Peron

UNIVERSITY OF NORTHUMBRIA AT NEWCASTLE



SCHOOL OF MODERN LANGUAGES



DISSERTATION IN CONTEMPORARY HISPANIC STUDIES (ML616)










TITLE: PERON’S RISE TO POWER: A CASE OF HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF?



















NAME OF STUDENT: Lynne Chrisp
Submission date: September 2003



||Page |
|Note to the reader | 1 |
|Introduction |2-8 |
|Perón’s Rise to Power|9-13 |
|Caudillos |14-19 |
|Labour Organisation and the Socio-Economic Prospects of the Pre-Perónist Worker |20-21 |
|Perón’s Working-Class Support –Theories|22-27 |
|Perón’s Competition |28-36 |
|Perón’s Appeal |37-43 |
|Perón’s Nationalism|44-48 |
|Conclusion to Part One |49-50 |
|Contemporary Democratic Support |51-61 |
|IMF and Public Response|62-67 |
|Contemporary Popular Protest |68-73 |
|Conclusion |74-77 |
|Bibliography |78-84|




The following essay, ‘Perón’s Rise to Power: A case of history repeating itself’, was devised in September 2002 and written in the months which followed, that is, in advance of the Argentinian presidential election, the final round of which is scheduled to take place on the 18 May 2003. To this point no caudillo figure capable of producing a dialogue powerful enough to mobilizethe support of the vast majority of the Argentinian lower and middle classes has entered the political scene as per my predictions. Nevertheless, political comment on the current elections indicates further entrenchment of attitudes of public cynicism and apathy towards the representative system of government which have been a recurrent aspect of Argentina’s democratic history.[1] The fact that,contrary to my predictions, democratic government continues to function in Argentina does not, in my opinion, represent a valid counter argument to the suggestions contained in the following essay. The aspects of the current public response in the recent electoral period tend, on the contrary, to lend further support to my contention that in Argentina the death-knell has sounded for the system ofrepresentative democracy and that the eroded form of leadership will eventually be replaced possibly by an organic style of democracy under a political caudillo.

In 1955 Argentinian President Juan Domingo Perón was ousted by a military junta. The trend of military rule established in 1955 continued almost without interruption until Raul Alfonsín of the UCR Radical Party was democratically...