Peronism Without Perons

...Judge Fegoli, taking the matter under prolonged advisement, at the last minute declined to intervene...

...It stemmed from Peronism's inability to decide whether it was a mass movement, a political party, or both...

...The anti-Peronist middle class has from the beginning dreaded a Left-wing putsch staged by elements within the movement, and there is a faction that has looked upon Peronism as a stepping-stone to Marxism: First, one sensitizes the masses to class struggle, then one educates them about socialism...

...She cultivated a power base in the ranks of the working poor—the "shirtless ones"—and fed a revolution of rising expectations with the language of class struggle...

...The ideological confusion won't be resolved by the structural changes...

...labor remained loyal through the long interregnum...

...Both sides talked constantly to the mass media, too...

...It lasted two days, was wide open to the media, and was characterized by lively debate and democratic voting on the floor...

...In addition, they elected a temporary leadership, headed byBritos...

...Many observers, indeed, consider the intemperance and vulgarity of Herminio Iglesias, head of the Justicialists in Buenos Aires Province, a major factor in the outcome of the 1983 presidential contest...

...After the purge, the rump proceeded to give Iglesias and Miguel everything they wanted...

...January saw a succession of farcical developments...

...Anti-Peronists will tell you that Peron, ousted by the military in 1955, supported and manipulated the Montoneros until he was able to ride the rising tide of violence back into power in 1973...

...The Argentine Caudillo, however, had a unique asset that Mussolini lacked: Evita...

...The parallel Peronisms now face the matter of unity...

...And it was he who brought a largely Justicialist crowd to its feet on February 8 by flourishing the Peronist code word: "Compafieros [comrades], yes, compafieros, we are all compafieros, all, without any distinction...

...Oraldo Britos, who resembles Dwayne Doberman in the old Phil Silvers Show, is no man on horseback...

...Carlos Menem, gover-norofLaRiojaandoneof those threatened physically, declared, "I can say that when Peron said force is the reason of beasts he knew what he was talking about...

...Upon his death the next year Isabel, his successor as president, followed the advice of the Rasputin-like court astrologer, Jose Lopez Rega, and broadened the Armed Forces' powers to deal with what had become a virtual civil war...

...But the movement that transformed Argentine society four decades ago, created by Juan Domingo Peron (died 1974) and his wife Eva ("Evita," died 1952), has finally run out ofPerons: This February the surviving widow, Maria Estela (" Isabel"), resigned as leader of the Justicial-ist Party...

...Consequently, by the time the restoration of civilian politics approached they were a source of serious internal conflict...

...a few were faced down and encouraged to leave "voluntarily...

...as general secretary, Hermin-io Iglesias...

...Peronists don't intervene...

...Eventually, the Renovators and the old guard must make up, but whatever deal they strike (Iglesias is widely seen as expendable, Miguel not), Peronism will be different in structure and character...

...Bittel termed the Igles-ias-Miguel tactics "thuggery, gangsterism, bullying...

...The news was a denouement of sorts to a tumultuous train of events...

...Peronism has always been nebulous...

...The broadside was denounced on the floor of the Legislature as "a grave offense against the dignity of the House...

...When latter-day Peronism revealed itself to be largely nonideo-logical and mainly interested in power, its Romantic Left elevated the starlet-turned-agitator to the position of a Marxist saint: "If Evita were alive today she would be a Montonero," said the literature of the '70s—a sentiment that is alive and well in the Peronist Youth...

...Shapiro, a professor of zoology at the University of California, Davis, who over the last decade has traveled extensively in Latin America...

...The Renovators declared all actions taken at the Odeon null and void...

...Peron himself, once a military attache in Mussolini's Italy, learned most of his tricks watching//Dwce...

...Starring Herminio Iglesias, Lorenzo Miguel, Diego Ibafiez...

...Itwas instructed to organize party elections for next December 15 that will permit the rank and file to select a permanent executive council, and to "intervene" in Buenos Aires in order to bring about democratic reform—in other words, remove Iglesias—within 120 days...

...This group is bound to wane as Peronism succumbs to conventional politics...

...Despite a great show of gentlemanly courtesy to individuals, denunciations of collective positions flew thick and fast...

...Peron and Evita skillfully orchestrated the trade unions in a manner designed to assure Peronism's domination whatever might happen...

...Throughout the era of military rule that ended in December 1983 with the inauguration of President Raul Alfon-sin, Isabel—first under house arrest and subsequently in exile—remained head of the Peronists...

...others persist for a while on sheer nostalgia...

...The Mafia in its theatrical version...

...The President, among the canniest politicians in the Americas, has perfected his technique for co-opting the Peronists' mass appeal...

...Then the Justicialists suffered their first defeat in a national election and suddenly found themselves cast as an institutionalized democratic opposition...

...The third area of ambiguity was the most abstract of the lot, yet the most profound and critical...

...That night, parties unknown plastered the capita] with a poster in the form of a theater advertisment: "Last time in Buenos Aires...

...Iglesias briefly basked in the feeble glow of public sympathy generated when a small bomb exploded harmlessly in his driveway...

...It will be a democratized political party, divested of its claims to mass-movement status...

...It remains to be seen if the very visible frustration of the Romantic Left wing of the Peronist Youth, which underwent its own schism in tandem with the party, can be diverted into nonviolent channels...

...How many delegates showed up for the Buenos Aires congress is not clear...

...The judge obliged, triggering a jurisdictional dispute that has not been resolved...

...It was he who recently got Isabel to visit Argentina as his guest...

...Many members of both factions mutter privately that Alfonsin is the best Peronist in the country, that his Radical Civic Union is turning from a political party into a mass movement, and that the only man in Argentina with the charisma to lead Peronism to a victory over Raul Alfonsin is Raul Alfonsin himself...

...Today, lacking Perons in the priesthood, it is completely meaningless...

...The first article, "Rumblings on the Right," appeared in The New Leader of January 14-28...

...True, the Renovators are trying to develop a Peronist doctrine relevant to the 1980s, but most dispassionate observers expect nothing more than the usual studied ambiguity, cloaked in the familiar stale rhetoric...

...How Peronist can a Peronless Peronism be...

...She did absolutely nothing to confront the ambiguities plaguing the movement...

...Each side knows that it cannot survive as a significant electoral force without the other...

...After Isabel was forced out of the Presidency she never involved herself publicly in the workings of the party, nor did she acknowledge the adulation of the "verticalist" faction that regards her as the sole heir and prophet of her husband...

...anything at all can be read into it...

...Around midnight, pretty much in secret, the delegates passed a series of limp resolutions calling for Peronist unity behind the Iglesias-Miguel machine...

...All these tensions came to a head in mid-December, when the leadership convened a national party congress at the Odeon Theater in Buenos Aires...

...Totheex-tent that Peronismo had any coherence, it was basically fascism decked out (as usual) in the trappings of socialism...

...One finds graffiti calling for the release of Montonero leader Mario Fir-menich, the self-confessed killer of ex-president Pedro Aramburu...

...In so doing, she set herself up for the inevitable coup of 1976...

...The second, more widely felt ambiguity concerned the whole structure of Peronism, exposed by Isabel's incompetence...

...He then unsuccessfully attempted to suppress them...

...As vice presidents of the party—Isabel was the nominal president—it chose Lorenzo Miguel and his buddy Jose Maria Vernet, governor of Santa Fe...

...Angel Robledo, a Justicialist theoretician, admitted as much recently, dismissing the two congresses as "a simple power struggle, totally lacking in programmatic content...

...UntilNovember 1983 the issue had not arisen...

...Dubbing themselves the "Renovators," they also drew up an agenda aimed at democratizing the organization...

...It was a transparent publicity stunt: The press reported that on the morning of the blast he had warned his son to avoid the front of the house...

...it didn't get going until dark, and no one believes the official head count...

...They have run their unions and the party from smoke-filled rooms, barely bothering to maintain a sham of democracy—although official Peronist doctrine proclaims that power flows from the masses, and that the function of leaders is merely to carry out the popular will...

...During their lifetimes the strategy worked...

...Britos and his allies, who numbered representatives from the capital opposed to the local lords, countered with a bold move: They called a national congress of their own for February 2, at the resort town of Termas de Rio Hondo in Santiago del Estero Province—thereby not only ignoring Miguel and Iglesias but reducing the influence of Buenos Aires and big labor...

...They fell roughly into three categories, beginning with ideological confusion...

...still others, like Peronism, preserve the illusion of the chiefs continuing presence with a dynasty or "priesthood...

...A net movement of Leftists out of Justicialism and into the independent nationalist-socialist Intransigent Party is already under way...

...Ig-lesias responded by scoffing: "The military intervenes...

...Rio Hondo was something else...

...Some fizzle immediately...

...Yet even if the ideological murkiness turns to light, the Renovators come to terms with their opponents, and most of the party's Left stays peacefully in the fold, Peronism will still have at least one problem: Raul Alfonsin...

...The rank and file, to say nothing of the public in general, meanwhile grew increasingly impatient with the authoritarianism and strong-arm methods of the Peronist bosses...

...One day before the Iglesias-Miguel congress was to resume, dissension among the Peronists in the Chamber of Deputies broke into the open: Minority Leader (and Iglesias crony) Diego Ibanez had to resign because 53 of the 111 Justicialist deputies voted "no confidence" in him...

...A week later the two factions were fighting over access to the party's offices and meeting halls, and Britos was ignoring the conciliatory noises by Iglesias and Miguel, who kept insisting on the need for a third, "unity" congress—in Buenos Aires, of course...

...Should they abide by the rules of parliamentary procedure, as a political party would, or take to the streets, as a mass movement might...

...The Caudillo, it should be remembered, was twice chosen in relatively free balloting...

...Several well-known Peron-ists were not allowed in altogether...

...some rebels who dared to speak were roughed up and Ihrown out...

...The verticalists' absurd hope that Isabel will take charge has been dashed by her retirement...

...It was he who wisely told his fellow Radicals to say nothing while the feuding Peronists made fools of themselves in public...

...Ultimately about half of the 600 delegates, led by Senator Oraldo Britos, walked out...

...Even the Peronists in the press were scandalized...

...Iglesias' group went to federal court in Buenos Aires, and tried to persuade Judge Juan Fegoli to rule the dissident congress invalid on the grounds that the minutes of the Odeon gathering showed it had been recessed, not adjourned, and thus was technically still in progress...

...In the interim, the Renovators applied to a judge in the interior for official authorization of their event, since this would entitle the participants to free public transportation to Rio Hondo...

...But it rested on filling the Justicialist Party hierarchy with men drawn from organized labor—the so-called 62 Organizations—who are almost universally identified as racketeers and hoodlums...

...In the late 1960s the Left wing of the Peronist Youth gave birth to the Montonero terrorist organization and Argentina began its slide into anarchy...

...Buenos Aires What happens to a mass movement when its charismatic founder dies...

...Britos sought to appease labor by selecting Roberto Garcia of the Taxi Drivers' Union as his second vice president...

...The insurgents included nearly every delegate from the interior provinces (that is, the entire country except for the capital) and Deolindo Bit-tel, the party's defeated vice presidential candidate...

...APeron surrogate will not appear in the near future...

...Determined to squelch the mounting unrest over their image and policies, the bosses—Iglesias and his close ally, Lorenzo Miguel, chief of the Metalworkers' Union— packed the hall with goons to intimidate dissidents...

...To underscore this point they announced the resumption of sessions on February 1. The dissidents presented evidence that the Odeon minutes had been altered to make it appear that the congress had never formally ended, that the certifying signatures had been falsified, and that the registration books had been conveniently lost...

...The new Justicialism will be led by ordinary men and women paying lip service to the memory of giants...