lecture 05 - peronism and literature for the class in ks argentina

Lecture 5

Peronism and Literature

Juan Domingo Perón

� Juan Domingo PerónOctober 8, 1895 – July 1, 1974

� Argentine military officer and politician.

� He was three times elected as President of Argentina although he managed to serve only one full term in this function.

Juan Domingo Perón

� In June 4, 1943, coup d'état

was led by General Arturo

Rawson against

conservative President

Ramón Castillo, who had

been fraudulently elected to

office and “ends” the

INFAMOUS DECADE.

Ramón Castillo (1873-1944)

Infamous Decade (1930~1943)

� This period of time started in 1930 with the coup d'état against President Hipólito Yrigoyen by José Félix Uriburu.

� A decade marked by a significant rural exodus, where many small rural landowners were ruined by the Great Depression, which in turn pushed the country towards import substitution industrialization.

Hipólito Yrigoyen (1852-1933)

Infamous Decade (1930~1943)

� This period was characterised by:

� electoral fraud,

� persecution of the political opposition (mainly

against the UCR)

� generalised government corruption, against the

background of the Great Depression.

Infamous Decade: Economics(The Roca-Runciman Treaty)

� It was during Justo's term that Argentina signed the Roca-Runciman Treaty with the United Kingdom

� It was assured that the UK will get a provision of fresh meat in exchange for important investments in the field of transportation in Argentina, and Argentina will give certain economic concessions, such as teh control over the public transport in Buenos Aires to a British company, theCorporación de Transportes.


� The treaty created a scandal:� The UK allotted Argentina a quota less than any of its dominions. 390,000 tons of meat per year were allotted to Argentina in exchange for many concessions to British companies.

� 85% of exportation had to be arranged through British refrigerated shippers.

� The tariffs of the railways operated by the UK were not regulated.

� They had not established customs fees over coal.

� They had given special dispensation to the British companies with investments in Argentina.

� They had reduced the prices of their exports.

� As many problems resulted from the declarations of the vice-president Roca, who affirmed after the signing of the treaty, "By its economic importance, Argentina resembles just a large British dominion."


� Being the elected democratic liberal senator of the Santa Fe province, Lisandro de la Torredenounced various scandals, directing an investigation on the meat trade starting in 1935.

� In the midst of the investigation, de la Torre's disciple, senator-elect Enzo Bordavere, was murdered by Ramón Valdez Cora on the Senate floor, and the province of Santa Fe was intervened.

Lisandro de La Torre (1868 -1939)

Infamous Decade: Economics(YPF)

� After the coup in september 6, 1930, the Senate should havesanctioned a proyect about the oil nationalization while thenegotiations about the bases of a russian offert to buy the gas that YPF could not provide to Argentina yet.

� Arturo Frondizi, said that having the provision of russian oil Argentina could pass the law to make his national and statemonopolic oil because there will be no reprisals and Argentina will not be under the imposed prices of the Standard Oil or Shell.

� After the coup, this was not a problem to deal with, and the statekept paying to Standard Oil and Shell big amounts of money forthe oil and the proyect was aborted.

Infamous Decade: Economics(“the British Colony”)

� Federico Pinedo, still Minister of Economy, presented on 18 November 1940 an "Economic Reactivation Plan", which was to implement some protectionist measures and building of social lodging in order to face the crisis. He also proposed the nationalization of the British railways, having agreed upon advantageous terms for their owners with them beforehand. However, the conservatives voted against his plan, which led him to resign.

Infamous Decade:the COUP of GOU� On June 4, 1943, the coup made by the G.O.U. (United Officers' Group, a secret society) ended the governmentof Ramón Castillo, who had beenfraudulently elected to office,

� The military was opposed to GovernorRobustiano Patrón Costas, Castillo'shand-picked successor, the principal landowner in Salta Province, as wellas a main stockholder in its sugarindustry.

The G.O.U.

� The GOU started to operate

somewhere in the beginning of the

1940 decade, after the time Juan

Domingo Perón returned from

Europe.

� The heads of state of Argentina

during this time period were

Arturo Rawson, Pedro Ramírez

and Edelmiro Farrell.

Perón as the Head of the Labor Department

� As a colonel, Perón took a significant part in the military coup by the GOU

� At first as an assistant to Secretary of War General Edelmiro Farrell, under the administration of General Pedro Ramírez. Later he became the head of the –for that period- insignificant Department of Labor.

� Perón's work in the Labor Department led to an alliance with the socialist and syndicalist movements in the Argentine labor unions. This caused his power and influence to increase in the military government.

Perón as president.� Perón and his running mate, Hortensio Quijano, leveraged popular support to victory in the February 24, 1946 presidential elections.

� When Perón became president on June 4, 1946, his two stated goals were social justice and economic independence.

� Perón instructed his economic advisors to develop a five-year plan with the goals of increasing workers' pay, achieving full employment, stimulating industrial growth of over 40% while diversifying the sector (then dominated by food processing), and greatly improving transportation, communication, energy and social infrastructure (in the private, as well as public, sectors).

Perón as president.

� Egalitatian social

classes.

� Nationalization of

several private

services companies.

� Health Care and

wages.

EVA DUARTE

� María Eva Duarte de Perón (7 May 1919 – 26 July 1952)

� Was the second wife of President Juan Perón (1895–1974) and served as the First Lady of Argentina from 1946 until her death in 1952. She is usually referred to as Eva Perón, or by the affectionate Spanish language diminutive Evita.

� She was born in the village of Los Toldos in rural Argentina in 1919, the youngest of five children.

� In 1934, at the age of 15, she went to the nation's capital of Buenos Aires, where she pursued a career as a stage, radio, and film actress.

Eva Peron’s Influence

� Eva Perón was instrumental as a symbol of hope to the common laborer during the first five-year plan.

� Coming from humble origins, she was loathed by the elite but adored by the poor for her work with the sick, elderly, and orphans.

� It was due to her behind-the-scenes work that women's suffrage was granted in 1947 and a feminist wing of the 3rd party in Argentina was formed.

� Simultaneous to Perón's five-year plans, Evita supported a women's movement that concentrated on the rights of women, the poor and invalids.

EVA PERÓN:The Eva Perón Fundation

� The Sociedad de Beneficencia (Society of

Beneficence), a charity group made up of 87

society ladies, was responsible for most charity

works in Buenos Aires prior to the election of

Juan Perón.

� In 1948 she established the Eva Perón

Foundation, which was perhaps the greatest

contribution to her husband's social policy.

EVA PERÓN:The Eva Perón Fundation

� Within a few years, the foundation had assets in cash

and goods in excess of three billion pesos

� It employed 14,000 workers

� It purchased and distributed annually:� 400,000 pairs of shoes

� 500,000 sewing machines

� 200,000 cooking pots.

� The foundation also gave scholarships, built homes,

hospitals, and other charitable institutions.

Eva Perón:The Femal Peronist Party

� Eva Perón has often been credited with gaining for Argentine women the right to vote. While Eva did make radio addresses in support of women's suffrage and also published articles in her Democracianewspaper asking male Peronists to support women's right to vote, ultimately the ability to grant to women the right to vote was beyond Eva's powers.

� Eva Perón then created the Female Peronist Party, which was the first large female political party in the nation. Navarro and Fraser write that by 1951 the party had 500,000 members and 3,600 headquarters across the country.

� the Female Peronist Party granted Juan Perón a large majority (sixty-three percent) of the vote in the 1951 presidential elections.

Eva’s Death

� Evita died by a cervical cancer at the age of 33, at 8:25 p.m., on 26 July 1952.

� The news was immediately broadcast throughout the country, and Argentina went into mourning.

� All activity in Argentina ceased; movies stopped playing; restaurants were closed and patrons were shown to the door.

� A radio broadcast interrupted the broadcasting schedule, with the announcer reading, "The Press Secretary's Office of the Presidency of the Nation fulfills its very sad duty to inform the people of the Republic that at 20:25 hours Mrs. Eva Perón, Spiritual Leader of the Nation, died.“

� Eva Perón was granted a state funeral and a full Roman Catholic requiem mass.

� On the 9th of August Saturday the body was then transferred to the Congress Building for an additional day to be publicly viewed.

The Memorial

� Shortly after Evita's death, Dr. Pedro Ara was approached to embalm the body. His highly advanced embalming technique preserved all organs including the brain and created a very lifelike appearance, giving the body the appearance of "artistically rendered sleep.“

� Dr. Ara claims that his embalming of Evita's corpse began on thenight of her death and that by the next morning "the body of EvaPerón was completely and infinitely incorruptible" and therefore suitable for display to the public.

Disappearance of Evita’s corpse.

� Shortly after her death, plans were made to construct a memorial in Evita's honor.

� While waiting for the monument to be constructed, Evita's embalmed body was displayed in her former office at the CGT building for almost two years.

� Before the monument to Evita was completed, Juan Perón was overthrown in a military coup, the Revolución Libertadora, in 1955. Perón hastily fled the country and did not make arrangements to secure Evita's body.

� A military dictatorship took power in Argentina. The new authorities removed Evita's body from display and its whereabouts remained amystery for 16 years. From 1955 until 1971.

� In 1971 the military revealed that the body was buried in a crypt in Milan, Italy, under the name "María Maggi."

Peronism and literature:The speech of the dichotomy

� During this period the speech becamea way to “split the waters”.

� With several names, the officialismrefers itself as the workers, thepatriots, the nationalists. In other hand, the oposition were named after animal names, references to imperialism, tomercenaries, etc.

� This violence on this speech, (usedalso in the totalitarian regimes in Europe), split the society, ideologically, in two sides:

� The peronism vs. the antiperonism


The idea in the speech

For Peronist:

*Labor workers

*Blue-Collars

*Proletarian

*Comrades

*Shirtless

*Argentine people

To Anti-Peronist:

*Imperialist

*Gorills

*Oligarch

*Sepoy

*Capitalist

*Traitors


� In the 10-year period of Perón's first two presidencies, 1946-1955, there was a deliberate assault on the aristocratic, liberal values which had guided Argentina since 1880.

� This period saw further mature work from the poets Enrique Molina (1910-), Olga Orozco (1922-) and Alberto Girri (1919-1991), whose austere, introspective verse was an antidote to the populist abuse of language in the public sphere. The literary field was to be further stimulated, after the downfall of Perón with the development of publishing houses and the 'boom' of Latin American literature of the 1960s.


� In 1946, President Juan Domingo Perón began

transforming Argentina into a Justicialist regime with the

assistance of his wife Evita.

� Almost immediately, the spoils system was the rule of the

day, as ideological critics of the new order were

dismissed from government jobs.

� During this period, Borges was informed that he was

being "promoted" from his position at the Miguel Cané

Library to a post as inspector of poultry and rabbits at the

Buenos Aires municipal market.

NEXT WEEK

� LECTURE:

Valenzuela, Strange things happen here

� SEMINAR:

Guillermo Martínez, Vast hell

Julio Cortazar, Second Time Round

Literature and the ’76 Argentine Coup:

lecture 05 - peronism and literature for the class in ks argentina

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