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Radicals and reactionaries: AD 1916-1946
Irigoyen's success in 1916 brings his party fourteen years in office. It is a period which sets the confrontational pattern of Argentina's political life during the rest of the 20th century.
The Radical party wins wide popular support by representing the interests of the new urban and industrial classes in Argentina's first period of democracy. To a large extent the party fails to deliver its promised reforms, but the very existence of the promises greatly alarms Argentina's traditional ruling class - whose fears are strongly shared in military circles.
Whereas military coups have often occurred elsewhere in Latin America, they have not been part of the Argentinian tradition. Indeed no change of government has been achieved by force of arms since Mitre's winning of power in 1861. But the Radical period comes to an end in 1930 as a result of a coup. Thereafter, for six decades, the tension between populist demands and the military is a constant thread in the fabric of Argentinian life.
The crash of 1929, and the subsequent slump in the export of Argentinian beef and wheat, gives the army its first opportunity. Irigoyen is removed in 1930, half way through his second term as president.
The coup of 1930 introduces sixteen years in which the military either rule directly or use force to control the result of elections. Most of the military leaders incline to fascism, admiring the various European dictators of the time for achieving stablility by totalitarian means. Argentina is the last Latin American country to declare war on Germany in World War II, doing so only in 1945 (at the last possible moment to secure a seat in the new United Nations).
For the last two years of the war the republic is ruled by a new military junta calling itself the GOU (Grupo de Oficiales Unidos, Group of United Officers). The GOU seizes power in 1943.
Since 1930 the pattern of Argentinian politics has been the military attempting to hold in check the populist demands made on behalf of the poorer classes. But now one member of the GOU, Juan Perón, dramatically squares the circle to his own political advantage.
Perón has spent a year (1938-9) on secondment to the Italian army. He has observed at first hand the methods and the appeal of Mussolini, and he has learnt some lessons. After the coup of 1943 he takes the post of secretary of labour and social welfare, a relatively insignificant position but one which suits perfectly his own purposes.
Perón cultivates the support of the masses by intervening on their behalf in strikes, by building personal alliances with union leaders, and by pressing for improvements in wages and holidays, working conditions, health and pensions. He rapidly becomes the hero of the descamisados (the 'shirtless'). His political star rises accordingly. By 1945 his roles within the junta include vice-president and minister of war.
It takes no political genius to recognize in all this Perón's personal ambitions. These ambitions alarm a group of senior officers. They mount a coup in October 1945 and imprison the ambitious Colonel Perón. But they have left their move too late.