Liberal Argentina and Its Constraints: From Failed Democracy to Peronism (1912–1955)

This chapter examines the tensions produced by the political closure, the emergence of the Radical Civic Union (UCT) as an opposition party, and Hipólito Yrigoyen’s rise to power in the first democratic elections in 1916. It then describes the military coup that overthrew Yrigoyen in 1930 and the expansion of nationalist, extreme right-wing, and leftist groups and ideas. The crisis in the world economy at that time helps explain the changes in the local economy and the beginning of state interventionism to promote stability and industrialization. The second coup d’état, staged in 1943, led to the rise of Juan Domingo Perón and Peronism, confronted in turn by a powerful anti-Peronist movement that ended up overthrowing him.