ARGENTINA Putting the "Perón" Back In
Fox, Geoffrey
On the way to Buenos Aires from the airport at Ezeiza, two weeks before the May 14 elections, I asked the taxi driver to point out the site of the massacre. He smiled and waved vaguely behind...
...More surprising is Menem's turn toward the most notorious of the "liberals...
...Leopoldo Galtieri, who ordered forces into the Malvinas, Gen...
...Exjunta leaders Gen...
...Albano Hargindeguy, who had Menem illegally detained in 1976, and rebel Cols...
...One union boss observed to me about the Renewal faction that some Peronists were too cerebral, too disciplined, with their programs and their rules of procedure...
...Per6n's greatest accomplishments at that time, he thinks, were bringing the proletariat into politics and developing the country's infrastructure, but the doctrine needs "updating...
...However, unlike its U.S...
...And nobody, not even the military, wants another war...
...After hearing Menem at the Argentine consulate in New York in September, another ex-Montonero friend summed it up: "We are used to an Argentina that is prosperous but sad...
...This was too much even for Peronist loyalists...
...That's it...
...Jorge Videla and Adm...
...Menem's objective seems to be to get all sectors working together...
...Nor did he have any apparent connection to the Montoneros...
...But when Menem won Peronism's fairest and broadest internal elections ever, Cafiero and his supporters put on a good face and campaigned, with apparent vigor, for the party's choice...
...We are not liberals," Del Valle continued...
...As many as three hundred people were shot, stabbed or clubbed to death by the men on the platform...
...At about 2:30 p.m., one large contingent approached the speaker's platform from the south along highway 205...
...The main reason for the loss, Menem and others concluded, was that voters were disgusted by the party's undemocratic practices and violent image...
...The combined Montoneros/FAR had 10,000 members in 1973, he estimated, half of them combatants...
...I don't think you can give any more precise definition than that...
...Peronism's heterogeneous, but generally working-class and lower middle-class composition, and its mix of conservative nationalist and economic reformist ideas make it roughly analogous to the Democratic Party of the United States...
...As many as four million people had massed on the highway and fields around the airport, in the largest demonstration the country had ever seen...
...Happy, maybe...
...umns of Montoneros, self-styled "soldiers of Per6n," snaked through the crowd with immense banners and booming bass drums...
...But armed revolution no longer seems an attractive or possible option in Argentina...
...Directly opposed to them are the anticommunist nationalists, including some groups that are armed and dangerous...
...their party had never before lost a free election, and they could scarcely believe it was happening as they watched the returns...
...Most of the released officers are has-beens who no longer pose a threat...
...Peronism was the normal thing, of ordinary people...
...The Peronists had seized the colors of the national flag as their own, and everywhere there were headbands, plastic vests, flags, stickers and banners in sky-blue and white...
...Rico and Seineldin, but the indultos deprived them of their best issue for rousing rebellious troops...
...That's one version of happiness, and it's not really a departure from Per6n's own posture...
...members of the Peronist Youth joined demonstrations against the indultos in October...
...The reason, as bumperstickers and graffiti had proclaimed for months, was "Per6n vuelve"--Per6n returns...
...Liberals" uphold individual over community rights and advocate free-market policies instead of protecting local producers...
...Renewal" dominates the party apparatus in both the city and the province of Buenos Aires, where about half the population lives...
...since they have been the ones running the party, they have little enthusiasm for reform...
...Poor, definitely, for the foreseeable future...
...Rapanelli, it turns out, is wanted in Venezuela for his part in a massive currency exchange fraud...
...Groups of young men would push to start a wave, and we would see all those black heads moving one way, then the other...
...The Normal Thing A few days after the election-in which Menem took over 47% of the popular vote in a nine-way race-I was at an asado, the famous Argentine barbecue, for the president-elect along with the country's most powerful labor leaders and hundreds of journalists...
...making human waves, "balanceo," is a Peronist tradition...
...At least one provincial governor is said to be a former Montonero...
...The shooting stopped as fluttering wings filled the sky, but in a minute they were gone and the firing resumed...
...Most ex-Montoneros seem to have resigned themselves to operating on the fringes of the Renewal group or in labor or community organizations...
...Nora del Valle, a history professor, bristled when I mentioned populism...
...Of those 10,000 one-time members, many survive and are still active within Peronism-although not all admit to their Montonero past...
...Against orders, many i ne conmeceracion uenerai oei i ranajo: Will Peronist labor back Menem s privatization of state companies...
...Isabel's government, generally conceded to have been a disaster of economic mismanagement and social chaos, was abruptly terminated by the military coup of 1976...
...The campaign was very bitter, insults and threats were traded liberally...
...He smiled and waved vaguely behind us at bridge 12, where the Riccheri expressway passes over highway 205...
...Although they were heavily influenced by Che Guevara-an Argentine, but no Peronist-they particularly admired Evita, whom they posthumously recruited and put on their posters, portrayed as "Evita Montonera...
...Per6n, meanwhile, landed at another airport...
...Not all nationalists are Peronists, but all Peronists are, or claim to be, nationalists...
...Rico and Seineldin are among the most notorious set free...
...For Alberto Delgado, a tall man in a nylon campera who strolled over to say hello and share some mate, "Radicals were all from the better-off class, people who intellectualized politics, and who spoke about workers but never understood them...
...Emilio Massera, on the one side, and ex-Monotonero chief Mario Firmenich, on the other, remain in prison, Firmenich for directing the Born kidnapping...
...Beyond its own capacity for violence, it extends its influence by exploiting nationalist themes dear to most Peronists, even to most Argentines, such as the recovery of the Malvinas Islands, whose continuing control by Britain is deeply humiliating...
...They kept him in prison for five years, so he cannot be accused of complicity with the dictatorship (as can many old Peronists...
...A tall, urbane middleclass man, schooled by Jesuits, Toma says he became a Peronist to help complete the "peaceful revolution" begun in 1946-1955...
...Less ideological, but not always adverse to a little violence to get their points across, are the conservative chiefs of the larger trade unions (metalworkers, plastics, meatpackers) and their allies...
...The move that cost Menem the most support was his pardoning-indulto, by presidential decree--of most of the military officers convicted or pending trial for illegal acts from the dirty war to last.year's rebellions...
...Juan Domingo Per6n, president from 1946 until his overthrow by the army in 1955, was coming home...
...Menem, though, is impossible to place in any classical ideology...
...And it could hardly be considered a reward to put Maria Julia Alsogaray at the head of acompany that is about to be privatized, and where the workers are organized in a strong Peronist union...
...Shortly after Ezeiza, the 78-yearold Per6n was elected president for the third time...
...The day before our meeting, which was shortly before the election, Toma handed out fake dollars printed on toilet paper along Buenos Aires' ritzy Florida street as a protest against the economic crisis...
...Nevertheless, their existence continued to be the excuse for the "dirty war''--six years (1976-1982) of military terror that took at least 9,000 lives...
...We are a national and popular movement...
...Regarding the Malvinas, Menem unilaterally lifted trade sanctions against Britain and expressed his readiness to negotiate...
...Our actions are always group actions...
...Within weeks of the election, the first explosions came, with riots and raids on food stores as prices rose out of sight...
...The Comando member I spoke to was an attractive and intelligent brownskinned woman of about 40, originally from the interior...
...The overwhelming electoral defeat of 1983 shook the Peronists from their complacency...
...The FAR later merged with the Montoneros, which had been formed by Catholic nationalists sympathetic to Per6n...
...In Argentina, Peronism is the normal thing...
...The person in the street, who understands his fellows, who drinks mate...
...To abandon Peronism would be to abandon "the people," which no revolutionary can afford to do...
...He died the next year, leaving power to his vice president and widow, a former flamenco dancer known by her stage name, Isabel...
...The question now is what will become of the conflicts...
...A drastic devaluation, wage freezes and an ineffec6tive price rollback have reduced people's purchasing power nearly to zero...
...They call us 'populist' rather than 'popular.' It's a pejorative term for them-and for the liberal Right as well...
...Vamos, vamos argentinos," Menem's campaign song, blared out of huge speakers, alternating occasionally with the Peronist anthem with its famous phrase, "Per6n, Perdn, iquy grande sos...
...She did reveal, however, that Peronism is "beautiful, so beautiful," and that its truths could be apprehended by a profound reading of Per6n...
...My ex-Montonero friend, who still considers himself a Marxist and a Peronist, is worried...
...Despite their conflicts with Per6n in his last government and persecution by his widow, Isabel, they believe Peronism is a "national liberation" movement with revolutionary potential...
...Liberal" here is not the opposite of "conservative," but of "nationalist...
...In fact, by his quirkiness, his spontaneous gestures and his ready rapport with almost everybody, in his own way Menem is putting the Per6n back into Peronism...
...The Comando de Organizaci6n used to harass Menem during his first term as governor of La Rioja, 1973-1976, accusing him of something like cryptocommunism...
...As my journalist colleagues and I tried to push forward through the crowd, later estimated at half a million, the crowd would push back...
...Per6n, Per6n, how great thou art...
...she 5 VOLUME XXIIINO M I . k -- I- -u -)needed authorization from its leader, Alberto Brito Lima, she said, to talk about such things...
...Although Peronists at first looked at Menem's policies in disbelief, loyalty has so far triumphed over logic, as often happens in this movement...
...ColGeoffrey Fox is the author of Welcome to My Contri, a collection ofshort stories, and of the forthcoming The Land and People of Argentina (Harper & Row...
...But everybody acknowledges that the economy was in extremis, and extreme measures were needed...
...He remained loyal to the Right's darling, Isabel, long after her downfall and during her long silence in Spain...
...Whole families had come to greet him, some from distant provinces, with their picnic satchels, yerba mate, armbands, banners and noisemakers...
...To govern, Menem must make choices that are bound to alienate some of Peronism's diverse constituencies...
...In Buenos Aires I spoke with a former member of the Montoneros' "naA bust of Per6n in Barrio Rivadavia tional leadership," its governing organ, who preferred to remain anonymous...
...In the past, when there has been a political impasse, Argentine politicians have allowed--or even invited-the armed forces to take control...
...Besides, Menem was visibly nervous-a rustic lawyer who had risen to the governorship of his remote, rural province, he seemed as out of place at the Casa Rosada as Jimmy Carter did in front of the White House in 1976...
...Ironically, the Montoneros financed their military and political campaign with the ransom from kidnapping Jorge Born in 1974...
...But no matter: Menem continues to back his choice...
...The Marxists call us populists, because they don't consider us really 'popular.' What they say is that the people are with Peronism, but that Peronism needs a revolutionary doctrine-Marxism-to achieve what Peronism can't achieve alone...
...The real power was L6pez Rega, called el brujo (the warlock), a serious practitioner of black magic and numerology, and founder of the terrorist Argentine Anticommunist Alliance...
...For her, Isabel was without question still the "chief" of all true Peronists-after all, she bears the magic surname...
...Peronism is what is normal...
...His peculiar accent -in La Rioja, they don't trill their R's, so the name of his province sounds almost like La Yioha--came out hugely amplified, feeding the enthusiasm of the crowd...
...now we shall have an Argentina that is poor but happy...
...The military saw his popular appeal as potentially dangerous, and arrested him shortly after the 1976 coup...
...One Renewer is Miguel Angel Toma, 40, a newly-elected congressman from the capital, who sounds like a social democrat...
...For Oscar Fueyo, a lawyer in charge of the storefront party office in a middleREPORT ON THE AMERICAS "0 E 0 w '2 class neighborhood of La Plata, Peronism is first of all an emotional attachment to justice and a sense of community...
...The indultos also included most of the Montoneros-Femando Vaca Narvaja, once the second-incommand, returned from exile on Columbus Day to ajubilant crowd singing "Per6n, Per6n, iquo grande sos...
...That's what happened at Ezeiza: the caucus of the bullet...
...the possible exceptions are Cols...
...counterpart, Peronism until recently had no internal democratic mechanisms allowing its different constituencies to be heard...
...Constituencies in Conflict On July 8, incoming President Carlos Sadl Menem wriggled awkwardly into the presidential sash that outgoing President Radl Alfonsin held up for him...
...When Roig died after only five days in office, Menem asked Roig's successor at the company, N6stor Rapanelli, to take over the ministry...
...Targets included anyone who looked like a zurdo, a leftist-anyone, that is, with long hair, jeans, or other signs of Argentina's defiant youth...
...Real wages have dropped so precipitously in recent months that the middle class is suddenly impoverished and many workers are starving -literally, in a country which is one of the great food producers of the world...
...Pardons and Austerity Menem has already taken bold actions which at first glance hardly seem popular or nationalist...
...To their left, a "revolutionary tendency," influenced by Marxism and its offshoots, consists mainly of people who were in some way associated with the Montoneros...
...Someone ordered the release of the 18,000 doves-1,000 for each year of the General's absence from Argentina -which were meant to be freed as he spoke...
...Both men are short, but the longhaired Menem is slender and athletic while the mustachioed Alfonsin is tubby and ponderous, and they couldn't quite manage the choreography of the gesture...
...The massacre took place on June 20, 1973, a chilly fall day in Argentina...
...Menem drinks mate: a regular guy Menem took the stage, wearing his blue campera, the short jacket favored by workers and many Peronists, grinning and waving...
...To really understand Peronism, you would have to live here several years," she continued, then laughed and added, "And, be a Peronist...
...One of its minor strongholds is the proletarian Barrio Rivadavia, a cluster of small cement houses toward the southwestern edge of Buenos Aires where the local party cell is named after Isabel, whom most Peronists these days are embarrassed to mention...
...Portefios, "people of the port," are notorious for such attitudes...
...He named as minister of economics Miguel Roig, former vice-president of Argentina's biggest firm and probably its only transnational corporation, the food conglomerate Bunge and Born...
...Menem, many adherents now are saying, is not abandoning Peronist policies, but just working to achieve them in convoluted and amazingly astute ways...
...They, it was later established, were under orders from Per6n's personal secretary, a former police officer named Jos6 L6pez Rega...
...As they were about to pass under bridge 12, automatic rifle, machine gun and shotgun fire exploded from "security" atop the overpass and the speaker's platform...
...More seriously, he argued that Argentina will have to demand five years grace on interest payments on the foreign debt, so that the country has the means to reinvest in its industries...
...Shortly thereafter the Montoneros resumed military actions-which they had suspended during his short presidency -and became, briefly, a fearsome force...
...For that matter, neither did the other Argentine parties, each built around the personality of its REPORT ON THE AMERICAS I 4leader...
...The appeal endures, as proven by the 1989 election, which gave the Justicialista (Peronist) Party control of the presidency, both houses of congress and most of the provincial governorships...
...In the primary they backed Buenos Aires Governor Antonio Cafiero for president, refusing to consider Menem-either because they regarded him as too friendly to the Right, or because they disdained him as a provincial...
...I've always been a Peronist...
...Should they play it, the old Montonero believes, it could lead to a union of Menem's mass base with "nationalist" elements in the army, to impose what he calls a classically fascist regime: de facto military rule with popular support...
...By the late 1970s, the government had killed or "disappeared" so many of their cadre that they were little more than an annoyance to the regime...
...During Per6n's long exile after 1955, gang warfare came to serve the functions of caucuses and primaries...
...If they failed to get an audience, or if the leader (as often happened) chose not to intervene, the rivals fought with whatever weapons they had at hand, frequently resorting to violence...
...Ezeiza demonstrated both the breadth of Peronism's appeal and the virulence of its internal conflicts...
...Despite appearances, these were probably sensible steps, since the sanctions were hurting Argentina more than Britain...
...He likes to claim that he was the original "renewer," demanding internal reforms in the party...
...Toward the end, obeying some mysterious signal, thousands and thousands of arms shot up, each making the V sign and swaying in unison...
...Ram6n Camps, who commanded the Buenos Aires police, Gen...
...Thus, rival factions made their appeals directly to Per6n (or Evita, who interceded with Per6n...
...Because this country can't take any more...
...He did nothing to replace factional violence with dialogue, but instead encouraged the hunting down of left-wing Peronists...
...That, she said, was "a term of the liberals...
...The Per6n," now that the old man is gone, presumably lies in a leader's quirky spontaneity and rapport with "the people...
...To the left of the Renewers are former Montoneros and their sympathizers...
...Though numerically small, the extreme Right is an important tendency in Peronism, with friends in the police, the army and the trade unions...
...They want to take the Per6n out of Peronism," he complained wryly...
...The turn toward Bunge and Born is no more surprising than the abrupt policy shifts of Per6n's "third way" (anticommunist and anticapitalist...
...In Osvaldo Soriano's tragicomic novel, No habrd penas ni olvidos, one of the small-town characters cries out, "But I've never been involved in politics...
...At the other extreme are right-wing groups such as the Comando de Organizaci6n, whose cadre were among those firing from the platform at Ezeiza in 1973...
...The discovery of democracy within Peronism will undoubtedly help avoid such an outcome, but the wild card is still held by the colonels who led three mutinies against Alfonsin...
...She was guarded in her description of the Comando...
...A major force for party reform is the faction calling itself "Renewal" (Renovaci6n), made up mostly of urban intellectuals, many with a strong socialCatholic orientation...
...Per6n denounced these "soldiers" a few months before he died...
...A Communist for many years, he broke with the party in the late 1960s to help form the Marxist "Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias...
...I first saw Menem at a rally in the working-class suburb of La Matanza, where Peronists have never lost an election...
...Because even though we are the majority, even people living here don't understand us...
...If creditors refuse, "there will be a social explosion in Argentina...
...Free-marketeer Alvaro Alsogaray, recent presidential candidate of the right-wing Union of the Democratic Center (UCD), was named "special economic adviser," and his daughter, Maria Julia was made president of the soon-to-be-privatized state phone company...
Vol. 23 • November 1989 • No. 4
