Despite the enormous significance of Buenos Aires Province in Argentine affairs, its political history has received little attention to date. This concise and careful study helps fill the gap, and, in the process, illuminates topics that have intrigued observers of that nations troubled political scene.
Richard Walter focuses on the province’s role in national politics, which he interprets as the interplay between provincial and federal administrations. Frequent conflicts broke out between the two, which the national government invariably won. He also implicitly demonstrates how Buenos Aires mirrored such larger political trends as electoral fraud, budget deficits, factionalism—both inter- and intraparty—and the rise of nationalism and of populist caudillos. Indeed, in terms of populism, Buenos Aires preceded the nation.
The author also examines the Conservative and Radical parties and their struggle for control of the province, which had national implications. Both parties lost opportunities to address the people’s needs and to widen their bases of support, as Ronald Dolkart also noted in Prologue to Perón. Bitter infighting plagued the two parties. By retaining its old leadership and confining its appeals to emotion and democratic principle (which, admittedly, found resonance in the Infamous Decade), the UCR failed to adapt itself to changing socioeconomic circumstances. In contrast, Conservatives like Rodolfo Moreno and Manuel Fresco exhibited a social consciousness, but they and their party were too wedded to political opportunism and elitism to create a strong right-wing populist movement. By 1943, the UCR and Conservatives were outmoded, and the author’s previous book gives a similar impression of the Socialist party, tied as it was to liberalism. No wonder, then, that many Argentines would flock to Juan Perón, a man unsullied by politiquería, yet one whose social views resembled Fresco’s. Walter’s treatment of the Conservative party and its legacy, a topic neglected by scholars, is an important contribution to Argentine historiography.
Another theme of this book is the fate of democracy in Argentina. The author sees the creation of party organizations and leadership, popular interest in free elections, and extensive campaigning of the years under study as hopeful signs. Nevertheless, the inability to compromise, intimidation of opponents, fragmentation, and partisan justification of authoritarianism found throughout the period (although to a lesser extent during UCR rule) seem to outweigh the positive aspects. Here, the author demonstrates underlying continuities between the “democratic” and “fraudulent” eras. The implications of this study and of Peter Smith’s work, Argentina and the Failure of Democracy, for the present are not optimistic. Whereas Smith attributes the situation to the exclusion of labor, Walter focuses on the shortcomings of the broader political culture.
This is an excellent local study, yet it is also much more than that. Solidly documented and well crafted, the book is a useful addition to the literature on Argentine parties and personalities, the roots of Peronism, and the future of its political system.
