes and even had plans to produce Argentine cars.

Although hostile to the liberalism and the freedom of the American economy, Perón was not hostile to capital per se, only to the fact that he saw American businessmen as too independent, to able to establish their own agenda. He saw this as economic anarchy and sought to impose state control in order to further a spirit of cooperation. Thus, businessmen who advanced under Perón were those who gained benefits from the State—protection and favors, or monopoly positions in the marketplace. Independent union leaders under Perón were replaced by those loyal to him, which was very much in line with his intention of having the unions always under control of the State. The unions were to be favored but never independent of the benefactor state.

Remaining neutral during World War II, Argentina was able to sell its grains and beef to foreign markets and gather huge reserves of currency for the future. However, by the late forties and early fifties with the return of normalcy and having exhausted his reserves on public spending, his government saw itself strapped for cash and looking for foreign investment. In addition, Argentine industry, controlled and weighted down by union rules and heavily protected by the State, could not compete in the world market.

It was at this juncture that Perón altered his extreme view of economic nationalism and his somewhat hostile view of American economic activity, often labeled promiscuously as capitalism, and invited American companies to invest in Argentina. Milton Eisenhower, the brother of the president, visited Argentina and was wined and dined. A controversial agreement was signed with Standard Oil of California, and they were given free reign to explore and develop in areas of Argentina. .

One of the most conflictive situations of the Perón regime was the battle with Catholic Church, which tended to resent the competition of Perón’s youth groups and his popularity amongst the working class. All of this culminated in 1955 with an open battle between the Church and the Peronist Party. Peron responded by legalizing divorce, stripping the Church of its privileged educational position in schools, arresting Catholic clergyman, legalizing brothels, and passing a law that gave full citizenship to children born out of wedlock.

Church opposition to Peron’s regime grew. In 1955, the navy tried to kill Peron by bombarding the Plaza del Mayo and the presidential palace, but only managed to kill between 200 and 400 private citizens. Later in 1955, the military rebelled again and Perón fled to Paraguay under the protection of Alfredo Stroessner, the Paraguayan dictator. He was to live in exile for 17 years.

The Finale and his Legacy
On the day that Perón returned from exile, there was a shootout at the airport between different Peronist factions, and reports have the injures and deaths in scores of people. In 1974 he was again elected president by an overwhelming margin and within eight months he was dead. He wife Isabel Peron, an ex-dancer who he met in exile in Panamá, became president, and Perón’s ex-private secretary, a man named Jose López Rega, nicknamed "The Sorcerer" because of his love for the occult and witchcraft, became the de facto president.

Perhaps near the end of his life, Perón was too sick to realize the consequences of his actions. Most writers and intellectuals in Argentina recognize his decision to post his wife as vice president as a horrendous error that was to have dire consequences for the future of Argentina. An ex-dancer with no political experience, knowledge or talent in this area, her time in office was notable for indecision and incompetence. Not having the knowledge of what to do, she relegated most power to Jose López Rega, a mystical witch doctor of power, who responded with state-sanctioned violence and murder to quell the violence of the communist left.

Under Isabel and López Rega, Argentina fell into a cycle of violence and economic disarray. Lopez Vega was reported to be the head of an anti-communist death squad called the Triple AAA. This death squad was formed to counter the left-wing violence at the hands of the Montoneros, a socialist Catholic group intent on violent revolution, and the even more violent ERP, a Maoist group convinced that violent revolution was the only path to a new Argentina.

Isabel Perón and López Rega lasted less than two years, as chaos, violence, political murders and assassinations as well as economic disaster became everyday occurrences. In 1976, Peron’s wife was overthrown by a military junta. She fled to Spain, where she lives to this day. The military dictatorship ruled Argentina until 1983.

Today, Perón’s influence is still very much alive in Latin America, and in other parts of the world. The Third Way philosophy of Perón is apparent everywhere, from the mixed economy of United States to the deluted communism of China. None other than Hugo Chavéz mentioned Peròn as one of his heroes, and has used the analogy of the third alternative or the third way between savage capitalism and totalitarianism. Even though rarely admitted to all the economies in Latin America are a mixture between heavy state ownership and regulation, privileged businessman, large government sponsored unions and benevolent welfare-state programs that seek to establish "social justice," one of Perón's favorite concepts. As in Perón's time, the Church, the intellectuals, the media, the conservatives and the radical left are all hostile to liberalism, and its emphasis on dismantling state influence.

Perón sought a benevolent welfare state with the big unions as his power base in order to further his concept of social justice. He ran three times as a candidate, and was elected three times by large margins. In a sense, he was the democratic man par excellence, a marvelous manipulator of mass psychology and opinion.

Joseph Page, in his biography, compares him to Hughie Long, the ex-governor of Louisiana, who was a democratic phenomenon in his time and a bridge between the elite conservative forces of the old South and the Marxist theories of the state that were being propagated in the universities and intellectual circles of America in the thirties.

The word often used to describe these men is populist in that they had a pulse on the heartbeat of their turf, and often followed programs catering to popular wants and desires rather than what reality required in order to develop the economy.

Perón had little knowledge of economic consequences and took a huge war-time surplus and spent it on his pet projects. He was like a patriarch catering to his flock, bestowing presents and dreams on them, in order to reward them for their good behavior and adherence to his message. He is like the utopian visionary who seeks to establish heaven on earth but has no conception of how to accomplish it. Yet, when the money is flowing and the gold is in the pot, all is well with the world, and the king marches to his own band.

In the late sixties and seventies, several left-wing groups sympathetic to Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and communism adopted Peron as their own and sought to use his name to advance their ideas of a Marxist state. One of these groups was the Montoneros, composed of socialist Catholics, who believed in the armed struggle to a Marxist state. The Montoneros were famous for kidnapping and murdering the ex-president of Argentina, Pedro Aramburu. (Peron objected to them)

In addition to this, John William Cooke, Perón’s heir apparent, was an admirer of Castro’s communist revolution and wanted to combine these ideas with his conception of Peronism. However, Perón himself, although sympathetic to national socialism, was not an admirer of the Marxist version, and definitely saw communism as a blight to the working man. In fact, during the Cold War, many people in the American State Department, saw Perón as a counterweight to communism in South America, and urged support for his government.

Perón's legacy is as important today as it was during the forties and fifties. The names and faces change but if one looks, one can see the mark of Juan Domingo Perón all over Latin America and in the rest of the world, including the United States. In Argentina, the Peronist Party has an overwhelming influence on the Argentina’s political life, although without Perón at the helm, it seems to lack a direction or cohesion.

The present president of Argentina, Nelson Kirchner, is from the Peronist party, although from the left wing of the party. Yet, this notwithstanding, he follows the same Peronist prescription of heavy government control of the economy and a disdain for unfettered market transactions and trade. Kirchner harbors an anti-American attitude and has aligned himself with Hugo Chávez, although he follows a much more discreet path. Carlos Menen, the ex-president, was also from the Peronist Party, although from the right wing. He had a good relationship with the United States, sometimes referred to as "carnal." During his presidency, the market was opened up as was the channels of corruption.

Although associated with Fidel Castro and the socialism of Cuba, Hugo Chávez has mentioned Juan Perón favorably on many occasions and enjoys a close relationship with the present Peronist president. Ironically, rather than following the strict Marxist ideology of Castro, Chávez has traveled down a path much more reminiscent of Juan Perón: heavy state control and regulation while most small businesses remain in private hands.

In other parts of Latin America, the influence of Perón is still very noticeable. Economic nationalism is rampant south of the border, and Perón’s admonition of "vendepatria" or selling out the fatherland to foreign interests in still common. Evo Morales, another admirer of Castro, has been an advocate of this train of thought, the belief that "our national resources" must belong to the Bolivians, and administered by the State.

Even in Costa Rica, which has strongly liberalized its economy in recent years, the influence of Perón can be seen. The giant insurance and electric monopolies are state owned and the argument against privatizing them is that they must belong to Costa Rica, and to do otherwise is unpatriotic, or another instance of "vendepatria."

If one looks close enough one sees this same Peronist phenomenon with Ollanta Humala in Perú and Rafael Correa in Ecuador, both men advocates of economic nationalism and the belief that foreign investment or influence in the economy is destructive to national interests.

In the United States, the third way between a genuine free market absent of government control and totalitarianism is very apparent. The role of the benevolent State in all affairs of life is enormous and probably extends way beyond anything reached by Perón. Ironically, the country often castigated for being the home of savage capitalism is now the home of the largest and most efficient state apparatus the world has ever seen.

So the legacy of Juan Domingo Perón lives on. To the dispossessed of Latin America, ideology has little meaning. Only the knowledge that someone is willing to help them has any relevance. For the wide, democratic mass of people, struggling to keep their head above water, the only question is how much a leader like Peron can do for them and that he is speaking about changing their lives.

Surely, Juan Domingo Perón still walks along the shadows of Latin American history, the spirit and power behind the dispossessed of the world. They are all looking for that soothing lotion or narcotic voice that will lessen their burden and make them feel like they are part of something, and like Perón, the present crop of leaders offer alternatives to the corrosive corruption, arrogance and instability of the chaotic democracies that inhabit this part of the world. With someone like Perón at their side to do their fighting, the displaced and hopeless "descamisados" of despair can, at least in their dreams, rise above the loneliness and isolation of people without hope or future: the forlorn masses condemned to another night of screaming into the wilderness or into the dark hole of poverty and despair.