More about History of Argentina

More about History of Argentina

The following discussion focuses on events in Argentina from the time of European settlement. For events in a regional context, see Latin America, history of. Events that affected northwestern Argentina prior to the 16th century are described in pre-Columbian civilizations: Andean civilization.

The population of the area now called Argentina may have totaled 300,000 before the arrival of the Europeans. Some of the indigenous peoples were nomadic hunters and fishers, such as those in the Chaco, the Tehuelche of Patagonia, and the Querandí and Puelche (Guennakin) of the Pampas, but others, such as the Diaguita of the Northwest, developed sedentary agriculture. The highlands of the Northwest were a part of the Inca empire.

Early period

DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT

The main Atlantic outline of Argentina was revealed to European explorers in the early 16th century. The Río de la Plata estuary was discovered years before Ferdinand Magellan traversed the Strait of Magellan in 1520, although historians dispute whether the estuary was first reached by Amerigo Vespucci in 1501–02 or by Juan Díaz de Solís in his ill-fated voyage of 1516. Solís and a small party sailed up the Plata, which he called the Mar Dulce (“Freshwater Sea”), and made landfall. Ambushed by Indians, Solís and most of his followers were killed, and several disappeared. The survivors of the expedition returned to Spain.

The Río de la Plata was not explored again until Magellan arrived in 1520 and Sebastian Cabot in 1526. Cabot discovered the Paraná and Paraguay rivers and established the fort of Sancti Spíritus (the first Spanish settlement in the Plata basin). He also sent home reports of the presence of silver.

In 1528 Cabot met another expedition from Spain under Diego García, commander of a ship from the Solís expedition. Both Cabot and García had planned to sail for the Moluccas but altered their courses, influenced by excited tales about an “enchanted City of the Caesars” (a variant of the Eldorado legend), which later incited many explorations and conquests in Argentina. While Cabot was preparing to search for the fabled city, a surprise attack by the Indians in September 1529 wiped out his Sancti Spíritus base.

Inspired by the conquest of Peru and the threat from Portugal’s growing power in Brazil, Spain in 1535 sent an expedition under Pedro de Mendoza (equipped at his own expense) to settle the country. Mendoza was initially successful in founding Santa María del Buen Aire, or Buenos Aires (1536), but lack of food proved fatal. Mendoza, discouraged by Indian attacks and mortally ill, sailed for Spain in 1537; he died on the way.

In the same year, a party from Buenos Aires under Juan de Ayolas and Domingo Martínez de Irala, lieutenants of Mendoza, pushed a thousand miles up the Plata and Paraguay rivers. Ayolas was lost on an exploring expedition, but Irala founded Asunción (now in Paraguay) among the Guaraní, a largely settled agricultural people. In 1541 the few remaining inhabitants of Buenos Aires abandoned it and moved to Asunción, which was the first permanent settlement in that area. In the next half century Asunción played a major part in the conquest and settlement of northern Argentina. The main population of Argentina was concentrated there until the late 18th century. Buenos Aires, reestablished in 1580 by Juan de Garay with settlers from Asunción, was largely isolated from this northern area. Northern Argentina as well as Buenos Aires was settled mainly by the overflow from the neighbouring Spanish colonies of Chile, Peru, and Paraguay (Asunción). There was little direct migration from Spain, probably because the area lacked the attractions of Mexico, Peru, and other Spanish colonies—rich mines, a large supply of tractable Indian labour, accessibility, and the privilege of direct trade with Spain. Nevertheless, in the early communities a simple but vigorous society developed on the basis of Indian labour and the horses, cattle, and sheep imported by the Spaniards, as well as native products such as corn (maize) and potatoes. Some of the Indians worked as virtual serfs, and densely populated missions (reducciones) established by the Roman Catholic church played a notable role in the colonizing process. European men often took Indian wives because there were few Spanish women among the settlers.

COLONIAL CENTRES

Politically, Argentina was a divided and subordinate part of the Viceroyalty of Peru until 1776, but three of its cities—San Miguel de Tucumán, Córdoba, and Buenos Aires—successively achieved a kind of leadership in the area and thereby sowed the regional seeds that later grew into an Argentine national identity.

San Miguel de Tucumán’s leadership lasted from the latter part of the 16th through the 17th century. Its political and ecclesiastical jurisdiction extended over most of northern Argentina, including Córdoba. San Miguel de Tucumán also dominated trade, which was the chief economic activity, by supplying the rich silver-mining area of Upper Peru (now Bolivia) with foodstuffs and livestock in return for European manufactures and other goods brought from Spain. Under the same economic system, Córdoba rose to leadership in the 17th and 18th centuries, because the expansion of settlement gave the city a central location and because the University of Córdoba, founded in 1613, put the city in the intellectual forefront of the region.

Buenos Aires, which rose to leadership in the late 18th century, symbolized the reorientation of Argentina’s economic, intellectual, and political life from the west to the east. On the economic front commerce was oriented away from the declining silver mines of Peru and toward direct transatlantic trade with Europe. Intellectually, interest in the new ideas of the European Enlightenment found fertile soil in cosmopolitan Buenos Aires. Political life was reoriented in 1776, when Spain created the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata (consisting of modern Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and southern Bolivia), with Buenos Aires as its capital. By carving the new viceroyalty from lands formerly part of the Viceroyalty of Peru, Spain intended to put its east-coast dominions in a better defensive position. The chief threat came from Brazil, which was growing rapidly in population, wealth, and military potential. For the first time, the port of Buenos Aires was opened to transatlantic trade with Spain and, through Spain, with other countries. This resulted in a great increase in both legal trade and smuggling.

INDEPENDENCE

In Argentina the independence movement began in 1806–07, when British attacks on Buenos Aires were repelled in the two battles known as the Reconquista and the Defensa. Also important there, as elsewhere in Spanish America, were the ramifications of Napoleon I’s intervention in Spain, beginning in 1808, which plunged that country into a civil war between two rival governments—one set up by Napoleon, who placed his own brother Joseph Bonaparte on the throne, and the other created by patriotic juntas in Spain in the name of the exiled Ferdinand VII and aided by the British. In most of Spanish America there was general sympathy with the regency, but both claims were rejected, mainly on the ground that an interregnum existed and thus, under ancient principles of Spanish law, the king’s dominions in America had the right to govern themselves pending the restoration of a lawful king.

This view was sustained in Argentina by the Creoles (criollos; Argentine-born Europeans) rather than by the immigrant (“peninsular”) Spaniards, and it was put into effect by the Buenos Aires cabildo, or municipal council. This ancient Spanish institution had existed in all the colonies since the 16th century. Its powers were very limited, but it was the only organ that had given the colonists experience in self-government. In emergencies it was converted into an “open” cabildo, a kind of town meeting, which included prominent members of the community. On May 25, 1810 (now celebrated as Venticinco de Mayo, the day of the revolution), such an open cabildo in Buenos Aires established an autonomous government to administer the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata in the name of Ferdinand VII, pending his restoration. When Ferdinand was restored in 1814, however, he was virtually powerless in Spain, which remained under the shadow of France. An assembly representing most of the viceroyalty met at San Miguel de Tucumán and on July 9, 1816 (Nueve de Julio), declared the country independent under the name of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata.

Several years of hard fighting followed before the Spanish royalists were defeated in northern Argentina. But they remained a threat from their base in Peru until it was liberated by José de San Martín and Simón Bolívar in 1820–24. The Buenos Aires government tried to maintain the integrity of the old Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, but the outlying portions, never effectively controlled, soon were lost: Paraguay in 1814, Bolivia in 1825, and Uruguay in 1828. The remaining territory—what now constitutes modern Argentina—was frequently disunited until 1860. The root cause of the trouble, the power struggle between Buenos Aires and the rest of the country, was not settled until 1880, and even after that it continued to cause dissatisfaction.

Efforts toward reconstruction, 1820–29

In 1820 only two political organizations could claim more than strictly local and provincial followings: the revolutionary government in Buenos Aires and the League of Free Peoples, which had grown up along the Río de la Plata and its tributaries under the leadership of José Gervasio Artigas. But both organizations collapsed in that year, and Buenos Aires seemed to be losing its position as the seat of national government. However, as the city regained its function as an intermediary between the nation and foreign governments, it regained its prominence.

DOMINANCE OF BUENOS AIRES

By then, military leaders had assumed power in almost every province. Each provincial political regime soon acquired its own character, according to the relative power held by military strongmen (caudillos) and by local political interests. This differentiation was not, however, cause for friction between the provinces; rather, economic and geographic factors separated them. Buenos Aires made significant advances toward national leadership by taking advantage of the interprovincial rivalries.

Within the province of Buenos Aires itself, the regime of the so-called Party of Order instituted popular reforms, including dismantling the military apparatus that had persisted from the war. The remaining armed forces were sent to defend the frontier areas and Pampas against attacks by Indians. This prudence on the part of the government won the support of the rural landowners as well as the urban businessmen, whose backing ensured victory at the polls.

The political order that seemed to be taking hold was achieved by setting aside, rather than resolving, certain fundamental difficulties. In particular, the institutional organization of the country was not carried out, and nothing was done about the Banda Oriental (the east bank of the Uruguay River), which was occupied first by Portuguese and then by Brazilian troops. By 1824 both problems were becoming urgent. Britain was willing to recognize Argentine independence, but only if Argentina established a government that could act for the whole country. And in the Banda Oriental a group of eastern patriots had taken over large sectors of the countryside and agitated for their reincorporation into the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, forcing the Buenos Aires government to face the possibility of war with the Brazilian empire.

PRESIDENCY OF RIVADAVIA

In the meantime, an attempt was made to establish a national government through a constituent assembly that met in December 1824. Overstepping its legal authority, the constituent assembly in February 1826 created the office of president of the republic and installed the porteño (native of Buenos Aires) Bernardino Rivadavia as its first occupant. Civil war flared up in the interior provinces, soon dominated by Juan Facundo Quiroga—a caudillo from La Rioja who opposed centralization. When the assembly finally drafted a national constitution, the major portion of the country rejected it.

Meanwhile, war against Brazil had begun in 1825. The Argentine forces were able to defeat the Brazilians on the plains of Uruguay, but the Brazilian navy blockaded the Río de la Plata and succeeded in crippling Argentine commerce. Rivadavia, unable to end the war on favourable terms, resigned in July 1827, and the national government dissolved. Leadership of the province of Buenos Aires was given to a federalist, Colonel Manuel Dorrego. Dorrego was backed by local interest groups whose political spokesman was the great landowner Juan Manuel de Rosas, who had been named commander of the rural militia. Dorrego made peace with Brazil, and in 1828 the disputed eastern province was constituted as the independent state of Uruguay. The Uruguayan lands, which Rivadavia had considered indispensable to the “national integrity” of Argentina, were never to be recovered. In December 1828 troops returning from the war overthrew Dorrego and installed General Juan Lavalle in his place; Dorrego was executed.

Although there was little resistance to the new governor in the city of Buenos Aires, uprisings began promptly in the outlying areas of the province. A convention of provincial representatives met in Santa Fe; dominated by the federalists under Rosas, they called on the governor of Santa Fe to take steps against the Lavalle regime. Lavalle finally came to terms with Rosas, and they agreed to hold elections in Buenos Aires for a new provincial legislature. Under the compromise agreement Rosas and Lavalle appointed a moderate federalist governor of Buenos Aires, but political tensions were too great for this attempt at reconciliation. Rosas reconvened the old legislature, which Lavalle had disbanded when he came to power—a triumph for the most intransigent forces of federalism. The legislature unanimously elected Rosas governor on December 5, 1829.

Confederation under Rosas, 1829–52

The regime of Rosas in Buenos Aires enjoyed far broader support than any of its predecessors. Special interest groups, landholders, and export-import merchants (along with the British diplomatic contingent that was identified with these interests) all fell behind the new governor. Practically all the influential sectors in the province identified Rosas’s triumph with their own best interests.

DOMESTIC POLITICS

The new governor saw clearly the ambiguities and dangers of such widespread support, and, although he was identified as a federalist, he ruled as a centralist, with Buenos Aires his main power base. Rosas manipulated factions of labourers, gauchos, and elites from the estancias and set himself up as the arbiter of a delicate and constantly threatened balance between the masses and the elites.

By 1832 the opposition to federalism had disappeared throughout the country, and Rosas turned over the reins of the government of Buenos Aires to his legal successor, General Juan Ramón Balcarce. However, Balcarce’s assumption of the office fanned sparks of dissidence among those who had pledged to uphold the principles of federalism. Balcarce was overthrown, and his successor took office with a cabinet composed of Rosas’s friends. They adopted policies that were designed to lead to political and economic stability, but it was stability that Rosas feared, since it would have entailed the demobilization of his mass political following. The legislature in Buenos Aires was induced to designate Rosas governor of the province under conditions that Rosas successfully imposed: he was granted extraordinary resources, absolute public authority, and an extension of the governor’s term of office from three to five years. Armed with these powers, he soon established a formidable dictatorship, hunting down his real and supposed enemies with the aid of the Mazorca, a ruthless secret police force whose members behaved like thugs and vigilantes. To show their loyalty, citizens were required to wear red favours, and priests had to display Rosas’s portrait on the altars of their churches.

Rosas’s involvement in a trade dispute with Uruguay, however, proved to be costly and ended in failure. It contributed to the first open friction with France, which sent warships to blockade Buenos Aires in 1838. This caused dissension in the coastal region, which depended heavily on export trade. Argentine political exiles in Montevideo, Uruguay, received French backing in their efforts to overthrow Rosas, and in the north a league of dissident provinces was formed.

This formidable coalition of adversaries soon fell apart. France, faced with other problems, abandoned its adventure in the Río de la Plata area and left its local allies to fend for themselves against Rosas. At the same time, an army organized in Buenos Aires and commanded by Manuel Oribe (the deposed second president of Uruguay) gained control of most of the Argentine interior. For the first time since 1820, troops from Buenos Aires had advanced as far as the Bolivian and Chilean frontiers. The hegemony of Buenos Aires under Rosas’s system of federalism was not to be challenged again. Oribe went on to conquer most of Uruguay, and his predominantly Argentine army began a nine-year siege of Montevideo in February 1843. The city was supplied through the intervention of British warships, and in 1845 an Anglo-French fleet blockaded Buenos Aires while a British fleet sailed up the Paraná River. Eventually the British and French withdrew their aid to Montevideo and ceased hostilities with Rosas.

The fact that Rosas was able to conduct a vigorous foreign policy for so many years was partly because of the weakness of Argentina’s natural rival in the Río de la Plata area, Brazil, which had been involved in a civil war (1835–45) in Rio Grande do Sul. Once the rebellion was put down, it was only a question of time until Brazil again influenced the Río de la Plata region. This influence opposed Rosas, and it worked in support of a rebellion by General Justo José de Urquiza, governor of the province of Entre Ríos. In 1851 Urquiza formed an alliance with Brazil and Uruguay. The allies first forced Rosas’s troops to abandon the siege of Montevideo and then defeated his main army in the Battle of Caseros (February 3, 1852), just outside Buenos Aires. Rosas, abandoned by most of his troops as well as his political supporters, escaped to England, where he died in 1877.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, 1820–50

Argentina’s society and economy underwent considerable changes in the 30 years after 1820. Buenos Aires was the province best adapted to the new era of free trade, exporting cattle products in return for consumer goods from overseas. The interior provinces adjusted slowly, replacing their traditional markets in Upper Peru with new ones in Chile, where a great expansion of the mining industry was taking place. The coastal provinces fared better, although their livestock industry suffered from the effects of the civil war. For Santa Fe, moderate prosperity returned in the 1830s, and a similar trend began in Entre Ríos and Corrientes provinces in the 1840s.

National consolidation, 1852–80

General Urquiza called a constitutional convention that met in Santa Fe in 1852. Buenos Aires refused to participate, but the convention adopted a constitution for the whole country that went into effect on May 25, 1853. Buenos Aires recoiled from the new confederation, the first elected president of which was Urquiza and the first capital of which was Paraná. The porteño dissidence was a serious financial handicap to the state, since Buenos Aires kept for itself all the revenues from customs duties on imports. In 1859 Urquiza incorporated Buenos Aires by armed force, but he also agreed to a constitutional revision that underscored the federal character of the government.

Before the unification took effect, however, Urquiza was succeeded in the presidency by Santiago Derqui. Another civil war broke out, but this time Buenos Aires defeated Urquiza’s forces. Urquiza and General Bartolomé Mitre, governor of Buenos Aires, then agreed that Mitre would lead the country but that Urquiza would exercise authority over the provinces of Entre Ríos and Corrientes. Derqui resigned, and Mitre was elected president in 1862; Buenos Aires became the seat of government.

The authority of the new president was progressively weakened by opposition within his own province of Buenos Aires. The pressures of this opposition forced Mitre to intervene in the political struggles of Uruguay and then to fight Paraguay in the War of the Triple Alliance. From 1865 to 1870 an alliance of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay carried on a devastating campaign against Paraguay, employing modern weapons and tens of thousands of troops.

The war with Paraguay did not disrupt Argentina’s commerce, as other wars had. In the 1860s and ’70s foreign capital and waves of European immigrants poured into the country. Railroads were built; alfalfa, barbed wire, new breeds of cattle and sheep, and finally the refrigeration of meat were introduced.

The national armed forces became one of the cornerstones of the new centralized state; however, the army refused to uphold the policies of the president. One of Rosas’s nephews rallied the support of the military behind the presidential candidacy of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, a native of San Juan. His victory was guaranteed by the influence of the military combined with the support of a liberal faction in Buenos Aires that opposed Mitre, and the new president (1868–74) held office without a political party of his own. Credit from abroad fortified the economy, moreover, and thereby allowed Sarmiento to engage in a costly civil war to put down an uprising in Entre Ríos.

The next president, Nicolás Avellaneda (1874–80), was a native of San Miguel de Tucumán who had been Sarmiento’s minister of justice, public education, and worship. Avellaneda’s government faced serious financial difficulties engendered by the European economic crisis of 1873. Argentina defaulted on foreign loans and completed few public works projects, but it encouraged European immigration, largely into Patagonia, and it fully supported the Indian wars.

General Julio Argentino Roca, who was also from San Miguel de Tucumán and who had influence in Córdoba, became the next president (1880–86). Roca had led a brilliant military career that included directing the Conquest of the Desert, the campaign that brought the Indian wars to a close in 1879. This opened the southern and western Pampas and the northern reaches of Patagonia to settlement, and it made Roca a political hero. His campaign for the presidency provoked a new rebellion in Buenos Aires, but the uprising was quickly suppressed. The perennial question of the city’s status was then settled by making it a federal territory and converting it into the national capital; a new capital for the province of Buenos Aires was established at La Plata.

The conservative regime, 1880–1916

The entire country was now dominated by the National Autonomist Party, which had originally supported Avellaneda’s candidacy and was now an alliance of the various groups supporting Roca. These included many of the big ranchers, as well as commercial and business interests who were more than happy with Roca’s formula of “peace and efficient administration.” Argentina’s economy grew rapidly during this period, largely owing to British capital, which made it possible to build an extensive rail network from the upriver provinces to Buenos Aires and the sea. The new rail system facilitated the export of meat and other agricultural products, and ranching and farming thus became more profitable. Large-scale foreign investment sparked the expansion of other industries as well.

In addition, the population grew rapidly during this era, from less than two million in 1869 to nearly eight million in 1914. In 1881 Argentina and Chile agreed to delimit their Andean frontier, including partitioning Tierra del Fuego. Argentina was to have exclusive rights to the Atlantic waters, and Chile to the Pacific.

THE CRISIS OF 1890

The economic expansion led ultimately to inflation, the issuance of too much paper currency, and the onset of a financial crisis. A political crisis also followed. The government of Roca’s successor, Miguel Juárez Celman (1886–90), had avoided launching an unpopular anti-inflationary program, but this inaction sparked criticism both within and outside the official party ranks. In July 1890 a revolt erupted that had strong support from within the army, but it was defeated by loyal elements. Even so, Juárez Celman was forced to step down in favour of the vice president, Carlos Pellegrini (1890–92), a solid ally of Roca.

THE RISE OF RADICALISM

A new party, the Radical Civic Union, was formed in response to the difficulties of the 1890s. It was strongly opposed to the ruling regime and to the compromise candidate, Luis Sáenz Peña, who was accepted in 1892 by Mitre and the more moderate opponents of the Roca–Juárez Celman regime. Sáenz was in turn replaced in 1895 by José Evaristo Uriburu. In 1898 Roca returned to the presidency for a second term and attempted to bring the more moderate radicals back into the loose alliance of local political groups, which after 1890 had controlled the national government. The most intransigent radical factions remained in opposition; they were headed by Hipólito Irigoyen, who later served twice as president.

While political opposition declined, social unrest was becoming more widespread, and there was growing disarray within the government itself. Roca broke with Pellegrini, and the National Autonomist Party suffered because of the split. In 1904 Roca was barely able to avoid being succeeded in office by Pellegrini; moreover, the candidate Roca finally put into the presidency, Manuel Quintana, was not one of Roca’s staunchest supporters. Quintana was forced to quell a radical revolution in 1905, and he died the following year. His death opened the way to the presidency for José Figueroa Alcorta, a Cordoban who turned immediately to the task of destroying Roca’s political machine. In 1910 Alcorta installed as his successor Roque Sáenz Peña, a brilliant politician who was fully prepared to construct a governing coalition on new foundations.

The course of Argentine politics in the final stages of Roca’s career had convinced many of his most influential and militant followers that the country needed electoral reform. These reforms were not seen as excessively dangerous, since the Radical opposition seemed to have limited support. In 1912 President Sáenz Peña had the Congress pass an electoral-reform law that called for a compulsory secret ballot for all male citizens. His death in 1914 deprived the national leadership of its guiding force, and the electoral law he had championed opened the gates of power to the Radicals. The interim presidency of Victorino de la Plaza (1914–16) was followed by that of the Radical leader Irigoyen (1916–22). He was the first Argentine president who owed his victory to the popular vote rather than to selection by the incumbent president from the members of a ruling oligarchy.

The radical regime, 1916–30

The Radical front was a coalition of heterogeneous social groups whose competing interests slowed the passage of reforms, despite urgent calls for economic and social change. Not surprisingly, Irigoyen preferred to concentrate on the political ills he had inherited from the conservative regime. The most urgent measure involved political patronage, which had been used by the conservatives to keep their candidates in office. Patronage shifted to the service of the Radicals, who created a new political machine that was virtually unbeatable at the polls in almost every province.

In other fields also the Radical administration attempted to expand its political base. Irigoyen achieved substantial rapport with the more moderate labour unions—a rapport expressed in a generally pro-labour policy. That policy was tempered after violent clashes occurred in the capital city during the general strike of January 1919, which caused the military to align itself with conservative interest groups. Irigoyen’s administration supported organizations and movements among tenant farmers and also put through a university-reform plan.

Irigoyen’s influence was a deciding factor in the election of his successor, Marcelo T. de Alvear (1922–28), who represented a safe choice. Alvear was not content, however, with the restrictions that Irigoyen imposed upon him, and he reluctantly led a conservative wing hostile to Irigoyen. In the elections of 1928 Irigoyen ran for a second term and was elected by a margin of two to one, establishing him as head of his party.

Irigoyen was not a revolutionary, but his victory over the economic, social, and political elites of the country nonetheless earned him their enmity. His political machine, though an excellent mechanism for securing power, proved to be incapable of governing during times of economic distress, such as late 1929, the eve of the Great Depression. Behind the nation’s economic growth lay a shift in economic power from the Argentine landowning class to foreign merchants and processors. Before 1914 these foreign interests had been concentrated mainly in the grain-growing sector, but after 1920 they moved into the cattle-raising industry. Private investment still came primarily from Great Britain, which was also the main market for Argentine exports. The United States provided industrial and transportation equipment and was the government’s principal source of credit, but it had erected tariff and other barriers to the importation of Argentine goods, and that prompted Irigoyen to adopt an anti-U.S. and pro-British line.

Irigoyen’s government could not cope with the onset of the global depression, and the army expelled him from office in September 1930. This marked the end of a constitutional continuity that had lasted for 68 years; it was also the end of a long period of economic expansion based on the export of raw materials.

The conservative restoration and the Concordancia, 1930–43

During the next 13 years, which have often been termed “the Infamous Decade,” the armed forces sponsored a conservative restoration. After expelling Irigoyen they installed General José Félix Uriburu in the presidency (1930–32). Uriburu was a descendent of an old, conservative northern family, and he leaned toward fascism. His influence with the army, however, was not as great as that of General Agustín Pedro Justo, a former minister of war under Alvear, who favoured a gradual conservative reorientation of the country. The Radicals, who had been reorganized under the leadership of Alvear, won an unexpected victory in trial elections held in the province of Buenos Aires in April 1931, but the Radicals’ activities were then severely restricted (including the arrest or exile of their leaders), and their members either boycotted or were barred from the national election of 1931. General Justo, in contrast, had the backing of the Concordancia (a coalition of conservatives, a faction of the Radicals, and independent socialists), and, with only limited electoral fraud, he was elected by a large majority.

The new president, facing a difficult economic situation, instituted several controversial reforms and initiatives. In 1933 he signed the Roca-Runciman Agreement with Great Britain, which guaranteed Argentina a fixed share in the British meat market and eliminated tariffs on Argentine cereals. In return, Argentina agreed to restrictions with regard to trade and currency exchange, and it preserved Britain’s commercial interests in the country. Many Argentines saw the treaty as a sellout to Britain, although from the British point of view the pact accorded privileges not given to any other country outside their empire. Other unpopular reforms included restructuring the monetary system and establishing agencies to control exports. After 1935 the economic climate improved.

The election of 1937, in which the government retained its power, was marked by fraud and violence; however, the next president, Roberto M. Ortiz, returned to more proper electoral procedures, calling for federal intervention in the province of Buenos Aires, where a corrupt conservative machine had been in control. Ortiz’s poor health obliged him to resign in 1940, and his successor, Ramón S. Castillo, restored the conservative coalition to power and gained the support of General Justo.

At the outbreak of World War II, Argentina declared its neutrality, and it remained neutral even after the United States entered the conflict in 1941. Castillo’s motives for this stance were largely economic, and he attempted to court trade agreements with both the United States and the Axis powers while maintaining a significant commerce with Britain; however, his policies were only partly successful, and Argentina struggled to arm and equip its military while other Latin American nations received generous lend-lease shipments from the United States. In the face of opposition from both pro-Allied and pro-Axis groups, as well as concerns over the increasing strength of the United States-supplied Brazilian military, Castillo imposed a state of siege. General Justo died in January 1943, leaving the president without his most influential supporter, and Castillo was overthrown in June.

The Perón era, 1943–55

TRANSITIONAL PERIOD

The military government faced several urgent and difficult problems, including the decision of whether to remain neutral or choose sides in the war. It also had to decide between the restoration of a representative system and the installation of a long-term military dictatorship. General Arturo Rawson was made president but resigned after two days when his anticonservative stance and his advocacy of the United Nations won no military support.

General Pedro P. Ramírez replaced Rawson as president. He maintained neutrality in the war but faced increasing opposition from all political groups except the nationalist right wing and the fascist sympathizers. The government, reflecting an emergent authoritarianism, censored the press and dissolved political parties. Under pressure from the United States, the regime broke off diplomatic relations with Germany, but this deed was not favoured by many military officers, and Ramírez was removed by a coup. The presidency was turned over to General Edelmiro J. Farrell (1944–46), who led a military junta, but, under threat of international sanctions, his regime prepared for a return to representative democracy.

The search for a solution ended in the rise of Colonel Juan Perón to the office of president. From 1941 Perón had led the United Officers Group (Grupo de Oficiales Unidos; GOU), a secret military lodge that had engineered the 1943 coup. In October 1943 he secured the minor job of running the labour department and began building a political empire based in the labour unions. He helped the unions win favourable settlements from employers and pushed through a welfare program that provided vacations, retirement benefits, and severance pay. By 1945 Perón was also vice president and minister of war. His changes included giving autonomy to universities, reconstructing political parties (including the Communist Party, prohibited since 1936), and declaring war on Germany, thereby facilitating Argentina’s admittance to the United Nations. But with the return of political freedom came renewed opposition, culminating in a mass demonstration in Buenos Aires in September 1945. Emergency measures were enacted. Seizing the opportunity, Perón’s enemies in the navy reacted, and he was removed from office and arrested on October 9. At that point, however, Perón’s adversaries in the military and the political sphere failed to agree on a further course of action. Perón’s adherents in the unions organized a strike that found enthusiastic support among the people. He was released on October 17—a date still celebrated by Peronists as Loyalty Day—and his foes were forced to resign.

PERÓN IN POWER

Perón campaigned for the presidency in the elections of 1946. He organized the Labour Party, which was resisted by all the old parties and by the major vested-interest groups. His victory, though narrow, gave him control of both houses of Congress and all the provincial governorships. Perón’s political strategy and tactics were authoritarian and personalistic. He politically “purified” the schools and courts, declared a state of internal war in order to expand his executive authority, redistributed revenues in favour of the workers, nationalized public services, and gave preferential treatment to urban and industrial areas over their rural counterparts. He rewarded the organized workers for their support by enforcing labour legislation, improving wages and working conditions, controlling rents, and introducing the aguinaldo (13th-month bonus). Perón was a charismatic figure who spoke to working people in a language that they could understand. His appeal among the descamisados (“shirtless ones,” underprivileged workers) was reinforced and further dramatized by his wife, Eva Duarte de Perón (Evita), who unofficially led the Department of Social Welfare and presided over an extraordinary distribution of money, apartments, and jobs.

Until 1949 Perón’s economic policies were successful, largely because exporters were so successful during and just after the war. However, as inflation increased and trade became less profitable, it became more difficult to finance imports of vital raw materials. The constitutional reform of 1949 allowed Perón to be reelected in 1951, but his next government took on a more conservative hue, hastened by the death of his wife in July 1952. Evita had become a powerful political figure in her own right, burnishing the regime’s image of popular democracy, although she had been obliged by the military to rescind her acceptance of the vice-presidential nomination in 1951. After 1952 Perón incurred the increasing hostility of the church and the students. His efforts to eliminate the political influence of the church provoked disaffection in the officer corps, and in September 1955 he was overthrown by General Eduardo Lonardi and fled the country.

Attempts to restore constitutionalism, 1955–66

Lonardi recognized the strength of Peronism and sought a compromise, but he was displaced in November 1955 by General Pedro Eugenio Aramburu. The new administration was a military dictatorship that sought to restore constitutional government. Taking a fiercely anti-Peronist stance, it dissolved Perón’s old party and placed the labour unions under state administration. The Peronists wielded considerable influence on the factions that were competing for power, and in 1958 they supported Arturo Frondizi, a Radical leader who promised to readmit them to political life in return for their support. Frondizi won the presidency and majorities in both houses of Congress.

President Frondizi focused on economic development and showed a keen interest in reviving the flow of foreign investment. He devalued the currency to favour exporters and foreign investors; however, this had adverse effects on the middle and lower classes. Rapidly accelerating inflation and the campaign against it brought restrictions on credit, which increased the difficulties of industry, and Frondizi had to use the military to uphold his unpopular policies.

In March 1962 the reorganized Peronists gained control of important districts, among them the province of Buenos Aires. The armed forces withdrew support from Frondizi, dissolved Congress, and set up a government in the name of José María Guido, president pro tempore of the Senate. Guido’s 18-month administration was one of confusion as two military factions fought for control. The Colorados (“Reds”) sought a dictatorship that would deal strongly with the Peronists and extreme leftists. The Azules (“Blues”), who prevailed, favoured a constitutional government by a coalition including the Peronists, who would be confined to a weaker role than that indicated by their voting strength.

The elections of July 1963 resulted in victory for Arturo Illia, the candidate of the Radical Civic Union. President Illia inherited Frondizi’s economic problems, although the drastic reorientation of the economy had begun to show signs of success. Illia tried without success to split the resurgent Peronists, who now controlled the labour unions, from their exiled leader. The antagonized Peronists supported a coup in June 1966 that brought to power General Juan Carlos Onganía, a former Azul leader and commander in chief of the army.

Military government, 1966–73

Adalbert Krieger Vasena, minister of economy and labour, attempted to stabilize the economy by again devaluing the currency and then undertaking programs in electric power, steel, roads, and housing. In May 1969 disturbances and riots in the cities of Corrientes, Rosario, and particularly Córdoba rose out of student and labour conflicts; these incidents, later known as the Cordobazo, were identified as resentment toward Krieger Vasena’s economic policies. Krieger Vasena was removed, but the Onganía administration was unable to agree on an alternative economic policy, and the Cordobazo decisively affected the political climate. Underground activities were organized by a Trotskyite group, the People’s Revolutionary Army (Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo; ERP), and by Peronist groups. In 1970 one of these Peronist organizations, the Montoneros, destroyed the moderate Peronist union leadership and captured and killed former president Aramburu, who had been organizing a movement for a return to constitutional rule. The armed forces overthrew the Onganía government in June 1970. General Roberto Marcelo Levingston replaced Onganía, but inflation returned and terrorist acts increased; Levingston was overthrown in March 1971 and replaced by General Alejandro Agustín Lanusse, who promised to reestablish democratic elections by the end of 1973.

Perón had supported the Peronist underground but also used other means in a new bid for power. He maintained a formal alliance with the Frondizi followers, but the cornerstone of his strategy was an understanding with the largest non-Peronist party, the Radicals. In addition, he was mindful of the Argentine elites’ vested interests, and he purged his economic proposals of any motives that could alarm the propertied classes. The military government prevented Perón’s own candidacy but could not stop the electoral victory of the Peronist coalition, the Justicialist Liberation Front (Frente Justicialista de Liberación; Frejuli), in March 1973.

The return of Peronism

The newly elected president, Héctor J. Cámpora, took office in May 1973. It was immediately clear that he was merely preparing the way for the return of Perón from exile. Tensions rose sharply among Peronists as the organization’s left wing fought with its right-wing Montoneros for influence. At the final return of Perón in June, there was a pitched battle between right and left at Ezeiza International Airport. The union leadership and José López Rega, an associate of Perón, launched a violent antileftist campaign through a death squad organization, the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (AAA, or Triple A), which had the discreet support of Perón himself. In July Cámpora resigned, and new elections were presided over by another interim president, Raúl Lastiri, who began a purge of leftist influences in the government.

PERÓN’S SECOND PRESIDENCY

Perón was elected president with his third wife, María Estela Martínez de Perón (Isabel Perón), as vice president. Taking office in October 1973, he continued the campaign against the left, and in May 1974 the victims of the purge acknowledged the break with their former leader and passed into (still legal) opposition. Montonero activity increased, and the Triple A, suspected by many of being close to the police and intelligence branches of the administration, began to crack down on political, student, and union leaders.

Perón’s economic policies from 1973 included monetary stabilization, rigid control of prices and wages in order to favour wage earners, and limitations on the profits of agrarian exporters. Within a year the balance of payments suffered, however. The price of petroleum imports increased sharply, owing to the Arab oil embargo of 1973, and outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease in Argentina caused many European nations to ban shipments of Argentine meat.

PERÓN’S LEGACY

When Perón died on July 1, 1974, he left to his widow a deeply compromised inheritance, yet the transition of power was smooth, and Isabel Perón was sworn in as the world’s first woman president. Under the influence of López Rega, the government became even more inflexibly oriented toward the right, and violence reached new heights. López Rega, who used the rightist crusade to consolidate his power base, favoured labour and army leaders who personally supported him, and this style of favouritism created hostility among union, political, and military leaders. In 1975 he supported a drastic devaluation and a steep drop in real wages, whereupon inflation soared. Isabel Perón was persuaded to dismiss López Rega, but the unrest deepened. On March 24, 1976, military officers deposed the president and took over the government.

The return of military government

THE VIDELA REGIME AND THE DIRTY WAR

Five days after the coup a three-man military junta filled the presidency with Lieutenant General Jorge Rafaél Videla. The junta closed Congress, imposed censorship, banned trade unions, and brought state and municipal government under military control. Meanwhile, Videla initiated the infamous Process of National Reorganization, known subsequently as the “Guerra Sucia” (“Dirty War”), in which it is estimated that between 10,000 and 30,000 citizens were killed, often following their imprisonment and torture. The Argentine government, which maintained that it was fighting a civil war, initially faced little public opposition, but this began to change in the late 1970s, with growing evidence of civil rights violations. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who lost children to the Dirty War, began calling international attention to the plight of the desaparecidos (“disappeared persons”) through weekly Thursday afternoon vigils in the Plaza de Mayo, fronting the presidential palace. A particularly vocal critic of both left- and right-wing violence was Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, who was arrested and tortured in 1977 and received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1980. For the most part, however, opposition was choked off by rigorous censorship, strict curfews, and fear of the secret police.

During this period the economy continued to lag. A civilian from an old family, José Martínez de Hoz, became economy minister, but, keen as he was to deregulate the economy, the armed forces were equally determined to keep control. Annual inflation dropped in 1976–82 from about 600 to 138 percent—a more manageable but still distended level. Argentina’s balance of foreign trade initially improved, but by 1980 the overvalued peso had devastated Argentine industry, while uncontrolled spending had plunged the country into debt.

GALTIERI AND THE FALKLANDS WAR

Videla was succeeded in March 1981 by General Roberto Viola, who, with the Dirty War near its end, was quite unable to control his military allies. In December he was shouldered aside by Lieutenant General Leopoldo Galtieri. Galtieri faced a slumping economy and increased civil opposition to military rule. His trump card was that he had promised his navy ally, Vice Admiral Jorge Anaya, that they could fulfill Argentina’s historical claims to the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) by armed force.

Nationalist sentiment over the Falklands had been precipitated in 1977, when Argentina’s claim to another archipelago—the three Beagle Channel islands—was refused by the International Court of Justice in favour of Chile. (In 1979 the matter had again gone into negotiation, this time under Vatican auspices, and in 1984 Chile was awarded sovereignty.) In February 1982 Argentina increased pressure on the United Kingdom to relinquish the Falkland Islands. With popular support at home, Argentine troops landed on the Falklands and South Georgia island in early April, overcame the British Royal Marines stationed there, and raised the Argentine flag. For the next three weeks, while a British naval force sailed to the Falklands, the two belligerents failed to negotiate a solution. British forces retook South Georgia on April 25. A successful amphibious landing on San Carlos Water, Falkland Sound, followed, and after a brief land campaign the Argentine military governor surrendered the islands on June 14. (See also Falkland Islands War.)

Galtieri resigned as commander in chief of the army and president three days later. General Reynaldo Bignone was installed as president on July 1. The members of the junta representing the air force and the navy resigned in protest over Bignone’s appointment, but the junta was reconstituted on September 10. Under Bignone political parties were allowed to resume activities, and general elections were announced; meanwhile, elements of the armed forces worked to conceal evidence of crimes committed during the Dirty War. The Peronist party delayed choosing a presidential candidate and thus lost ground to the Radical Civic Union, led by Raúl Alfonsín, a civilian lawyer who had courageously defended victims of the military regime. Alfonsín won the election on October 30, 1983, and the Radicals gained a majority over the Peronists in the national Congress.

Restoration of democracy

Soon after his inauguration in December 1983, Alfonsín reversed legislation passed under Bignone by announcing plans to prosecute several members of the defunct military government, including former presidents Videla, Viola, and Galtieri. He also repealed a law granting amnesty to those accused of crimes and human rights violations during the Dirty War, and hundreds of military personnel were prosecuted. In the trial of nine former junta members in 1985, five were convicted, including Videla and Viola. Galtieri was acquitted in that trial, but in 1986 he was convicted, along with two other officers, of incompetency in the Falkland Islands War. Rebellion broke out within the military in the spring of 1987, but most of the armed forces stayed loyal. Massive rallies voiced approval of Alfonsín’s democracy, and the international community expressed support.

Alfonsín launched the Austral Plan, an austerity program that implemented a new currency (the austral), wage and price controls, and currency devaluations. The measures initially brought down inflation and restored the confidence of international bankers. Argentina then restructured its foreign debts, which had reached crisis proportions. The inflation rate began to rise again, however, reaching almost 388 percent annually at the end of 1988, and the austral began a precipitous decline in value against the U.S. dollar.

There were more rebellions in the last months of Alfonsín’s tenure as the military remained discontented over wages, inadequate equipment, and the trials of its members stemming from the Dirty War. The military’s hand was strengthened after insurgents carried out a bloody attack on a barracks outside Buenos Aires, and Alfonsín was forced to accept a military role in policy and to initiate a huge defense-spending program.

Although Alfonsín remained personally popular, he was constitutionally ineligible to succeed himself. His government’s poor handling of the economy contributed to the defeat of the Radical presidential candidate, Eduardo Angeloz, in May 1989. Instead, Carlos Saúl Menem, the Peronist former governor of La Rioja, led his coalition to victory in the presidential and congressional elections. Throughout the campaign Menem had cultivated an image recalling Perón, and it was his appeal to the poor and working classes, the traditional supporters of Peronism, that clinched his victory.

The Menem era and the 21st century

With the economy crumbling around him, Alfonsín resigned five months early, and Menem officially took over in July. Menem’s moderate Peronist program called for a free-market economy with lower tariffs, based on a wage-price pact between labour, business, and government. To help carry out his economic scheme, Menem unexpectedly enlisted the aid of former top-level executives from Bunge y Born, one of Argentina’s leading corporations.

Menem, in turn, needed military support in a time of economic emergency, and he sought to draw a veil over the past by pardoning those accused of human rights violations. Criticism of this act was strong but somewhat tempered by the fact that Menem himself had been held in detention for five years. Former president Galtieri also was pardoned. Meanwhile, in October 1989, while quietly sidestepping the question of Falklands sovereignty, Argentina and Great Britain formally agreed to establish full diplomatic relations.

Initially, Menem was no more successful than his predecessor in tackling the economy, and inflation continued unchecked. The situation changed in 1991 when Domingo Cavallo was appointed economy minister. Cavallo implemented a far-reaching program of economic stabilization, as well as measures to enhance revenue collection and prevent tax evasion. By August the annual inflation rate had fallen to 1.5 percent, the lowest in 17 years. The government then privatized numerous state-owned businesses and introduced a new currency, the Argentine peso, the value of which was pegged to the U.S. dollar. Capital flight was reversed, and in 1992 Argentina emerged with a reformed and apparently stable economy.

In 1993 the ruling Justicialist Party (Partido Justicialista, or PJ; Menem’s Peronist party) launched a campaign for a constitutional amendment that would permit the president to run for a second term. In elections held in October, the PJ gained a majority in the Chamber of Deputies but still needed support from the Radicals to change the constitution. Former president Alfonsín eventually consented to support the reforms, in an agreement called the Olivos Pact. The new constitution, promulgated in 1994, had few changes apart from the provision for consecutive presidential terms.

Menem decisively won reelection in 1995. The beginning of his second four-year term was overshadowed by the impact caused by the abrupt devaluation of the Mexican peso (the “Tequila Crisis”) and by increasing disagreements with Cavallo over economic policy. In addition, the government’s popularity was eroded by high unemployment and accusations of corruption, yet the president’s political control remained strong. When Menem finally dismissed Cavallo in July 1996, the economy was unaffected. Within a year, however, another recession took hold, made worse by the overvalued Argentine currency. Abroad, the foreign minister, Guido di Tella, negotiated an agreement with Chile regarding the delineation of their southern borders, and in October 1998 Menem paid a state visit to the United Kingdom. Commercial flights were resumed between the islands and the Argentine mainland in 1999. Later that year Fernando de la Rúa was elected president, heading an alliance of parties led by the Radicals to victory over the Peronists.

De la Rúa inherited a massive foreign debt, a deficit that was larger than expected, and a continuing recession. His administration responded by raising taxes, cutting the salaries of government employees, and encouraging the early retirement of others. As conditions deteriorated, the economy minister resigned, as did his replacement. De la Rúa then reappointed Domingo Cavallo to the post he had held under Menem. Cavallo’s reforms, however, were largely ineffective, and investors and lenders lost confidence in the economy. On December 20, following antigovernment protests in Buenos Aires, both Cavallo and de la Rúa resigned. Under a succession of interim presidents, the government restricted access to bank accounts, defaulted on its foreign-debt payments, and allowed the Argentine peso to decline in value. The country was rocked by another economic collapse in 2002.

The first round of the 2003 presidential elections was held in April against this backdrop of continuing economic and political turmoil. Menem, again a candidate, came out on top in the polling, followed closely by Néstor Kirchner, the governor of Santa Cruz province in Patagonia. However, Menem dropped out of the race before a runoff election could be held, and Kirchner, a centre-left Peronist, was inaugurated in May. During his term, Kirchner helped stabilize Argentina’s economy, and by 2005 he had overseen a restructuring of the country’s debt that satisfied many, though by no means all, of Argentina’s creditors. The second half of his term, however, was plagued by a countrywide energy crisis and high inflation. He did not run for a second term in 2007 and instead supported the candidacy of his wife, Sen. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who won by a significant margin and became Argentina’s first elected female president.

In 2010 Fernández de Kirchner’s administration engineered a successful debt swap with two-thirds of the “holdout” creditors who had rejected Argentina’s 2005 restructuring of debt upon which the country had defaulted in 2001. This swap, combined with that of 2005, ensured that more than 90 percent of the original bondholders had participated in a restructuring agreement. In July 2010 the Argentine Senate narrowly approved a bill, already passed by the lower house of Congress, legalizing same-sex marriage. Argentina thus became the first country in Latin America to permit gay couples to marry. Though the Fernández de Kirchner administration had supported the legislation, the Roman Catholic Church had organized mass demonstrations against it. Néstor Kirchner, who was expected to contest the presidency at the conclusion of his wife’s term, died suddenly in October 2010. Public sympathy over her husband’s death and wide approval of her social policies, as well as Argentina’s strong economy and a splintered opposition, bolstered Fernández de Kirchner’s standing, and she easily won reelection in October 2011. In legislative elections that month, Fernández de Kirchner’s Front for Victory (FPV) faction of the Peronist party and its allies won enough seats to capture an absolute majority in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate.

Beginning in late 2011, Fernández de Kirchner ratcheted up Argentina’s claims of sovereignty over the British-held Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) as the 30th anniversary of the Falkland Islands War approached and as the islanders voted nearly unanimously in a March 2013 referendum to remain a British overseas territory. In the process, Argentine-British bilateral relations sank to an all-time postwar low. Despite that foreboding atmosphere, many Argentines took heart in the elevation of the archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, to pope as Francis I in March 2013.

For the most part, the Argentine economy rebounded robustly over much of the first decade of the 21st century, but it continued to be plagued by among the highest inflation rates in the Western Hemisphere. Government-imposed price and export controls proved largely ineffective in constraining inflation, which, according to official figures, reached 10.6 percent in 2012, though many foreign and domestic observers believed it to actually be considerably higher, with some estimating it to have reached between 25 percent and 30 percent by 2013. The economy was also imperiled by creditors who had refused to accept any of the earlier debt restructuring and who undertook ongoing legal efforts to recover all of the money they had lent to the Argentine government.

In June 2014 the U.S. Supreme Court chose not to hear Argentina’s appeal of a lower court decision that had ordered the country to pay some $1.3 billion plus interest (the first tranche of a total of about $15 billion) to the U.S. hedge funds that had refused to restructure the debt. The decision prohibited Argentina from making interest payments to those creditors who had agreed to restructuring, and, when further efforts to negotiate a settlement between the hedge funds and Argentina collapsed at the end of July, the country found itself to be in technical default.

In January 2015 a scandal erupted after Alberto Nisman, the special prosecutor investigating the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires, was found dead the day before he was scheduled to testify before Congress. Just days earlier he had released a report in which he accused Fernández de Kirchner, her foreign minister, and others of engaging in negotiations with Iran to cover up the responsibility of Iranian government officials for the bombing in return for Iran entering into a trade deal with Argentina. After initially saying that she believed Nisman’s death was a suicide, the president reversed her opinion, stating that she now believed that Nisman had been the victim of foul play and that rogue intelligence agents had misled him regarding her involvement in the bombing investigation in an attempt to tarnish her reputation. On January 27 Fernández de Kirchner announced her intention to disband the country’s domestic intelligence agency and replace it with a new, more transparent security organization.