The Argentine Election

...If not, Argentina and all Latin America will slowly drift into a new peronismo without Peron...

...And the election results showed how these facts remain very much alive...

...The strength shown by the peronistas, two years after the dictator's ouster, is certainly the most significant fact of the elections...

...The People's Radicals, partisans of Aramburu and rather conservative, received more than 2.5 million votes...

...But as long as these social problems— which can be summarized as mass poverty under feudal oligarchy—remain, demagogues will have many opportunities...

...It reflects a reality which is not unique in Argentina, but is general throughout Latin America—a reality which Provisional President General Pedro Aramburu and the parties supporting him appear largely to have ignored...

...The new Constituent Assembly's task is not to write a new constitution, but to reform the Constitution of 1853, which was in force until the Peron era and was reinstated with the dictator's fall...

...The tragedy of Argentina is that these two parties, having regained full freedom (the election campaign was completely free), still have not succeeded in adequately confronting the problems which have been their raison d'etre for half a century: namely, the land problem and that of the nationalization of resources...

...It is no longer possible to limit politics to purely political questions, as was attempted by Aramburu and the parties which had to support him to avoid playing into Peron's hands...

...Argentina still has important reserves, strengthened by the traditions of social struggle, by their suffering under the dictatorship, by the young generation whom ten years of peronismo were unable to corrupt...

...Aramburu held these elections in order that these traditional republican characteristics might be strengthened...

...The Socialist party, which opposed Peron actively from the very start and which endured the most severe persecution, received a little more than half a million votes...

...But Aramburu, a liberal but a military man of rather traditional background, failed to take account of two other facts of Latin American life today: nationalist and social demagogy...

...The two million peronista voters—the majority of the workers, plus elements of the middle class—have shown that Argentina's social problems remain unanswered...

...The Intransigent Radicals, led by Arturo Frondizi, who had hoped to win a clear majority through ultra-nationalist appeals to former peronistas, received less than 2 million...

...The more than 2 million blank ballots cast indicate the importance which per-onismo retains in Argentina, despite copious proofs of the cynicism and corruption of Peron and his collaborators...

...Peron would have received only one vote—his own...

...The great traditional party of the Argentine middle class, the Radicals, was divided...

...Peron had profited from the Socialist propaganda in favor of such measures to launch a social and nationalist demagogy, and the 2 million blank ballots show that this demagogy still sells...

...However, the very fact that I have received this interpretation of the elections from the lips of several national leaders demonstrates that a consciousness of the essential problem is being more and more general...

...In the Constituent Assembly, however, it will be in a minority, because the blank ballots elected no deputies...

...If the democratic forces had succeeded in resolving them, there would be no further chance for demagogy...

...They will not solve the social problems, to be sure, but they will use them to take power and to mislead millions of people whom poverty deprives of political clairvoyance...

...Though the personalities will change, the problems which they have been unable to solve will remain...

...But next February, once the constitution has been reformed, the people will elect a new President of the Republic...

...But for these reserves to be effective, they must operate on planes beyond the purely political...

...The Peron era was the result of the convergence of a pair of cynical Nazi espionage agents (Peron and Eva Duarte) with fifty years of anti-imperialist social agitation by the Socialists and a large part of the Radicals...

...Aramburu wishes to accentuate the federal and decentralized features of Argentina and to reduce the powers of the executive, in order to prevent another dictator coming to power— as Peron did—by legal means...

...The followers of former dictator Juan Peron received 27 per cent of the vote, but did not elect a single deputy—for their instructions were to cast a blank ballot...

...It is to be hoped that the new deputies to the Constituent Assembly will learn to understand this...

...Peronist blank ballots reveal widespread social discontent The Argentine Election By Victor Alba Buenos Aires Of the 32 parties which named candidates for the Argentine Constituent Assembly, only six received a significant number of votes...

...That is because —in spite of its demagogic character—it responds to the deepest aspirations of the masses and the basic needs of the country...

...This was a strong rebuff to the Catholic Church, which was trying to make a "progressive" impression, after many years of collaboration with Peron and, later, with Lonardi, the rightist general who succeeded Peron and whom Aramburu forced out with the aid of young, democratic elements in the Army and Navy...

...To be content with political freedoms alone is to place them in jeopardy...

...The Communists received less than half that total, even though they had adroitly divided into Peronist and anti-Peronist factions under the dictator...

...What were the results...

...When Peron fell—not really because of his struggle against the Church but because he had decided to turn important oil resources over to U. S. companies—conditions were favorable for a series of radical structural reforms: nationalization of the land, socialization of the pseudo-nationalizations realized under Peron, workers' control of big industry...

...But under Peron both federalism and the division of powers were mere formalities...

...And that is the real hope of Argentina...

...Since Argentina achieved her independence, she has been a Federal state with a traditional division of governmental powers...

...Thus, if one counts the blank ballots cast by the peronistas, the combined opposition to Aramburu was nearly sufficient to form a coalition government...

...The persistence of dictatorial and demagogic regimes in Latin America can largely be explained in terms of these social problems, which are virtually the only ones which sway the masses...

...The great struggle in Latin America is the social struggle, and its alternatives are clear: either freedom with social justice, or else demagogy with neither freedom nor justice...

...Aramburu, who made all his ministers as well as the Army generals promise not to be candidates, will retire from politics...

...The Christian Democrats received about as many votes as the Communists...