PeronismFEDERICO M. ROSSI

Peronism is one of the main social and politicalmovements of contemporary Argentina.Peronism owes its name to its founder JuanDomingo Peron – three times president ofArgentina (1946–1952, 1952–1955, and1973–1974). Peronism is a national-populistmovement related to the first incorporationof laborers into Argentina’s political arena.The movement since then has evolved anddiversified.

ORIGIN

The origin of Peronism is a highly contestedissue. The core of the debate is related to thecharacterization of Peronism as a rupture ora continuity with the past development of thestruggles of popular sectors (the poor and/ormarginalized strata) for incorporation in andtransformation of the political regime.

There are a number of factors that togetherexplain the origin of Peronism. The massiveinternal migration of politically inexperiencedpoor people to the large urban areas dur-ing the 1930s produced a huge demographicchange and the alienation of politically inex-perienced new migrants (Germani 1973; DiTella 1990). Simultaneously, there was an accu-mulation of Communist and Socialist unionstruggles that produced a disparity between thematerial expectations of redistribution and thefew actual or perceived achievements obtained,which led old and new union leaders to supportPeron for pragmatic and ideological purposes(Murmis & Portantiero 1971; Torre 1990). Agroup of politically unrepresented elites alsofound an opportunity to access power. Pero-nism included the emergent national industri-alists as well as politically marginal civil andmilitary right-wing and Social Christian intel-lectuals (Di Tella 1990; Brennan 1998). Last,

The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements,Edited by David A. Snow, Donatella della Porta, Bert Klandermans, and Doug McAdam.© 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2013 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.DOI: 10.1002/9781405198431.wbespm366

the charismatic bond built between Peron andthe popular sectors allowed for the replace-ment of much of the previous labor movementarrangements by ideologically transforming thepopular sectors (James 1988; Plotkin 2003).

The combination of these elements builta populist multiclass coalition that workeduntil the 1955 coup against Peron (Di Tella1990). However, from 1955 to 1973 the Per-onist movement gradually added a youth left-wing sector and increased the role of unionswhile detaching the industrialists and right-wing elites. In this period the Peronist move-ment was proscribed and entered into a phaseof state persecution that increased the move-ment’s radicalization, leading to the creation ofPeronist guerrilla organizations.

IDEOLOGY

Justicialismo – a blending of the Spanish termsfor social justice – is the ideology proclaimedby Peronism. The scholarship on the Pero-nist movement has produced a rich debateabout its ideology, due to Peron’s changing dis-course and scholars’ use of European analyticcategories to explain a Latin American phe-nomenon. Justicialismo is founded on SocialChristian values and has three basic principles:social justice, political sovereignty, and eco-nomic independence. In pursuit of these threeprinciples, Peron elaborated two key notions.The first is related to the location of Peronismas a movement in a third position “equidistantfrom both idealism and materialism and, interms of socio-economic models, counterposeditself equally to capitalism and communism”(Gillespie 1982: 18). The second is related tothe societal model to achieve social welfare. Theorganized community idea is one of direct stateintervention to assure harmony between labor-ers and employers (Peron 1951). The Peronisteconomic model could be considered as anemulation of the Scandinavian welfare states

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in a mixed economy with a central role forunions in corporatist arrangements. In com-parative terms, Peronism is the equivalent forArgentina to the US New Deal, and GetulioVargas’ Trabalhismo in Brazil.

PERONISM AS A SOCIAL MOVEMENT

The great internal diversity of the Peronistmovement has produced some confusionamong scholars due to equating the electoralPartido Justicialista (PJ) with Peronism assuch. As the Sozialdemokratische ParteiDeutschlands is not the German labor move-ment, the PJ is not the Peronist movement,just the most important of a series of Peronistparties. Even Peron asserted that Peronismwas not a party but a movement (Peron1951), which was composed of four branchesduring the 1946–1976 period: (1) political,the electoral and patronage instrument basedon the PJ; (2) female, created by Evita Peronafter the enfranchisement of women and laterunderdeveloped; (3) labor, by far the mostdeveloped and structured sector, based on theConfederacion General del Trabajo (CGT);and (4) youth, incorporated in 1971–1974through the creation of a Peronist studentmovement and left-wing guerrilla organiza-tions such as the Montoneros (Gillespie 1982;McGuire 1997). From 1955 the industrialistswere gradually marginalized, through beingrepresented in the weak ConfederacionGeneral Economica.

Redemocratization in 1983 and neoliberalreforms from 1976 undermined the unions’power as the PJ mutated into a patronage-machine party (Levitsky 2003). This new con-text produced a decline of the CGT influenceinside the PJ during the 1990s. At the sametime, the Peronist movement diversified, withthe creation of the new union Central de Traba-jadores de la Argentina (CTA) in 1992, and thepiqueteros movement that mobilizes unem-ployed laborers in 1996. The PJ has been quitedominant but has been weakened by disputeswithin its constituency by alternative Peronist

parties since the 1990s, such as the right-wingMovimiento por la Dignidad y la Independen-cia and the center-left Frente Grande.

In brief, Peronism can be studied as a move-ment because it is composed of a network ofunion, party, and social organizations that areinterrelated through grassroots branches andinformal gatherings, making use of contentiousand routine strategies for electoral and otherpolitical purposes. The Peronist movement hastranscended any specific protest with periods oflatency and underground resistance networksduring the 1955–1973 and 1976–1983 peri-ods. Finally, as has happened with equivalentlabor-based movements elsewhere, Peronismdeveloped a popular political culture that uni-fies multiple actors and individuals, providingthem with an identity that does not requiremembership.

POLITICAL POPULAR CULTURE

Historically Peronism was the movement thatfirst incorporated workers into the nation’spolitics. For this reason, the formation of thedominant laborers’ tradition in Argentina isintimately related to the Peronist movement.Peronism has an emblem, hymn, intellectuals,and is the hegemonic political popular cultureof the poor people. Among the varied elementsof the Peronist popular culture, Evita is the best-known figure, sometimes even worshiped as asaint comparable to the Virgin Mary (Karush& Chamosa 2010).

The Peronist popular culture is the mostresilient element of the movement, resistingmultiple persecutions and twists on elites’discourses and practices. The neoliberalpolicies of Carlos Menem’s (PJ) presidency(1989–1995, 1995–1999) put into crisis someof the Peronist national-populist principles,while it showed the movement’s resilience.Martucelli and Svampa (1997) identifiedunion, revolutionary, and party pragmatictypes of Peronist militants during the 1990s.Auyero (2000) provided a detailed analysisof the clientelistic grassroots logics of the

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PJ and the redefinition of the Peronistanti-establishment mythical origins.

In a new turn of Peronism, Nestor Kirch-ner’s (2003–2007) and Cristina Fernandez deKirchner’s (from 2007) center-left Peronistpresidencies have promoted a redevelopmentof some of the first incorporation and left-wingPeronist symbols and rhetoric while includ-ing part of the piqueteros and unions in thegovernment coalition.

SEE ALSO: Alienation and social movements;Charisma; Guerrilla movements; Ideology;Labor movement in Latin America; Leadership;Piqueteros (workers/unemployment movementin Argentina); Poor people’s movements;Populism/populist movements.

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS

Auyero, J. (2000) Poor People’s Politics: PeronistSurvival Networks and the Legacy of Evita. DukeUniversity Press, Durham, NC.

Brennan, J. (1998) Industrialists and bolicheros.Business and the Peronist populist alliance,1943–1976. In: Brennan, J. (ed.), Peronism andArgentina. SR Books, Wilmington, NC, pp.79–123.

Di Tella, T. (1990) Latin American Politics: A The-oretical Framework. University of Texas Press,Austin.

Germani, G. (1973) El surgimiento del peronismo: elrol de los obreros y de los migrantes internos (Theemergence of Peronism: the role of workers and

internal migrants). Desarrollo Economico 13(51),435–488.

Gillespie, R. (1982) Soldiers of Peron: Argentina’sMontoneros. Clarendon Press, Oxford.

James, D. (1988) Resistance and Integration: Pero-nism and the Argentine Working Class, 1946–1976.Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Karush, M., and Chamosa, O. (eds) (2010) The NewCultural History of Peronism: Power and Iden-tity in Mid-Twentieth-Century Argentina. DukeUniversity Press, Durham, NC.

Levitsky, S. (2003) Transforming Labor-based Partiesin Latin America: Argentine Peronism in Com-parative Perspective. Cambridge University Press,Cambridge.

Martuccelli, D., and Svampa, M. (1997) La plazavacıa. Las transformaciones del peronismo (Theempty square. The transformations of Peronism).Losada, Buenos Aires.

McGuire, J. (1997) Peronism without Peron: Unions,Parties and Democracy in Argentina. Stanford Uni-versity Press, Stanford, CA.

Murmis, M., and Portantiero, J.C. (1971) Estudiossobre los origenes del peronismo (Studies on theorigins of Peronism). Siglo XXI, Buenos Aires.

Peron, J.D. (1951) Habla Peron (Peron speaks).Subsecretarıa de Comunicaciones, Presidencia dela Nacion, Buenos Aires.

Plotkin, M. (2003) Manana es San Peron: A CulturalHistory of Peron’s Argentina. SR Books, Wilming-ton, NC.

Torre, J.C. (1990) Peron y la vieja guardia sindical. Losorıgenes del peronismo (Peron and the Old Guardunions. The origins of Peronism). Sudamericana,Buenos Aires.