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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
Interpretations of Juan Domingo Perón and his movement have been and will continue to be a recurring and highly controversial theme in Argentine history. Studies of the nature of Peronism indicate that there is a wide diversity of viewpoints regarding its origin, its structure, its grassroots appeal and its mode of recruiting. Peronism has been analyzed within the framework of Argentine national developments, and it has been compared with foreign models—Fascism, Bonapartism, Nasserism—with which it shares some important characteristics. An analysis of Peronism and the reality of Argentina under Perón from a comparative viewpoint, is useful. But the search for the causes that brought Perón and Peronism to power in 1946 and shaped them until 1955, should be focused primarily on Argentina's own historical experience. Eldon Kenworthy has aptly questioned the approach followed by some American scholars in explaining Peronism, because in general, Kenworthy notes, they “have tended to interpret Peronism in terms of global trends salient to the United States rather than as a stage in Argentina's historical evolution.”
1 Kenworthy, Eldon, “The Function of the Little-Known Case in Theory Formation or What Peronism Wasn’t,” Comparative Politics (October, 1973), 17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Fayt, Carlos S., La naturaleza del peronismo (Buenos Aires, 1967).Google Scholar
2 Its economic lifeline is the wine industry. Together with the provinces of Mendoza and San Luis, it constitutes the region called Cuyo.
3 Napoleón Rosellot, the traditional Radical leader of San Juan, was so closely related to the provincial elite that he was from 1910 to 1914 the President of the Social Club, an institution harboring exclusively the well-to-do.
4 His father was a mining engineer sent to San Juan as a representative for a mining concern.
5 Clothing was an indicator of hierarchy for all the groups. Social status and party identification were adscribed to an individual according to the way that person dressed. The alpargata was perhaps the best exponent of a definite political affiliation, being an unmistakeable sign of lower class. The upper sectors associated the alpargata with the “rabble” who constituted the vertebral column of Cantonismo.
6 According to the Argentine constitution, the national authorities have the right to intervene in the provinces if an “anomaly” takes place, seriously impairing the stability of their established governments. Article 6 of the constitution states that “The Federal Government may intervene in the territory of a province in order to guarantee the republican form of government or to repeal foreign invasions, and at the request of its constituted authorities, to support or reestablish them, should they have been deposed by sedition or invasion from another province.” The difficulty of establishing limits to the use of the íntervention power lay basically in the ambiguity of the Argentine constitution itself. Under the assumption that the republican system of government was seriously threatened or annulled, the national government needed only to appeal to Article 6 of the constitution to become the arbiter of any provincial conflict.
7 La Prensa (Buenos Aires), February 19, 1920.
8 The historian Héctor D. Arias has stated that Jones created a sui generis Radicalism, which can not be properly called “Yrigoyenismo,” but “Jonismo.” de Varese, Carmen P. and Arias, Héctor D., Historia de San Juan (San Juan, 1966), p. 434.Google Scholar
9 Nacional, Congreso, de Diputados, Cámara, Diario de Sesiones (hereafter referred as Diputados), 1920, 6, 131–183 (January 27, 1921).Google Scholar The report of a congressional investigating committee is on pp. 441–537 (February 25, 1921).
10 Los Andes, June 12, 1921.
11 The UCR was split between Yrigoyenistas, later called “personalistas"—who viewed Yrigoyen as the indisputable leader of the party—and the anti-Yrigoyenistas, or “anti-persona-listas.” This sector was more conservative-inclined. It criticized the personalist style with which Yrigoyen managed the national and party affairs.
12 Bates, Sergio W., Muerte de Jones (La tragedia sanjuanina) (Buenos Aires, 1922), p. 52.Google Scholar
13 Crítica (Buenos Aires), January 9, 1923. Federico Cantoni was a provincial Senator.
14 The town of Rinconada is located twelve miles south of the city of San Juan, the capital of the province. Jones was not the first provincial prominent figure to die because of violence. San Juan had a long and bloody history of political passion. In 1858 former Governor Nazario Benavídez was killed while he was in jail; two years later Governor José Antonio Virasoro died leading an armed movement; in 1861 former Governor Antonino Aberastain was shot after being defeated by the federal forces at the battle of Rinconada, the same place where Jones fell; in 1872 Governor Valentín Videla was assassinated, and in 1884 National Senator Agustín Gómez suffered the same fate.
15 None of the accused were professional troublemakers. One of the arrested, Vicente Miranda Jameson, who was accused by the Jonistas of having mutilated the governor’s right ear, had his left ear cut off in retaliation.
16 Aldo was 29 years old. Politically, he was a member of the International Socialist Party. He took part in the Comité de Agitación Córdoba Libre, in favor of the university reform.
17 La Prensa, December 2, 1921. A special correspondent of Los Andes, November 29, 1921, noted that in San Juan there were countless followers of Cantoni who would offer their lives to defend him.
18 La Prensa, October 22, 1922.
19 Cantoni had been regarded as a candidate for a long time. In fact, even in the general election held in April 1922, when he was in jail, there were posters bearing his face throughout San Juan stating: “The eyes of the martyr contemplate you. Vote for the UCR Bloquista.” La Epoca (Buenos Aires), March 22, 1922.
20 La Epoca, January 6, 1923.
21 Crítica, January 3, 1923.
22 Ibid. January 6, 1923.
23 Ibid., January 7, 1923. In Argentina the term chinada refers to the lower class natives of non-urban areas.
24 La Epoca, January 6, 1923; La Prensa, January 9, 1923.
25 Diario Nuevo (San Juan), January 13, 1923. This newspaper was the leading conservative publication in the province. A comité is the gathering place of a political party at the ward level.
26 Diario Nuevo, January 14, 1923.
27 One showed him, with an inquisitorial look, stating: “The eyes of the martyr of democracy are looking at you from jail.” Another poster displayed Cantoni behind bars with this epigraph: “The people who love Federico Cantoni won’t allow him to remain in jail and will place him in the government house.” Crítica, Januray 9, 1923.
28 The UCR Bloquista received 12,042 votes against 8,119 for the Concentración Cívica. La Prensa, January 18, 1923.
29 La Prensa, January 27, 1923. At the end of January the legislature elected Aldo Cantoni National Senator.
30 La Epoca, March 14, 1923. A few days earlier Federico Cantoni expressed the same views to his supporters, thanking them for believing that the Rinconada was “something other than a repulsive crime.” La Prensa, March 8, 1923.
31 Precisely, his adherence to the program of the party served him to compare the UCR Bloquista with national Radicalism: “Our Radicalism is not like any other Radicalism in the nation, which does not have any program or a specific political goal. Neither is our party the leftist movement which provoked so many comments from easily frightened individuals. To ask that the workers of the wine industry in San Juan earn a salary of 3 pesos per day instead of 1.50 is not a demonstration of a Bolshevik tendency, much less when it is considered that an hectare [two acres and a half] of vineyard yields from 3,000 to 4,000 pesos.” La Nación, March 19, 1923.
32 In Argentina a person from Italy or of Italian descent is called a “gringo.”
33 According to the 1912 provincial census, there was in San Juan 43.2 per cent illiteracy, ranging from 32.5 in the capital to 75.7 per cent in the remote department of Iglesia, in the northwest corner of the province. Provincia de San Juan, Segundo censo general de la provincia de San Juan (Buenos Aires, 1910–1912), p. 11. A department is a political division similar to the county in the United States.
34 Personal interview with José P. Barreiro, who was Undersecretary of Government during the governorship of Federico Cantoni and Secretary of Government during the governorship of Aldo Cantoni (1926–1928). Those who collaborated with Cantoni, of course, accepted him as he was. However, one of his more severe critics asserted that Cantoni deliberately liked to resemble the rabble he protected, or perhaps his slovenliness was merely a result of what he considered his low-quality Italian style upbringing. Personal interview with the Sanjuanino historian Osvaldo Maurín Navarro.
35 Personal interview with José P. Barreiro.
36 La Nación, February 11, 1924.
37 Riviello, José Palermo, Filípicas argentinas (Buenos Aires, 1939), p. 524.Google Scholar This comment marks an early use of the term “descamisados” applied to the followers of Juan Domingo Perón in 1945.
38 La Prensa, February 12, 1924.
39 Ibid.
40 “Se diviniza la alpargata,” disdainfully stated a prominent Mendozan conservative. In fact, he summed up in these four words the whole dimension of the social change brought by the Bloquistas. Los Andes, September 16, 1923 (Article by Lucio Funes, “El drama de la Rinconada.”)
41 La Reforma, August 27, 1924.
42 The Tedeum is a religious service, traditionally performed nationwide in Argentina to commemorate important patriotic anniversaries. It provides some pomp for the authorities, but it never had any real meaning for the people at large.
43 Debates (San Juan), May 26, 1924, reported that the Tedeum was attended by the most “selected and distinguished” people of San Juan, “as in the good old times,” openly rebuffing the “absurd pretension of the governor of eliminating a traditional act.” That was the occasion, it added, to see with full splendor again “el elegante traje de gala, el guante blanco y el zapato de charol, prendas que mira con horror el oficialismo, que en un acto de ridículo concepto personal ha trocado por el chambergo polvoriento, el chiripá y la alpargata.”
44 La Reforma, July 4, 1924.
45 Provincia de San Juan, Presupuesto general para 1924 (San Juan, 1923), n.p.
46 The significance of these measures is illustrated by the fact that the trip from the capital to Jáchal, 100 miles to the north, demanded eight hours by car. La Prensa, March 2, 1925. There was no railway line connecting these two cities. Likewise, to the distant Valle Fértil department, the mail was delivered by mule, once a week. La Reforma, February 4, 1926.
47 Provincia de San Juan, Mensaje del Excmo. Sr. Gobernador Dr. Federico Cantoni (San Juan, 1925), p. 25.
48 La Prensa, May 23, 1924.
49 Another source of conflict was created by the so-called letras de tesorería, small-value notes resembling provincial bonds, which were circulating in San Juan. They were widely used for everyday transactions, replacing in fact the national currency, which was the only legal tender. This serious anomaly ended early in 1925 when the government finally withdrew all letras from circulation.
50 La Nación, February 29, 1924.
51 The President of the League was Juan Maurín, one of the more influential landowners and bodegueros, and a prominent member of the conservative Liberal Party. Other members in the executive committee were leaders from the anti-Cantonista political parties.
52 Perhaps there is no better example of abusive legislative behavior than the way in which the 1924 budget was approved by the provincial Senate. In order to overcome the opposition of some members, the Cantonistas met on a Sunday at 8:00 in the morning, without notifying those Senators they knew were questioning the enormous size of the budget. But as more Senators were needed to obtain quorum, two from the opposition were brought to the Senate by the police. Then the budget was approved “a libro cerrado,” that is, without any discussion in the Senate. La Prensa, February 25, 1924.
53 The anti-Cantonista Debates, December 21, 1923, warned its colleagues:
54 La Prensa, May 5, 1925; La Nación, September 27, 1924.
55 La Reforma, September 22, 1924. Meanwhile, the biting attacks on Cantoni in La Epoca continued undiminished. Their fierceness was exemplified by the terms it constantly used when referring to him and his movement: “desborde de barbarie,” “iracundia salvaje,” “personaje de toldería,” “sátrapa,” “gobierno bárbaro y barbarizante,” “comunismo semigaucho,” “oficialismo mazorquero.” July 3, 1923; January 11, 1924; January 21, 1924; April 1, 1924; August 20, 1924, and March 26, 1925.
56 Liga de Defensa de la Propiedad, la Industria y el Comercio de San Juan, Memorial presentado al Poder Ejecutivo de la Nación, January 19, 1924.
57 La Epoca, June 28, 1924.
58 La Reforma, July 5, 1924.
59 Diputados, 1924, VII, 82–114. The quote is on p. 83.
60 Ibid., 1925, II, 67–100; 169–198; 212–228, and 289–336.
61 In the social field the major accomplishment was the enactment of the Old Age Pension Act, granting benefits to persons 60 years old and older.
62 La Reforma, January 26, 1927.
63 The bylaws of the doctors’ mutual association stated that they would not accept employment at any hospital unless they were paid $200 per month, and that they would not assist patients in consultation with other physicians without a payment of 50 pesos and previous approval of the deal by the association.
64 The Sanjuanino doctors appealed to the courts to void such a high tax. A year later, the National Supreme Court ruled on this thorny and highly emotional issue, asserting that this license tax was unconstitutional because it had been levied with the purpose of penalizing a special class of persons. Rizzotti v. San Juan (1928). Amadeo, Santos Primo, Argentine Constitutional Law (New York, 1943), pp. 211–212.Google Scholar
65 The Saenz Peña Electoral Law of 1912 assigned two thirds of the seats of every district to the party polling the majority of the votes, and one third to the party in second place.
66 Provincia de San Juan, Diario de sesiones de la Honorable Convención Reformadora de la Constitución (San Juan, 1927).
67 La Vanguardia (Buenos Aires), February 8, 1927. This daily publication was the official spokesman of the Socialist Party.
68 In his 1927 annual message to the legislature, Governor Aldo Cantoni proudly pointed out that those scholars who had until then looked at the social legislation of Uruguay as the most advanced or at the Mexican constitution as a model, now had in the constitution of San Juan a testimony of progressive, modern constitutional law. Mensaje del Gobernador de la Provincia, Dr. Aldo Cantoni, May 12, 1927 (San Juan, 1927), p. 11.
69
This antecedent is not mentioned by
Hollander, Nancy Caro in “Women: The Forgotten Half of Argentine History,” in Pescatello, Ann, ed., Female and Male in Latin America (Pittsburgh, 1973), pp. 141–158.Google Scholar The Bloquistas were as successful with the feminine side of the electorate as they had been with males. The returns of the April 8, 1928, provincial election were as follows: 
Provincia de San Juan, Junta Electoral de la Provincia, Libro de Actas No. 6, pp. 233–258.
The Bloquistas also led the way in promoting female participation in the activities of the party, to the extent of setting up special women’s organizations. With women voting, citizen participation in the electoral process in San Juan improved significantly to 36.6 per cent of the total population. In comparison, the figures for national elections, with only men voting, were:
Source: Ministerio del Interior, Memoria del Ministerio del Interior, 1927–1928 (Buenos Aires, 1928), p. 73.
70 The Argentine Socialist leader Alicia Moreau de Justo, a veteran crusader for women rights, observed that the Sanjuanino electoral experience proved that women behaved politically as men did. For although women participation as voters by itself could not improve long established political habits, it was not the calamity that many critics had feared. La mujer en la democracia (Buenos Aires, 1945), p. 221, and “Participación de la mujer en la política nacional,” Revista de la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, X, 2da. serie (March-June, 1969), 288.
71 Congreso Nacional, de Senadores, Cámara, Diario de sesiones (hereafter referred as Senadores), 1927, 1, 506.Google Scholar
72 Ibid., 448–491 (Aug. 18); 498–507 (Aug. 20); 508–548 (Aug. 22); 549–593 (Aug. 23); and 594–648 (Aug. 24).
73 La Reforma, March 14, 1928. But his strong anti-Yrigoyen statements and the uncontrolled partisan fervor led to street violence, and one night Cantoni saved his skin only by accident after his car was fired upon several times.
74 The congressional debates are in Diputados, 1928, II, 264–334; 384–448; III, 24–36, and 804. Senadores, 1928, I, 583–649. Yrigoyen appointed Modestino Pizarro, a former Radical member of the Buenos Aires province legislature.
75 In February 1929, while Aldo Cantoni was brought from the jail to the court house, there was an attempt against his life, but it failed. A year later, the assassination of Manuel Ignacio Castellanos, a lawyer for the Bloquista leaders in jail, including Aldo Cantoni, strained even more the antagonistic relationship between the intervention and its opponents.
76 La Prensa, February 6, 1929.
77 Ramón Columba, a direct observer of such barren political performance as Chief Stenographer, left his impressions in El congreso que yo he visto (1914–33) (Buenos Aires, 1949).
78 La Razón (Buenos Aires), July 23, 1929, referred to his unorthodox speech as a “cult of vulgarity.” Crítica, July 27, 1929, however, argued that there was nothing strange in Cantoni’s language, because this was the way he always talked with the workers and farmers. The real anomaly, it added, would have been if he had made academic speeches. The impact of the role played by this newspaper can be measured by its large circulation. On June 29, 1929, it issued a record 529,669 copies. Moreover, Crítica published in full Cantoni’s speeches in the Senate.
Interest in the meetings was so great that the Chamber of Deputies could not meet on several occasions for lack of a quorum because so many members had gone to the Senate to follow the debates. Cantoni was reprimanded on several instances for using such unparliamentary words as “el viejo Yrigoyen” in referring to the President of Argentina, or calling the Personalist wing of the Radical Party the “Partido Peludista,” and for alluding to the famous presidential “amansadora,” the waiting room at the government house, as “juntando orines. ”
79 A sepulchral silence was observed while the Senators voiced their crucial vote. When it ended, the people jamming the gallery exploded with wild enthusiasm. Later that night, the Yrigoyenista followers improvised a parade through the popular Avenida de Mayo in celebration of the Senate decision. La Prensa, August 3, 1929. The debates for Cantoni’s credentials are in: Senadores, 1929, I, 59–63 (June 25); 107–110 (July 4); 117–127 (July 11); 129–191 (July 16); 192–220 (July 18); 287–309 (July 20); 315–342 (July 23); 345–388 (July 25); 423–461 (July 27); 466–496 (July 30); 497–548 (July 31); 549–616 (Aug. 1), and 617–692 (Aug. 2).
80 Pizarro, Modestino, La verdad sobre la intervención en San Juan (23 de diciembre de 1928—6 de setiembre de 1930) (Buenos Aires, 1930), pp. 61–62.Google Scholar
81 La Prensa, November 4, 1929.
82 del Carril Quiroga, Pablo Alberto, Antecedentes electorales nacionales. Distrito San Juan, 1927–1943 (Córdoba, 1948),Google Scholar n. p. La Prensa, March 9, 1930, asked if there were only 2,885 Bloquistas in San Juan, why so much blood and persecution? The 1928 election returns were: UCR Bloquista 19,594; Socialist Party 6,001. Carril Quiroga, Antecedentes electorales, n.p.
83 After the 1930 coup, Bloquismo did not return to be a part of the UCR. It re-emerged in 1932 as the foremost political force in San Juan after Federico Cantoni was overwhelmingly elected Governor for the second time in the November 1931 elections. But if in some respects this movement represented in 1932 a continuation of the popular force it was in the 1920’s, it was besieged again by the fury of its local adversaries. National politics had changed significantly also. Argentina’s president was now conservative General Agustín P. Justo, not Yrigoyen; hence, Bloquismo more than ever, found its influence confined to the provincial sphere. In fact, from an ideological standpoint, Cantonismo became an anomaly in a country where the conservatives were rigorously imposing their will. Such was the weakness besetting the third Bloquista government, that in February 1934 it was violently ousted from power in a fashion resembling nineteenth century caudillismo, by the same elements which fought against it in the 1920’s. When Federico Cantoni died in July 1956, he was no longer regarded as a “dangerous Communist,” for age and moderation had softened his early implacable political zeal. Bloquismo is still a strong provincial party, but today it represents a political entity with a somewhat different orientation from its original one.
84 Hayes, Ricardo Sáenz, Ramón J. Cárcano. En las letras, el gobierno y la diplomacia, 1860–1946 (Buenos Aires, 1960), p. 355.Google Scholar
85 President Perón, Juan Domingo to the President of the “Liberation Front May 12,” Aldo, H. Cantoni, Buenos Aires, May 9, 1974 Google Scholar. This letter was sent in adhesion to the 51st anniversary of the beginning of the first Bloquista government in San Juan.
86 Personal interview with Américo Ghioldi. Buenos Aires.
87 The ideological association between Yrigoyenista Radicalism and Peronism has been stated by several authors. For example, two Argentine sociologists stated that the distinctive feature of Peronism was not having absorbed “disposable masses,” migrating from the rural interior to the urban centers, but having merely organized them, because the masses had already expressed their longings for reform and social justice. Thus, Peronism would represent “a continuation and expansion of the characteristics already detected in Radicalism.” Cantón, Darío and Moreno, José Luis, “Bases sociales del voto radical en la Argentina de 1928–30,” Revista Latinoamericana de Sociología, 6 (September and December, 1970), 464.Google Scholar Luna, Félix extends the continuity of the popular pattern to the nineteenth century, asserting that the movements of the last fifty years, “Radicals, Yrigoyenistas or Peronists,” have “the same profile” as those of the equestrian caudillos. Los caudillos (Buenos Aires, 1971), p. 34.Google Scholar
