The revolution of September 5, 1930, is generally considered a turning point in Argentine political development because it marked the first in a long series of military coups. During the fifty years prior to the revolution of 1930, there was not a single successful rebellion against the central government; national politics were characterized by civilian leadership and the regular constitutional change of presidents.1 In contrast, since 1930 no civilian elected to the presidency has successfully completed a full term of office.
Despite this remarkable change, it would be inaccurate to conclude that the use of force appears in Argentine politics only during the post-1930 years. Between 1870 and 1930 there were eight instances of armed rebellions against the central government, as well as various uprisings against local government. From 1930 to 1970 an additional 18 rebellions took place, making a total of 26. These are listed chronologically in Table I.2
Armed rebellions serve as a useful starting point for examining political change in Argentina. As historical events, rebellions are relatively easy to pinpoint; at any given moment there either is or is not an armed rebellion under way, and its existence as an historical fact is not questioned.3 Rebellions are important for many reasons, not least of which is the discontinuity they cause in existing rules of political behavior. If disputes which begin over economic or social policy lead to a rejection of the existing political rules, they may ultimately result in ideological struggles over the nature of the political system itself.
The causes of rebellions have attracted considerable theoretical attention. Two contrasting positions stand out in this debate: 1) that implied by Marx in the Communist Manifesto, that misery leads to rebellion (“you have nothing to lose but your chains”), and 2) de Tocqueville’s view that revolution reflects the rising expectations of better times (“the French found their position the more unsupportable in proportion to its improvement”).4
Both of these two positions have received a certain amount of empirical validation. In the case of the French Revolution, which is probably the most-studied event of its kind, a gradual consensus has emerged to the effect that Marx and de Tocqueville were both right.5 The French Revolution followed several decades of prosperity, but it was immediately preceded by an intense depression and acute inflation which produced major social distress. James C. Davies has argued that a similar combination of events led up to both the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Egyptian Revolution of 1952.6 Davies suggests that “revolutions are most likely to occur when a prolonged period of objective economic and social development is followed by a short period of sharp reversal.”7
Thanks to the early start made by the Argentine government in collecting trade and budgetary statistics, the nature of economic activity from 1870 to 1970 can be estimated easily. For the period 1870-1900 per capita imports in gold pesos serve as an index of economic conditions.89 Between 1900 and 1945 the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America’s estimates of Argentina’s Gross Domestic Product per capita are available. After that time, similar figures from the Argentine Central Bank can be used.9
These data were used to classify each year as one of four types: 1) prosperous years (when indicators improve over the previous year), 2) downturn years (years in which indicators begin a decline), 3) poor years (when indicators continue to drop), and 4) upturn years (in which indicators begin an improvement). Table II shows how each year is classified. Upturn and downturn years have a special significance. Thus in 1930 Argentina’s overall product was not much lower than in 1929, but the economic downturn had completely altered the optimism of the previous years. Likewise, the upturn which began in 1933 made that year seem very much better than 1932, even though gross production was about the same.
Table III shows what percentage of years of each type was marked by rebellions. Downturn years are more likely to have rebellions than any other type (rebellions occurred in 60 per cent of such years). The next highest frequency was for poor years (31 per cent were marked by rebellions). In contrast, rebellions occurred in only 7 per cent of the upturn and the prosperous years. There is even the possibility that the rebellions occurring in two of the three prosperous years showing rebellions (1873 and 1955) may actually have been linked to downturns, for the succeeding years (1874 and 1956) were years of sharp recession which may have begun the year before without being reflected in the annual data.
The next question is when in the economic cycle did the rebellions occur? The Davies hypothesis suggests that a rebellion, if it does not occur in the year of downturn itself, should occur in the early rather than the late years of the recession. To test this, rebellions were classified into four groups, depending on whether they occurred in the early or late part of an expansion or contraction. “Early” was considered to be the year of upturn (or downturn) and the first two years of a subsequent expansion (or contraction); other years were considered ‘late” in the cycle.10
The findings, presented in Table IV, offer strong support for the hypothesis that rebellions occur in the first part of an economic downturn, since 73% of the rebellions in Argentina in the period studied taken place at such a time. No rebellions took place late in an expansion. Of the five rebellions occurring during an early period of upturn, only one did not immediately precede or follow a sharp downturn to which it may have been linked. Rebellions in Argentina are associated historically with economic contractions and tend to occur within two years of a downturn.
These findings reflect a pattern over an entire century. Nevertheless, the Argentine economy has undergone considerable structural change during that time. Historians of the Argentine economy usually divide the century 1870-1970 into three periods: 1) the period of export agriculture (1870-1929), 2) the period of economic transition (1930-1944), and 3) the period of import-substitution manufacturing which begins with the close of World War II and continues to the present.11 It is interesting to examine the relationship between the frequencies of recessions and rebellions within each of these periods, as shown in Table V.
The data show that the length of the Argentine economic cycle has grown shorter with each period. The frequency of rebellions has increased along with the frequency of recessions. In other words, the rise of political instability appears to be associated historically with the rise of economic instability in the Argentine case. That Argentina has become more unstable politically as it has developed economically appears to contradict assertions such as Lipset’s that “the more well-to-do a nation, the greater the chance that it will sustain democracy.”12 This view of the matter fails to take into account that development, as in Argentina, can lead to greater economic instability.13
Social and Historical Dimensions of Rebellions
The time-series analyses thus far undertaken have been of an elementary nature, but suffice for establishing the existence of some sort of relationship between the timing of recessions and rebellions. Given the fairly crude nature of the economic indicators used, it seemed less profitable to continue with time-series analysis than to turn to the examination of the social character of the rebellions themselves and of the historical situations in which they occur. Such an examination shows that the rebellions appear to be of three different types, and that these types are clustered in different historical periods.
The first five instances, occurring between 1870 and 1880, were of a type which might be called regional rebellions. They were carried out in the name of regional and provincial rights and were led by a regional leader or caudillo who was not a regular army officer but nonetheless held the honorific title of general. The troops of such leaders were local militia and personal retainers, not elements of the federal standing army. This type of rebellion had been even more common in the years immediately prior to 1870. One senator from the interior declared in parliament in 1868 that 117 rebellions had taken place in the provinces between June 1862 and September 1868, with a loss of 4,728 lives.14
With the 1890s a new type of rebellion appeared, which can be termed the party rebellion. The rebellions of 1890, 1893, and 1905 were organized in the name of the Unión Cívica Radical, the first of Argentina’s national, rather than regional political parties. Elements of the regular army were involved, but the leadership was largely civilian, and civilians were active participants in the fighting.
After the coup of 1930, a new series of party rebellions broke out. These also involved substantial military participation, but were carried out in the name of the Radical party, not in the name of the Armed Forces. Likewise, the Peronist rebellions of 1945 and 1956, though they involved military elements in addition to civilians, were carried out in the name of Peronism, and can be thus considered party rebellions as well.15
The revolt which overthrew the Radicals in 1930, led by General Uriburu, marks the emergence of a third type of rebellion, the military rebellion. Like subsequent military rebellions, it was led and staffed exclusively by members of the federal Armed Forces. The rebellion was announced as a rebellion of the Armed Forces, not of a party or region, and victory was described as a triumph for the Armed Forces. In later military rebellions, such as those of 1943, 1945, 1951, 1955, 1959, 1960, 1962, 1963, 1966, and 1970, civilian members of opposition parties or groups at no time played an important role in organizing or conducting the conflict, even though they occasionally played a minor role in preliminary plotting or in voicing public support for a military takeover.
If we turn from the type of rebellion, as defined by regional, party, or military character, to the question of which social groups were involved, and what their positions were in each period of economic history, certain linkages become clearer. The social groups involved in the various types of rebellions were those which emerged as the key winners and losers in each economic period.
To summarize a good deal of social history in one paragraph, we can review the winners and losers as follows. During the period of trade expansion, from 1852 to 1914, the main economic losers were the handicraft manufacturers and merchants of the interior, and the rural caudillos. The main gainers were the coastal hacendados and the Buenos Aires merchants and middle class. With the onset of the Depression of the Thirties, these export-linked groups began to suffer severely. The main gainers during the Thirties were urban labor and entrepreneurs in the rapidly expanding industrial sector. Under Perón in the late Forties and early Fifties the industrial working class made strong gains at the expense of the rural landowners and the urban middle class, although after Perón’s fall they lost much of what they had gained. Another group that was a conspicuous gainer during the Thirties and afterwards was the military, which had suffered an eclipse between 1916 and 193o.16
It seems clear that the regional rebellions of the 1870s and earlier were undertaken by provincial groups suffering from the effects of free trade. The self-contained economy of the interior was at that time disintegrating under the impact of foreign manufactured goods.17 An examination of the manifestos of the regional rebellions supports this: the chief demands were for trade protection and economic equality.18 The trade expansion of the 1880s completed Argentina’s transition to an export economy, in the process giving the central government sufficient resources to stamp out the final futile attempts of the interior provinces to stem the change.
The development of the export economy in turn created a new social group, the commercial middle class of Buenos Aires. Membership in urban white-collar, business, and professional occupations doubled between the censuses of 1869 and 1895, and doubled again by 1914, when it constituted 21% of the economically active population.19 The leadership and following of the Unión Cívica Radical were drawn from this emergent middle class. Their demands were reformist in nature: political participation for all male citizens, an eight-hour working day, and so on.
The industrial transition of the 1930s created another emergent social class: the urban proletariat. The labor movement and the Socialist Party failed to organize this rapidly expanding group. After the coup of 1943, Colonel Perón encouraged first the unionization and then the politicization of urban workers. His success can be seen in the fact that the Peronists remain the largest political movement in Argentina even in the 1970s.
The party rebellions of 1890, 1893, and 1905 represented the aspiration of the emergent middle class, just as the pro-Perón occupation of downtown Buenos Aires in October, 1945, represented the first dramatic flexing of muscle by the emergent proletariat. Both the middleclass Radicals and the working-class Peronists were eventually successful in capturing the presidency via elections. Likewise, both were eventually ousted from power by the military. The ousters were in both cases followed by new party rebellions, as the Radicals in the Thirties and the Peronists in the Fifties tried to recapture control of government. These second-phase rebellions (following ouster) all involved military personnel in addition to civilians, but were defined by the participants as party uprisings, not military ones. Thus party rebellions in Argentina signified either the attempts of emergent classes to gain political power, or their attempts to regain that power once seized by other groups.
Military rebellions are far less easy to characterize in class or regional terms. Instead they appear to represent the political activity of what Max Weber called a status group, in this case one defined by membership in a corporate institution that emerged with a critical position in the society.
At least two factors played an important role in the emergence of military revolts. The first has been traced by Cantón in a recent article: the professionalization of the Armed Forces which began in 1901, providing them with the power and prestige necessary for successful intervention.20 By 1930 a new generation of army officers had emerged, socialized in the values of the military and oriented to the Armed Forces as a reference group. Since 1930, of course, the power and prestige of the Armed Forces have continued to increase, both as a result of internal Argentine changes and in response to developments in other nations.
The second factor contributing to greater frequency of military rebellion has been the growing economic involvement of the Armed Forces. The military isolation of Argentina during the Second World War led the Armed Forces to demand their own productive facilities. This resulted in the establishment in 1941 by the Castillo government of the Office of Military Factories, which was to run expropriated Axis facilities and develop production in areas such as aeronautics. The operation was greatly expanded under succeeding military presidents. After 1941, in other words, the Argentine military has had not only a general concern with economic events, but a specific institutional interest in manufacturing.
As a result of the intensified allegiance of officers to a professionalized army with an expansive definition of the military role in conducting national affairs, as well as the direct involvement of the military in the productive process, the Argentine Armed Forces have developed a responsiveness to economic events that is noteworthy. The role of the army as an institutionalized political actor tends to cut across the class, regional, and party cleavages of Argentine society, making for a political system of greatly increased complexity and conflict.
The increase in military involvement with economic developments has not been matched by an increase in the success with which military leaders have resolved economic problems. The Argentine economy since 1948 has been characterized by slow growth, high inflation, and short stop-go cycles of expansion and contraction. Recessions have discredited military governments as impartially as civilian governments. As Kenworthy has pointed out, it is far easier to take power than it is to implement policy.21
The instability of the Argentine economy in recent years, reflecting the structural crisis with which it is beset, does not hold much promise for the disappearance of rebellions as a political phenomenon. The longest rebellion-free period in the years we have examined took place between 1905 and 1930. Precisely those years were characterized by a relatively steady pattern of economic growth and stability, together with the incorporation of dissenting social groups into the formal political process. The return to steady economic growth appears to be the sine qua non of Argentine electoral democracy.
Summary and Conclusion
Since 1870 armed rebellions in Argentina have been triggered by recessions. These recessions act as precipitating factors which lead certain social groups to attempt the overthrow of the existing government. The timing of such rebellions supports Davies’ hypothesis that rebellions occur in the first part of an economic downturn. The increasing frequency of rebellions appears to be linked to the increasing instability of the Argentine economy.
In addition, there exist long-term changes in the social characteristics of Argentine rebellions, which have changed from regional rebellions to party rebellions, and in the most recent years to military rebellions. These changes are related to the emergence of Buenos Aires as the economic center of Argentina, followed by the growth of the urban middle class and then of the industrial labor force. The development of a professional army, increasingly politicized and economically oriented, is a factor of importance.
Economic changes therefore appear to be related to Argentine rebellions in two ways. Over the long term, economic development leads to the growth of new social groups and to the relative weakening of older groups. In the short term, recessions contribute to the decisions of such groups to resort to the force of arms. Rebellions have been led both by new groups seeking power and by older groups trying to maintain their position. During prosperous years, both types of groups have usually accepted the existing government. Consensus tends to rupture during economic downturns, however, and contending groups resort to violence to defend themselves or advance their interests.
The rebellions of this time were all unsuccessful in the sense that no revolutionary group took over the government between 1870 and 1930. The rebellion of 1890 was a partial success inasmuch as it led directly to the resignation of President Juárez Celman; however, the government remained in the hands of the ruling party.
There are numerous treatments of these rebellions by Argentine historians. Among the most useful are those by Juan Alvarez, Las guerras civiles argentinas (Buenos Aires, 1936), and Jorge Abelardo Ramos, Revolución y contrarrevolución en la Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1961).
The criterion defining the existence of a rebellion was the use of weapons against federal troops (plots are not included). One rebellion in our list took place without the use of weapons; the October 17, 1945, occupation of downtown Buenos Aires by Peronist workers. This was considered to be a rebellion because it would have involved armed conflict had not the army hesitated at the prospect of mass bloodshed.
Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution (New York, 1856), p. 214.
The debate over the French Revolution has been summarized in Ralph W. Greenlaw (ed.), The Economic Origins of the French Revolution: Poverty or Prosperity? (Boston, 1958).
James C. Davies, “Towards a Theory of Revolution,” American Sociological Review, 27:1 (February 1962), 5-18.
Ibid., p. 5.
Import figures appear to be the best available measure of economic activity in the years before GDP estimates are available. There are three reasons : 1) For the period 1900-1930, when Gross Domestic Product and import-export figures are both available, the import figures show a far better year-by-year fit with GDP than do export figures. 2) Throughout most of the 1870-1900 period Argentina was a capital-importing nation which maintained a continuous large surplus of imports over exports. 3) The impact of changes in the quantum of imports had an immediate effect upon the level of living in Argentina (which then imported most manufactures), whereas fluctuations in exports had a delayed effect of a year or more.
Figures were put in per capita form to control for variations in population size, which fluctuated remarkably during the years of massive immigration.
This definition of “early” and “late” tends to overrepresent early years, given the instability of the Argentine economy, in which the average length of a half-cycle (a period of expansion or contraction) is only 3.4 years. However, some expansions or contractions were much larger; there were eight half-cycles lasting between 5 and 9 years.
This breakdown of Argentine economic history has been made by a number of scholars, including Carlos F. Díaz-Alejandro, Essays on the Argentine Economy (New Haven, 1971); Aldo Ferrer, La economía argentina (México, 1963); Leopoldo Portnoy, Análisis crítico de la economía (Buenos Aires, 1961); Arthur P. Whitaker, Argentina (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1964).
Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man (Garden City, N. Y., 1963), p. 31.
John Gunther’s discussion of Argentina in his Inside South America (New York, 1967) demonstrates a puzzlement typical of the many observers who are surprised that Argentine development has not led to stable parliamentary democracy.
Ramos, Revolución, p. 189.
The manifestations of October 17, 1945, did not involve the participation of specific army units, although individual army officers played an important part in bringing it about.
Evidence concerning the rise and fall of different social groups is discussed at length in Gilbert W. Merkx, “Political and Economic Change in Argentina from 1870-1966” (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1968).
The number of persons employed in the weaving trades in the interior dropped from 11% to 1% of Argentina’s employed population between the censuses of 1869 and 1914.
This was nicely articulated by General Varela, leader of the Catamarca rebellion of 1866-1870: “The monopoly of the public treasures and the absorption of provincial revenues has come to be the patrimony of the porteños, condemning the provincianos to give them even the bread reserved for their children. To be a porteño is to be exclusive, and to be a provinciano is to be a beggar.” Ramos, Revolución, p. 183.
Merkx, “Political and Economic Change,” p. 86.
Darío Cantón, “Notas sobre las Fuerzas Armadas Argentinas,” Revista latinoamericana de sociología, 1:3 (November 1965), 290-313.
Eldon Kenworthy, “Argentina: the Politics of Late Industrialization,” Foreign Affairs, 45:3 (April 1967), 463-476.
Author notes
The author is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of New Mexico.
