In collecting hundreds of letters to Juan and Eva by everyday people as well as from correspondence solicited by Juan Perón, this book promotes a view that charismatic bonds in Argentina have been formed as much by Argentines as by their leaders, demonstrating how letter writing at that time instilled a sense of nationalism and unity, particularly during the first Five Year Plan campaign conducted in 1946. It goes beyond the question of how charisma influenced elections and class affiliation to address broader implications. The letters offer a new methodology to study the formation of charisma in literate countries where not just propaganda and public media but also private correspondence defined and helped shape political polices. Focusing on the first era of Peronism, from 1946 to 1955, this work shows how President Perón and the First Lady created charismatic ways to link themselves to Argentine supporters through letter writing.

Whether in search of adventure and opportunity or fleeing poverty and violence, millions of people migrated to Argentina in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By the late 1920s Arabic speakers were one of the country’s largest immigrant groups. This book explores their experience, which was quite different from the danger and deprivation faced by twenty-first-century immigrants from the Middle East. Hyland shows how Syrians and Lebanese, Christians, Jews, and Muslims adapted to local social and political conditions, entered labor markets, established community institutions, raised families, and attempted to pursue their individual dreams and community goals. By showing how societies can come to terms with new arrivals and their descendants, Hyland addresses notions of belonging and acceptance, of integration and opportunity. He tells a story of immigrants and a story of Argentina that is at once timely and timeless.

Recasting the Nation in Twentieth-Century Argentina tackles the meaning of "the nation" by looking to the geographical, ideological, and political peripheries of society. What it means to be Argentine has long consumed writers, political leaders, and many others. For almost two centuries prominent figures have defined national values while looking out from the urban centers of the country and above all Buenos Aires. They have described the nation in terms of urban experience and, secondarily, by surrounding frontiers; they have focused on the country’s European heritage and advanced an entangled vision of race and space. The chapters in this book take a dynamic new approach. While scholars and political leaders have routinely ignored the country’s many peripheries, the Argentine nation cannot be reasonably understood without them. Those on the margins also defined core tenets of the nation. This volume will be vital reading for those interested in how Latin American societies emerged over the past two centuries and for those curious about how ideas outside of the mainstream come to define national identities.

In 1983, following a military dictatorship that left thousands dead and disappeared and the economy in ruins, Raúl Alfonsín was elected president of Argentina on the strength of his pledge to prosecute the armed forces for their crimes and restore a measure of material well-being to Argentine lives. Food, housing, and full employment became the litmus tests of the new democracy. In Search of the Lost Decade reconsiders Argentina’s transition to democracy by examining the everyday meanings of rights and the lived experience of democratic return, far beyond the ballot box and corridors of power. Beginning with promises to eliminate hunger and ending with food shortages and burning supermarkets, Jennifer Adair provides an in-depth account of the Alfonsín government’s unfulfilled projects to ensure basic needs against the backdrop of a looming neoliberal world order. As it moves from the presidential palace to the streets, this original book offers a compelling reinterpretation of post-dictatorship Argentina and Latin America’s so-called lost decade.

With gender as its central focus, this book offers a transnational, multi-faceted understanding of citizenship as legislated, imagined, and exercised since the late eighteenth century. Framed around three crosscutting themes - agency, space and borders - leading scholars demonstrate what historians can bring to the study of citizenship and its evolving relationship with the theory and practice of democracy, and how we can make the concept of citizenship operational for studying past societies and cultures. The essays examine the past interactions of women and men with public authorities, their participation in civic life within various kinds of polities and the meanings they attached to their actions. In analyzing the way gender operated both to promote and to inhibit civic consciousness, action, and practice, this book advances our knowledge about the history of citizenship and the evolution of the modern state.

The challenges of teaching history are acute where we consider the world history classroom. Generalized world history courses are a part of many, if not most, K-12 curricular frameworks in the United States. While United States history tends to dominate the scholarship and conversation, there are an equally wide number of middle-level and secondary students and teachers engaged in the study of world history in our public schools. And the challenges are real. In the first place, if we are to mark content coverage as a curricular obstacle in the history classroom, generally, then we must underscore that concern in the world history classroom and for obvious reasons. The curricular terrain to choose from is immense and forever expanding, dealing with the development of numerous civilizations over millennia and across a wide geographic expanse. In addition to curricular concerns, world historical topics are inherently farther away from most students’ lives, not just temporally, but often geographically and culturally. Thus the rationale for the present text, Hollywood or History? An Inquiry-Based Strategy for Using Film to Teach World History. The reviews of the first volume Hollywood or History? An Inquiry-Based Strategy for Using Film to Teach Untied States History strategy have been overwhelmingly positive, especially as it pertains to the application of the strategy for practitioner. Classroom utility and teacher practice have remained our primary objectives in developing the Hollywood or History? strategy and we are encouraged by the possibilities of Volume II and the capacity of this most recent text to impact teaching and learning in world history. We believe that students’ connection to film, along with teachers’ ability to use film in an effective manner, will help alleviate some of the challenges of teaching world history. The book provides 30 secondary lesson plans (grades 6-12) that address nine eras in world history.

Within Argentina, Juan Domingo Perón continues to be the subject of exaggerated and diametrically opposed views. A dictator, a great leader, the hero of the working classes and Argentina's “first worker”; a weak and spineless man dependent on his strongerwilled wife; a Latin American visionary; a traitor, responsible for dragging Argentina into a modern, socially just 20th century society or, conversely, destroying for all time a prosperous nation and fomenting class war and unreasonable aspirations among his client base. Outside Argentina, Perón remains overshadowed by his second wife, Evita. The life of this fascinating and unusual man, whose charisma, political influence and controversial nature continue to generate interest, remains somewhat of a mystery to the rest of the world. Perón remains a key figure in Argentine politics, still able to occupy so much of the political spectrum as to constrain the development of viable alternatives. Jill Hedges explores the life and personality of Perón and asks why he remains a political icon despite the 'negatives' associated with his extreme personalism.