This is certainly a book that all readers interested in contemporary Argentina should peruse. Two previous editions of the work have been published by its senior author, but the present one brings the picture of Argentine politics up to date. It puts particular emphasis on the “Proceso,” that is, the dictatorship that followed the overthrow of Isabel Perón in 1976, and the subsequent restoration of democratic government under President Raúl Alfonsín.
The book beings with a short introduction sketching the geographic, demographic, economic, social, and historical background of Argentine politics. In subsequent chapters the authors examine political parties, the armed forces, organized labor, the Catholic church, and students as the principal “political forces” in Argentina. Although they are referred to more or less tangentially, rural landowners (traditional rulers of the republic) and industrialists are not analyzed in any detail.
The authors present a rather sad picture of Argentina’s political parties, both in historical terms and in the nation’s contemporary political circumstances. Attention is concentrated on the Radical party (with its various splinters and permutations) and the Peronistas. The authors argue that the parties have failed in their role as institutions intended to conciliate economic and social interests in support of more or less consistent political programs. What’s more, the parties have been too prone to call on the military to overthrow the government in power.
The authors sketch the changing attitudes and factions in the twentieth-century Argentine military that have influenced its intervention in politics. It seems to this reviewer that the authors fail to stress sufficiently the basic element in those attitudes: the refusal since 1930 to accept subordination under civil administration. In all the coups against civilian governments except that of 1955, elections would have gotten rid of unpopular regimes in due time; but the military felt it had the right to oust the government in power whenever it decided to do so. Furthermore, the authors argue, close military support for economic development has been an important element in bringing the officers to intervene with force in national politics. If this is the case, however, it might be hard to explain how the total military regime of 1976-1983 carried out a wide deindustrialization program.
The chapter on organized labor sketches the many factions into which the labor movement has divided over the decades since it became predominantly Peronist (and a major factor in national politics) in the late 1940s. The authors suggest that schisms in the movement have weakened it, but that even more debilitating to its influence in recent years has been the undermining of the industrial sector of the economy, in which trade union influence was largely concentrated.
The authors’ discussion of the role of the Catholic church in Argentine politics brings home the relative conservatism of the church in Argentina, compared with some other Latin American countries. There are few examples of recent Argentine church leaders who have challenged the violation of human rights by tyrannical military regimes, as they have in Chile and Brazil. This section also raises a question regarding the authors’ assertion that Juan Perón was excommunicated by the Vatican because of his policies toward the church in the last years of his first period in power. Perón told this reviewer personally in 1960 that he had not been excommunicated, because he had never been named in any Vatican decree proclaiming him excluded from the liturgy of the church. Some credence to Perón’s claim can be found by noting that when he returned to the presidency in 1973, no question was raised about his eligibility, although the Argentine Constitution provides that the president must be a Roman Catholic.
Furthermore, although the authors sketch Perón’s quarrel with the church in the 1953-1955 period, they do not offer any real explanation for why this conflict developed. Perón explained to me that it was provoked by the church, which was seeking to infiltrate the labor movement and was forming a Christian Democratic party. Such an explanation is dubious, but the question remains why a regime that had started out with the church s blessings became virtually anathema to the church a few years later.
The authors are moderately optimistic about the future of Argentine politics. They emphasize that in 1989 the presidency, for the first time in half a century, passed from one elected civilian president to another. This reflects, they argue, a basic change in public attitudes and a belief that both the Alfonsín and Menem regimes “have been legitimate governments entitled to remain in office until the end of their term.”
