How Perón Rescued and Failed Argentina

By Arwen O’Brien
Photo: Associated Press

In the recent Argentine presidential election of November 2023, a surprising wave of young adult voters (almost 70% percent of the under 30’s) cast their votes for the libertarian, extremist candidate Javier Milei, instead of Sergio Massa, the candidate for the Peronist party in government. It may seem surprising that young voters chose a candidate like Milei, who the news outlets describe as a right-wing politician – against abortion rights and government spending – and is self-described as an anarcho-capitalist. However, young voters weren’t just rejecting the current Peronist government, but rejecting the Peronists who have dominated Argentine politics for the last 80 years. 

The Roots of Peronism

What exactly is Peronism? It is a political doctrine based on a mixture of nationalism and socialism, put forth by Juan Domingo Perón in the wake of World War II. Perón, the original populist, admired the strong-man bond between government and the masses, as seen in Germany under the rule of Hitler and Italy under Mussolini. In Perón’s speech “What is Peronism?” delivered in 1948, he claimed, “I live among my people [as president] so I share all the ups and downs…” (Perón). He sought to redistribute wealth, build up a strong, loyal support base among the poor and the workers, and reject foreign investment. Because he was a charismatic leader who appealed to the poorer masses and called for better working conditions, wages, and state pensions, he and his political ideology quickly gained popularity (Elliott and Cordoba 2023). 

To further understand why Peronism gained such traction, it is important to emphasize just how many in Argentina at that time were poor in comparison to the small number of the wealthy. On the eve of World War I, Argentina was considered a developed country, its wealth built on agricultural exports. Its GDP per capita was on par with that of France and Germany, and higher than Spain’s, distinguishing it from all other South American countries. However, the majority of the population was composed of the “descamisados” (translated literally, the people with untucked shirts), a nickname given to the working class who wore their shirts untucked, symbolic of the lower class at a time when it was seen as etiquette to have your shirt tucked in. The extreme divide in wealth and privilege caused resentment to develop between the descamisados and the upper class. Peron’s politics fed off of this animosity, successfully earning him the support of the greater lower class. In his “The Twenty Truths of the Perónist Justicialism” speech in 1950, he declared, “The only privileged ones [in this country] should be the children” (Perón). With messages like these, impoverished Argentinians who for decades had been ignored by the wealthy elites felt they had a leader who could speak for them. 

Perón in Power – Short-term Gains

In the years following Perón’s successful election as President in November of 1946, Peronism secured strong support as his government accomplished major, popular changes. One of the most notable was the formation of trade unions in every industry, which remain widespread in Argentina today. The unions aided in protecting workers’ existing rights and achieving new ones (e.g. holidays, paid maternity leave, and job security). For holidays, Perón not only ensured that paid vacations became standard for all workers but also built recreation centers across the country “available to workers for 15 days a year, at the cost of 15 cents per day, all services included” (Columbia University). Women received 3 paid months of maternity leave. By comparison, in the U.S., maternity leave was not made law until 1993 (Vahratian 2009), and paid maternity leave is still not federally mandated. There were also vast improvements made to education rights, with education being made free to all and students given one paid week off before each exam. Considering how many of these positive changes were most significant for young adults, and with younger voting groups tending to lean left-wing, it begs the question as to why the youth of Argentina largely supported the anti-Peronist and far-right candidate Milei in the recent 2023 election.

Perón’s Legacy – Long-term Pains

Simply put, many of the early policies under Perón did not play out well in the long term. Strong unions provided Perón with a power base that became arguably anti-democratic. Perón’s reforms gave the unions a lot of power, with which they were able to prevent legislation that perhaps would have benefited the country. They also created an inflexible labor market that persists to this day. And, of course, there were the financial costs behind these changes, which were not supported by sufficient investment. Reckless redistributive policies “set in motion predictable cycles that first bankrupt the state and then sent off an inflationary spiral and lead to a new government to go begging for a rescue package from the International Monetary Fund” (Toro 2023). In other words, Peronism put in place destructive economic policies that largely consisted of debt-financed wealth redistribution, eventually making everyone poorer. 

Argentina was left in a cycle of economic malpractice with the “public sector spending way too much, inflation out of control, and working people getting poorer and poorer with each run-through of the populist cycle” (Toro 2023). Its per capita GDP plummeted and still has yet to recover. A hundred years ago its GDP was 80% of the U.S., while today it is around 30% (Rahn 2010). 

While Peronism strives to diminish the divide between the poor and the wealthy, it is not to be confused with socialism. It falls into its own category of “Justicialism” – a mixture of authoritarianism and nationalism. Perón was deeply nationalistic and Peronism frequently employs protectionist policies that in the short-term can have benefits but in the long-term tend to hurt the economy. Argentina has long been associated with its staple diet – beef. For years it supplied the world’s dining tables, but the Peronist government restricted exports regularly and it banned all beef exports in 2021 with the intention of keeping domestic prices low. While most governments around the world try to encourage their local companies to export because it brings money into the country, Peronists chose to artificially reduce prices even though such a measure would negatively affect the economy in the long run. An ulterior reason Peronists perhaps enacted this measure is that landowners and Peronists have always been in conflict. Landowners want to sell the produce of their land on international markets, but Peronists placed high taxes on exports even when exports were allowed. This can be attributed to the Peronist dislike of entrepreneurs and business people, perceiving them as taking goods away from their fellow Argentinians. Before Perón and his legacy, Argentina was the world’s top beef exporter; now, it has fallen to 13th place (Eulich 2015).  

When Argentina was a rich country, Europeans were keen to emigrate there. Between 1850 and 1913, the per capita level of immigration was higher in Argentina than in any other country (Droller et. al 2022). Today, after decades of Peronism, about 70% of young Argentinians have expressed the desire to emigrate elsewhere (Sippy 2023). Perhaps it is little surprise then that Milei has had success in basing his platform on rejecting Peronism and wanting to imitate the U.S., adopting the USD and expressing “In 50 years we will be the world’s biggest shanty town. But if you give me 20 [years, we will be like] Germany. If you give me 35: the United States” (Sippy 2023).

References

Droller, Federico, Fiszbein, Martín, and Pérez, Santiago. “The Age of Mass Migration in Argentina: Social Mobility, Effects on Growth, and Selection Patterns.” University of California Davis, 2 Aug. 2022, https://seperez.faculty.ucdavis.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/743/2022/08/Argentina_Migration_Chapter.pdf

Elliott, Lucinda, and Horacio Cordoba. “In Argentina, Three Generations of a Peronist Family Weigh Their Vote.” Edited by Adam Jourdan and Rosalba O’Brien, Reuters, 18 Nov. 2023, http://www.reuters.com/world/americas/argentina-three-generations-peronist-family-weigh-their-vote-2023-11-18/.

Eulich, Whitney. “Where’s the Beef? How Argentina Humbled a Once-Mighty Economy.” The Christian Science Monitor, The Christian Science Monitor, 8 Mar. 2015, www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2015/0308/Where-s-the-beef-How-Argentina-humbled-a-once-mighty-economy.

The Legacy of Juan Peron, Columbia University, http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/state_and_revolution/Juan_Peron.htm. Accessed 8 Jan. 2024.

Perón, Juan. “The Twenty Truths of the Perónist Justicialism” 17 Oct. 1950, Plaza de Mayo. Speech. 

Perón, Juan. “What is Peronism?” 20 Aug. 1948, Buenos Aires. Speech. 

Rahn, Richard W. “Could the U.S. Become Argentina?” CATO Institute, 21 Apr. 2010, www.cato.org/commentary/could-us-become-argentina.

Sippy, Zachariah. “Why Young People in Argentina Backed Far-Right President-Elect Javier Milei.” The Nation, 30 Nov. 2023, https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/argentina-youth-javier-milei/

Toro, Quico. Argentinians Pick Their Poison, Persuasion, 17 Nov. 2023, http://www.persuasion.community/p/argentinians-pick-their-poison.

Vahratian, Anjel, and Timothy R.B. Johnson. “Maternity leave benefits in the United States: Today’s economic climate underlines deficiencies.” Birth, vol. 36, no. 3, Sept. 2009, pp. 177–179, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1523-536x.2009.00330.x.