Peron: The Promise Unfulfilled

He had dominated Argentina's politics for three decades and was South America's most famous contemporary figure. His erratic career took him from obscurity to the peak of power, to exile and then to one of this century's most remarkable political comebacks. Through it all, Juan Domingo Peron remained his country's symbol of national unity. He was el Lider, the caudillo who held out the perennial promise that the feuding privileged and underprivileged of Argentina would one day coalesce and turn their richly endowed country into the leading nation of South America. When he died last week that promise remained unfulfilled.

Although nearly two-thirds of Argentine voters elected him to a third term as President last September, after 18 years in exile, he was unable to reconcile the smoldering class differences that have brought the nation of 24 million to new civil chaos. While retaining some of his old flair, Peron seemed to lack his old ruthlessness. He hesitated to take strong action against the terror ist leftist guerrillas, whose kidnapings of businessmen had frightened away foreign investors. He wisely imposed a tough "social pact," an agreement between employers and workers that amounted to a wage-price freeze, momentarily reducing inflation from 80% to 30% annually, but then gave in to demands for enormous wage hikes by journalists, the military and the police.

Peron will be best remembered for the successes--and excesses--of the nine years of his first two presidential terms, before a coup sent him into exile in 1955. A professional soldier and son of a moderately wealthy landowner, he rose to power as a champion of the exploited urban workers, the "shirtless ones" as he affectionately called them.

Flanked by his wife Evita, a former actress whose compassion for the poor earned her an immense following, Peron enthralled the masses with his speeches from the balcony at the Casa Rosada, Argentina's Government House. He followed up his pledges of social change with real reforms: the establishment of a social security system, construction of low-cost housing, wage hikes and the lengthening of workers' vacations, public health programs against tuberculosis, malaria and leprosy, and the encouragement of collective bargaining.

Evita, worshiped by the masses as the "little Madonna," bolstered Peron's popularity. She was head of the Eva Peron Foundation, a lightly audited charity that she used to pass $100 million annually to the poor. After she died of cancer in 1952 at age 33, Argentines petitioned the Vatican to canonize her. Although Rome refused, a secular cult has formed to revere her memory; it is still going strong.

Third Position. During his first two terms, Peron stripped the political power of the hated latifundistas, the landowning oligarchy that had dominated Argentine politics. He moved against unpopular foreign business interests by having the state buy the British-owned railways and ITT-owned telephone system. In foreign affairs he was the first postwar advocate of nonalignment, urging a "third position" as an alternative to joining the blocs led either by the U.S. or the Soviet Union. He conducted a vociferous anti-U.S. campaign, alleging that there was a "gigantic North American plot" to seize Cuban sugar, Bolivian tin, Chilean copper and Central American bananas. To the dismay of South America's upper classes, Peron encouraged the growth of labor unions all over the continent.

The rhetoric and even the idea of a "third position" probably reflected Peron's strong sympathy for Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, two governments that saw themselves as a "third way" between Communism and capitalism. After experiencing Mussolini's regime in the early 1940s--he observed Italian Alpine ski troops--Peron called il Duce "the greatest man of our century." He later turned Argentina into a haven for suspected war criminals.

Peron returned to Argentina in time to take part in the 1943 colonels' coup that overthrew the constitutional government of Ramon Castillo. Rewarded with the post of Secretary of Labor, he carefully cultivated a following among the working masses. Their support helped him survive another coup in 1945 and brought him the presidency in the election of 1946. He became an accomplished practitioner of crowd manipulation--staging mass demonstrations --and propaganda. To gain control of the courts and universities, he fired judges and teachers suspected of favoring the political opposition. He harassed and imprisoned his opponents and abolished press freedom. His dictatorial techniques, while less brutal and bloody, were reminiscent of his fascist heroes.

Peron alienated the pious masses in 1955 when he challenged the Roman Catholic Church. He ended religious instruction in the schools, permitted divorce and took steps to legalize bordellos. After 100,000 Catholics demonstrated against these measures in June 1955, the Peronistas retaliated by sacking and burning some of the most beautiful churches in Buenos Aires. The Vatican responded by excommunicating him, a banishment it did not lift until eight years later when he confessed that he had erred by acting against the church.

Finally Peron lost popular support by his erratic economic policies that depleted most of the country's foreign reserves, caused a drop in food production and sparked inflation. The military became increasingly distressed by his whimsical use of power and by economic malaise. In September 1955, all three branches of the armed services colluded to take control of the government.

Peron fled, first to Paraguay and then to other Latin American countries. He finally settled in Spain in 1960. There he lived in a $500,000 villa. Despite rumors that he had sacked Argentina's treasury, Peron's apologists insisted that his supporters bankrolled his regal lifestyle in exile.

Despite Peron's departure, Peronism proved to be an amazingly durable factor in Argentine politics--increasingly so as the years passed and his legend became romanticized. Peronism soon claimed the loyalty of about half the population, a spectrum that included neofascists, far-left urban guerrillas, and trade unionists. From exile, the ousted President stayed in touch with his loyalists in Argentina through lengthy letters, taped messages and personal emissaries. He remained the most important single factor in Argentine politics. A succession of five military and three civilian governments found themselves unable to govern effectively, partly because of the discontent--and promise--fomented by Peron.' With each failure the alternative was clear: Peron.

Even in old age he looked impressive, with his 6-ft. 200-lb. frame and his graying hair dyed black. When he returned home last year in response to his countrymen's desperate summons, his appearance triggered a paroxysm of jubilation. Hundreds of thousands turned out to cheer him, but more than 100 were killed as rightist and leftist Peronistas ended up fighting each other. The violence was symbolic of Peron's last reign: he was too old and too ill to solve Argentina's festering problems.

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