Juan Perón
Juan Domingo Perón was an Argentine military officer and politician who served as the 29th president of Argentina from 1946 to his overthrow in 1955, and the 40th president from 1973 to 1974. He is the only Argentine president elected three times and holds the highest percentage of votes in clean elections. Perón was one of the most important, and controversial, Argentine politicians of the 20th century; his influence extends to today. Perón's ideas, policies and movement are known as Peronism, which continues to be a force in Argentine politics.
In 1911, Perón entered military college, and rose through the ranks. In 1930, Perón supported the coup against President Hipólito Yrigoyen, a decision he regretted. He was appointed a professor of military history, and in 1939, sent on a study mission to Fascist Italy, then traveled to Nazi Germany, France, Francoist Spain, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. During this travel, Perón developed many of his ideas. Perón participated in the 1943 revolution and became Minister of Labor, then Minister of War and Vice President. He became known for adopting labor right reforms. Political disputes forced him to resign in October 1945 and he was arrested. On 17 October, workers gathered in the Plaza de Mayo to demand his release. Perón's surge in popularity helped him win the 1946 election.
Perón's administration was influential for initiating industrialization, expanding social rights, and making university tuition-free. Alongside his wife, Eva Duarte, the government granted women the right to vote, built half a million houses, and provided charity, especially to children, and became immensely popular among the working class. It also employed authoritarian tactics: dissidents were fired from their jobs, arrested or exiled, and the press was controlled. War criminals, such as Josef Mengele and Adolf Eichmann, were given refuge. Perón was re-elected by a landslide in 1951, though his second term was troubled. Eva died soon after his inauguration. Religious tolerance and charity given by Eva's foundation damaged his standing with the Catholic Church. After an attempt to sanction a divorce law and deporting two priests, he was mistakenly thought to have been excommunicated, and pro-Church elements of the armed forces bombed Plaza de Mayo, Buenos Aires, in June 1955. 300 civilians were killed in this coup attempt, which prompted reprisals against churches by Perón supporters; a coup deposed him.
During the following military dictatorships, the Peronist party was outlawed and Perón exiled. He lived in Paraguay, Venezuela, Panama and Spain. When the Peronist Héctor José Cámpora was elected president in 1973, Perón returned amidst the Ezeiza massacre and elected president for a third time. Violence erupted between left- and right-wing Peronists, which Perón was unable to resolve. His minister José López Rega formed the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance, believed to have committed hundreds of extrajudicial killings. Perón's third wife, Isabel Perón, was elected vice president on his ticket, and succeeded him upon his death in 1974. She was ousted in 1976, and followed by even deadlier repression under the junta of Jorge Rafael Videla. Although controversial figures, Juan and Eva Perón are considered icons by supporters. The Peróns' followers praise their efforts to eliminate poverty and dignify labour, while detractors consider them demagogues and dictators. The Peróns gave their name to the political movement known as Peronism, which is represented mainly by the Justicialist Party.
Childhood and youth
Juan Domingo Perón was born in Lobos, Buenos Aires Province, on 8 October 1895. He was the son of Juana Sosa Toledo and Mario Tomás Perón. The Perón branch of his family was originally Spanish, but settled in Spanish Sardinia, from which his great-grandfather emigrated in the 1830s; in later life Perón would publicly express his pride in his Sardinian roots. He also had Spanish, British, French and Tehuelche ancestry.Perón's great-grandfather became a successful shoe merchant in Buenos Aires, and his grandfather was a prosperous physician; his death in 1889 left his widow nearly destitute, however, and Perón's father moved to then-rural Lobos, where he administered an estancia and met his future wife. The couple had their two sons out of wedlock and married in 1901.
His father moved to the Patagonia region that year, where he later purchased a sheep ranch. Juan himself was sent away in 1904 to a boarding school in Buenos Aires directed by his paternal grandmother, where he received a strict Catholic upbringing. His father's undertaking ultimately failed, and he died in Buenos Aires in 1928. The youth entered the National Military College in 1911 at age 16 and graduated in 1913. He excelled less in his studies than in athletics, particularly boxing and fencing.
Army career
Perón began his military career in an infantry post in Paraná, Entre Ríos. He went on to command the post, and in this capacity mediated a prolonged labour conflict in 1920 at La Forestal, then a leading firm in forestry in Argentina. He earned instructor's credentials at the Superior War School, and in 1929 was appointed to the Army General Staff Headquarters. Perón married his first wife, Aurelia Tizón, on 5 January 1929.Perón was recruited by supporters of the director of the War Academy, General José Félix Uriburu, to collaborate in the latter's plans for a military coup against President Hipólito Yrigoyen of Argentina. Perón, who instead supported General Agustín Justo, was banished to a remote post in northwestern Argentina after Uriburu's successful coup in September 1930. Nevertheless, he was promoted to the rank of major the following year and named to the faculty at the Superior War School, where he taught military history and published a number of treatises on the subject. He served as military attaché in the Argentine Embassy in Chile from 1936 to 1938 and returned to his teaching post. His wife was diagnosed with uterine cancer that year and died on 10 September at age 36; the couple had no children.
The Argentine War Ministry assigned Perón to study mountain warfare in the Italian Alps in 1939. He also attended the University of Turin for a semester and served as a military observer in countries across Europe – holding positions as a military attaché in Berlin and in Rome.
He studied Benito Mussolini's Italian Fascism, Nazi Germany, and other European governments of the time, concluding in his summary, Apuntes de historia militar, that social democracy could be a viable alternative to liberal democracy or to totalitarian régimes. He returned to Argentina in 1941, and served as an army skiing-instructor in Mendoza Province.
Military government of 1943–1946
In 1943 a coup d'état was led by General Arturo Rawson against Ramón Castillo, who had assumed the presidency a little less than a year earlier as the vice president of Roberto María Ortiz following Ortiz's resignation due to illness; both Ortiz and Castillo had been elected in the 1937 presidential election, which has been described as being among the most fraudulent in Argentine history. The military was opposed to Governor Robustiano Patrón Costas, Castillo's hand-picked successor, who was the principal landowner in Salta Province, as well as a main stockholder in its sugar industry.As a colonel, Perón took a significant part in the military coup by the GOU against the conservative civilian government of Castillo. At first an assistant to Secretary of War General Edelmiro Farrell, under the administration of General Pedro Ramírez, he later became the head of the then-insignificant Department of Labour. Perón's work in the Labour Department witnessed the passage of a broad range of progressive social reforms designed to improve working conditions, and led to an alliance with the socialist and syndicalist movements in the Argentine labour unions, which increased his power and influence in the military government.
After the coup, socialists from the CGT-Nº1 labour union, through mercantile labour leader Ángel Borlenghi and railway union lawyer Juan Atilio Bramuglia, made contact with Perón and fellow GOU Colonel Domingo Mercante. They established an alliance to promote labour laws that had long been demanded by the workers' movement, to strengthen the unions, and to transform the Department of Labour into a more significant government office. Perón had the Department of Labour elevated to a cabinet-level secretariat in November 1943.
Following the devastating January 1944 San Juan earthquake, which claimed over 10,000 lives and leveled the Andes range city, Perón became nationally prominent in relief efforts. Junta leader Pedro Ramírez entrusted fundraising efforts to him, and Perón marshaled celebrities from Argentina's large film industry and other public figures. For months, a giant thermometer hung from the Buenos Aires Obelisk to track the fundraising. The effort's success and relief for earthquake victims earned Perón widespread public approval. At this time, he met a minor radio matinee star, Eva Duarte.
Following President Ramírez's January 1944 suspension of diplomatic relations with the Axis powers, the GOU junta unseated him in favor of General Edelmiro Farrell. For contributing to his success, Perón was appointed vice president and Secretary of War, while retaining his Labour portfolio. As Minister of Labour, Perón established the INPS, settled industrial disputes in favour of labour unions, and introduced a wide range of social welfare benefits for unionised workers.
Employers were forced to improve working conditions and to provide severance pay and accident compensation, the conditions under which workers could be dismissed were restricted, a system of labour courts to handle the grievances of workers was established, the working day was reduced in various industries, and paid holidays/vacations were generalised to the entire workforce. Perón also passed a law providing minimum wages, maximum hours and vacations for rural workers, froze rural rents, presided over a large increase in rural wages, and helped lumber, wine, sugar and migrant workers organize themselves. From 1943 to 1946, real wages grew by only 4%, but in 1945 Perón established two new institutions that would later increase wages: the "aguinaldo" and the National Institute of Compensation, which implemented a minimum wage and collected data on living standards, prices, and wages. Leveraging his authority on behalf of striking abattoir workers and the right to unionise, Perón became increasingly thought of as a presidential candidate.
On 18 September 1945, he delivered an address billed as "from work to home and from home to work". The speech, prefaced by an excoriation of the conservative opposition, provoked an ovation by declaring that "we've passed social reforms to make the Argentine people proud to live where they live, once again." This move fed growing rivalries against Perón and on 9 October 1945, he was forced to resign by opponents within the armed forces. Arrested four days later, he was released due to mass demonstrations organised by the CGT and other supporters; 17 October was later commemorated as Loyalty Day. His paramour, Eva Duarte, became hugely popular after helping organize the demonstration; known as "Evita", she helped Perón gain support with labour and women's groups. She and Perón were married on 22 October.