Peronist consumer politics and the problem of domesticating markets in Argentina, 1943-1955

HAHR - Hispanic American Historical Review

Volumn 87, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 111-149

  Elena, Eduardo ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 64949147914     PISSN: 00182168     EISSN: 15271900     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00182168-2006-089     Document Type: Review

References (80)

1. Républica Argentina, Ministerio de Interior, Leyes, decretos y revoluciones para normalizar precios y reprimir la especulación (Buenos Aires, 1947), 4-5
2. E. P. Thompson, "The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century," Past and Present 50 (Feb. 1971): 76-136
3. It would be impractical to enumerate the hundreds of works on Peronism. For a useful overview of the historiography, see Mariano Plotkin, "The Changing Perceptions of Peronism," in Peronism and Argentina, ed. James P. Brennan (Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 1998), 29-54
4. On the equally massive literature on populism, see Alan Knight, "Populism and Neo-populism in Latin America, Especially Mexico," Journal of Latin American Studies 30 (1998): 223-48
5. and Michael L. Conniff, "Introduction: Toward a Comparative Definition of Populism," in Populism in Latin America, ed. Michael Conniff (Tuscaloosa: Univ. of Alabama Press, 1999), 3-30. Research into Peronism's labor and business history is far from exhausted, as suggested by innovative work being currently done in these fields
6. There is, of course, vast scholarship on mass consumption in the United States and Europe, and my approach to Argentine consumer politics has been informed by a critical reading of these works. It is worth noting, however, that this historiography often propagates a form of Euro-U.S. exceptionalism, which demonstrates little awareness of how mass consumption featured in postwar visions of modernization across the "Third World." Victoria de Grazia and E. Furlough, eds., The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1996)
7. Susan Strasser, Charles McGovern, and Mathias Judt, eds., Getting and Spending: European and American Consumer Societies in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998)
8. Martin Daunton and Mathew Hilton, eds. The Politics of Consumption: Material Culture and Citizenship in Europe and America (Oxford: Berg, 2001)
9. and Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Knopf, 2003)
10. Much of this inquiry has focused on Mexican popular culture. For essays by key authors working in this vein, see Gilbert M. Joseph, Anne Rubenstein, and Eric Zolov, eds., Fragments of a Golden Age: The Politics of Culture in Mexico since 1940 (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 2001)
11. and Néstor García Canclini, Consumidores y ciudadanos: Conflictos multiculturales de la globalización (Mexico City: Grijalbo, 1995)
12. On social experiences of commercial markets more generally, see "Creating Markets in Latin America, 1750-1998," special issue, ed. by Steven Topik, Latin American Perspectives 26, no. 1 (Jan. 1999)
13. Arnold Bauer, Goods, Power, History: Latin America's Material Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2001)
14. Lauren Derby, "Gringo Chickens with Worms: Food and Nationalism in the Dominican Republic," in Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural History of U.S.-Latin American Relations, ed. Gilbert Joseph, Catherine Le Grand, and Ricardo Salvatore (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 1998), 449-93
15. Julio Moreno, Yankee Don't Go Home! Mexican Nationalism, American Business Culture, and the Shaping of Modern Mexico, 1920-1950 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2003)
16. Maureen O'Dougherty, Consumption Intensified: The Politics of Middle-Class Daily Life in Brazil (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 2002)
17. and Benjamin Orlove, ed., The Allure of the Foreign: Imported Goods in Postcolonial Latin America (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1997)
18. For comparative studies of similar economic policies in Allende's Chile, Alan García's Peru, Sandinista Nicaragua, and other cases, see Rudiger Dornbusch and Sebastian Edwards, eds. The Macroeconomics of Populism in Latin America (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1991). These essays, however, tend to equate populism too broadly with fiscal irresponsibility, and their treatment of populist politics scratches the surface of the ideological factors that motivated regulation (114)
19. Daniel James has offered a stimulating analysis of how Peronism represented a form of social citizenship for working-class Argentines, which centered on class empowerment and a "heretical" cultural challenge to the status quo. I have adopted a similarly expansive definition that does not equate citizenship simply with formal rights or electoral politics; however, my approach in this essay focuses on the largely overlooked links between social entitlements and the ideal of "just" consumption. Daniel James, Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine Working Class, 1946-1976 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1988), 7-40
20. On liberalism and Argentine commercial law, see Jeremy Adelman, The Republic of Capital: Buenos Aires and the Legal Transformation of the Atlantic World (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1999), 224-50
21. Ricardo D. Salvatore, "The Normalization of Economic Life: Representations of the Economy in Golden-Age Buenos Aires, 1890-1913," HAHR 81, no. 1 (2001): 1-44
22. David Rock, Politics in Argentina, 1890-1930: The Rise and Fall of Radicalism (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1975), 115, 117-24, 203-9
23. Richard J. Walter, The Socialist Party of Argentina, 1890-1930 (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1977), 40, 116-18, 140-42
24. Salvatore, "Normalization of Economic Life"; and James Baer, "Buenos Aires: Housing Reform and the Decline of the Liberal State in Argentina," in Cities of Hope: People, Projects, and Progress in Urbanizing Latin America, 1870-1930, ed. Ronn Pineo and James Baer (Boulder: Westview, 1998)
25. Juan Domingo Perón, Obras completas, vol. 8 (Buenos Aires: Ed. Docencia, 1985), 300
26. Vicepresidencia de la Nación, Consejo Nacional de Posguerra, Ordenamiento económico-social (Buenos Aires, 1945)
27. On the Peronist state, see Patricia Berrotarán, Aníbal Jáuregui, and Marcelo Rougier, eds., Sueños de bienestar en la Nueva Argentina: Estado y políticas públicas durante el peronismo (1946-1955) (Buenos Aires: Imago Mundi, 2004)
28. A leading analysis of Peronist social policy suggests that workers' share of the national income grew between 1943 and 1950 from 44 to 55 percent but that inflation and paycheck deductions cut into spending power; Peter Ross, "Justicia social: Una evaluación del los logros del peronismo clásico," Anuario IEHS, vol. 8 (1993): 105-24
29. See also Guy Bourdé, La classe ouvrière argentine (1929-1969), vol. 2 (Paris: Editions L'Harmattan, 1987), 846-61
30. Susana Novick, IAPI: Auge y decadencia (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1986), 39, 72-73
31. Secretaría de Asuntos Técnicos, Comercio minorista en la Capital Federal (Buenos Aires, 1954), 5-15
32. Governments across Europe and the Americas - including the United States - experimented with economic controls to mange inflation in the war's aftermath. See Meg Jacobs, "How About Some Meat? The Office of Price Administration, Consumption Politics, and State Building from the Bottom Up, 1941-1946," Journal of American History (Dec. 1997): 910-41
33. Noticias Gráficas (Buenos Aires), June 11, 1946; and Aug. 14, 1946
34. Subsecretaria de Informaciones, Dirección General del Registro Nacional, Abastecimiento y represión del agio, vol. 1 (Buenos Aires, 1950), 9
35. Eva Perón, Discursos completos, 1946-1948, vol. 1 (Buenos Aires: Ed. Megafón, 1985), 9-12
36. Mark Edmunson, Nightmare on Main Street: Angels, Sadomasochism, and the Culture of the Gothic (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1997)
37. For an analysis of gender and consumer politics, see the essays collected in Victoria De Grazia's The Sex of Things, in particular de Grazia's "Nationalizing Women: The Competition between Fascist and Commercial Cultural Modes in Mussolini's Italy," 337-58
38. see also Jacobs, "How About Some Meat"; and Cohen, Consumers' Republic
39. On Peronist efforts to gain a female political following, see Marysa Navarro, Evita (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Corregidor, 1981)
40. Estela dos Santos, Las mujeres peronistas (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1983)
41. Susana Bianchi and Norma Sanchis, El partido peronista femenino (Buenos Aires: CEAL, 1988)
42. Mariano Plotkin, Mañana es San Perón: Propaganda, rituales políticos y educación en el régimen peronista (1946-1955) (Buenos Aires: Ariel Historia Argentina, 1993), 256-74
43. and Silvana A. Palermo, "El sufragio femenino en el Congreso Nacional: Ideologías de género y ciudadanía en la Argentina (1916-1955)," Boletín del Instituto de Historia Argentina y Americana "Dr. Emilio Ravignani," 16-17 (1997): 151-78
44. Abastecimiento y represión del agio, 45, 61
45. AGN, Photography Department, box 1307, envelope 24, doc. 201471, Apr. 22, 1953; envelope 6, doc. 188496 (n.d.); and envelope 4, doc. 172881, May 9, 1947
46. James P. Brennan, "Industrialists and Bolicheros: Business and the Peronist Populist Alliance, 1943-1976," in Brennan, Peronism and Argentina
47. Christina Luccini, Apoyo empresarial en los orígenes del peronismo (Buenos Aires: Centre Editor de América Latina, 1990)
48. Judith Teichman, "Interest Conflict and Entrepreneurial Support for Perón," Latin American Research Review 16, no. 1 (1981)
49. Jorge Schvarzer, Empresarios del pasado: La Unión Industrial Argentina (Buenos Aires: CISEA / Imago Mundi, 1991)
50. and Peter Birle, Los empresarios y la democracia en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Ed. Belgrano, 1997)
51. Partido Socialista, Hacia la bancarota (Buenos Aires: Ed. La Vanguardia, 1948), n.p
52. For historical investigations into the formation of "citizen- consumers," see De Grazia, Sex of Things, 275-86
53. Cohen, Consumers' Republic
54. and Matthew Hilton and Martin Daunton, "Material Politics: An Introduction," in Daunton and Hilton, The Politics of Consumption, 1-32
55. See Dornbusch and Edwards, Macroeconomics of Populism, 7-44
56. Louise M. Doyon, "Conflictos obreres durante el régimen peronista (1946-1955)," in La formación del sindicalismo peronista, ed. Juan Carlos Torre (Buenos Aires: Ed. Legasa, 1988), 223-63
57. Michael Snodgrass, "Topics Not Suitable for Propaganda: Working-Class Resistance under Peronism," in Workers' Control in Latin America, ed. Jonathan C. Brown (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1997)
58. and Samuel L. Baily, Labor, Nationalism, and Politics in Argentina (New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1967), 121-61
59. Presidencia de la Nación, Subsecretaria de Informaciones, Guerra a muerte a los especuladores dijo Perón (Buenos Aires, 1950)
60. For state credit policies, see Marcelo Rougier and Martín Fiszbein, "De Don Derrochín a Maese Ahorrín: El fomento del ahorro durante la economía peronista," in Rougier et al., Sueños de bienestar, 107-44
61. Néstor Ferioli, La Fundación Eva Perón, vol. 2 (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1990), 139
62. and Mónica Campins, Horacio Gaggero, and Alicia Garro, "La Fundación Eva Perón," in Estado, corporativismo y acción social en Brasil, Argentina y Uruguay, ed. Castro Gomes et al. (Buenos Aires: Biblos, Fundación Simón Rodríguez, 1992), 98-99
63. For the most thorough exploration of this theme, see Plotkin, Mañana es San Perón, 211-96
64. Caja Nacional de Ahorro Postal, Economía familiar (Buenos Aires, 1950)
65. For instance, at the 1950 press conference, María Rosa Calviño de Gómez, a close friend of Evita's, was appointed to head a new Organización de Consumidores. Yet this group almost immediately faded from sight; it never came close to matching the union movement's more contentious cost-of-living activism
66. Sucesos argentinos, no. 694, 1952
67. and Ernesto Goldar, Buenos Aires: Vida cotidiana en la década del 50 (Buenos Aires: Ed. Plus Ultra, 1980), 19
68. Goldar, Vida Cotidiana, 21
69. For more on this letter-writing event, see my article "What the People Want: State Planning and Political Participation in Peronist Argentina," Journal of Latin American Studies 37, no. 1 (2005): 81-108
70. Democracia, Apr. 10-16, 1953
71. U.S. State Department, Confidential Files, 1950-1954, Economic and Financial Review, reel 12, Apr. 2, 1953, July 27, 1953, 3-5
72. and Félix Luna, Perón y su tiempo: La comunidad organizada, 1950-1952, vol. 3 (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1984), 28-30
73. La Gaceta (Tucumán), Apr. 2, 1953, 1
74. Javier Auyero, Poor People's Politics: Peronist Survival Networks and the Legacy of Evita (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 2000)
75. and Contentious Lives: Two Argentine Women, Two Protests, and the Quest for Recognition (Duke: Duke Univ. Press, 2003)
76. On the discursive similarities between populists and leftists, see Ernesto Laclau, Populism and Ideology in Marxist Theory (London: NLB, 1977), 143-98
77. Brazil's Getúlio Vargas, for instance, complained in 1954 about the "spirit of easy profits and speculative fortunes" and promised to defend workers against high prices. Vargas was responding, in part, to pressure from unions and other social movements involved in the "Movimento contra a Carestia da Vida" begun in the early 1950s. Robert M. Levine, Father of the Poor? Vargas and His Era (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998), 85, 119
78. and Maria da Glória Cohn, História dos movimentos e lutas sociais (São Paulo: Loyola, 1995), 92-95, 108
79. Lázaro Cárdenas created the State Food Agency in 1937 to distribute subsidized goods to urban consumers in Mexico, and he complained about merchants "who generally speculate with the basic needs of the poor." The PRI struggled to balance the political imperative of satisfying popular-sector consumers with increasingly liberal economic policies; Enrique C. Ochoa, Feeding Mexico: The Political Uses of Food since 1910 (Wilmington: SR Books, 2000), 49
80. Salvador Allende and other leftist leaders in Chile likewise considered inflation as an attack on the nation and pueblo, linking rising prices to hoarding and other exploitative practices of unpatriotic merchants; Peter Winn, Weavers of Revolution: The Yarur Workers and Chile's Road to Socialism (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1986), 229-35