The Radical Governments

Argentina increased in prosperity and prominence between 1880 and 1929 and emerged as one of the ten richest countries in the world, benefiting from an agricultural export-led economy as well as British and French investment. Driven by immigration and decreasing mortality the Argentine population grew fivefold and the economy 15-fold.

Conservative élites dominated Argentine politics through nominally democratic means until 1912, when President Roque Sáenz Peña enacted universal male suffrage and the secret ballot. This allowed their traditional rivals, the centrist Radical Civic Union, to win the country’s first free elections in 1916. President Hipólito Yrigoyen enacted social and economic reforms and extended assistance to family farmers and small business.

The Infamous Decade

Yrigoyen was overthrown by a coup in 1930, however, which led to another decade of Conservative rule. The Concordance regime strengthened ties with the British Empire and their electoral policy was one of “patriotic fraud”. The country was neutral during World War I and most of World War II, becoming an important source of foodstuffs for the Allied Nations.

The Peronist Years

In 1946 General Juan Perón was elected president, creating a populist movement referred to as “Peronism”. His wife Eva was popular and played a central political role until her death in 1952, mostly through the Eva Perón Foundation and the Female Peronist Party, as women’s suffrage was granted in 1947.

During Perón’s tenure wages and working conditions improved appreciably, unionization was fostered, strategic industries and services were nationalized, as well as import substitution industrialization and urban development being prioritized in the agrarian sector.

Formerly stable prices and exchange rates were disrupted however: the peso lost around 70% of its value from 1948 to 1950, and inflation reached 50% in 1951. Foreign policy became more isolationist, straining US-Argentine relations. Perón intensified censorship as well as repression: 110 publications were shuttered and numerous opposition figures were imprisoned and tortured.

Advancing a personality cult, Perón rid himself of many important and capable advisers while promoting patronage. A bombing of Plaza de Mayo was followed some months later by a violent coup which deposed him in 1955. He fled into exile, eventually residing in Spain.

Fragile Civilian Governments

Following an attempt to purge the Peronist influence and the banning of Peronists from political life, elections in 1958 brought Arturo Frondizi to office. Frondizi enjoyed some support from Perón’s followers, and his policies encouraged investment to make the country self-sufficient in energy and industry, helping reverse a chronic trade deficit for Argentina.

The military frequently interfered on behalf of conservative, agrarian interests however, and the results were mixed. Frondizi was forced to resign in 1962. Arturo Illia was elected in 1963 and enacted expansionist policies but, despite prosperity, his attempts to include Peronists in the political process resulted in the armed forces retaking power in a quiet 1966 coup.

Though repressive, this new regime continued to encourage domestic development and invested record amounts into public works. The economy grew strongly and income poverty declined to 7% by 1975. Partly because of their repressiveness, however, political violence began to escalate and Perón, still in exile, skilfully co-opted student and labor protests which eventually resulted in the military regime’s call for free elections in 1973, and his return from Spain.

Taking office that year Perón died in July 1974 leaving his third wife Isabel, the Vice President, to succeed him in office. Mrs. Perón had been chosen as a compromise among feuding Peronist factions who could agree on no other running mate; secretly though, she was beholden to Perón’s most fascist advisers. The resulting conflict, between left and right-wing extremists, led to mayhem, financial chaos and a coup d’état in March 1976 which removed her from office.

The National Reorganization Process

The self-styled National Reorganization Process intensified measures against armed groups on the far left, such as People’s Revolutionary Army and the Montoneros who since 1970 had kidnapped and murdered people almost weekly. Repression was quickly extended to the opposition in general however and, during the “Dirty War”, thousands of dissidents “disappeared”. These abuses were aided and abetted by the CIA, in Operation Condor, with many of the military leaders that took part in abuses trained in the School of the Americas.

This new dictatorship brought some stability at first, and built numerous important public works, but frequent wage freezes and deregulation of finance led to a sharp fall in living standards and record foreign debt.[21] Deindustrialization, the peso’s collapse, and crushing real interest rates, as well as unprecedented corruption, public revulsion over the Dirty War, and finally the 1982 defeat by the British in the Falklands War, discredited the military regime and led to free elections in 1983.