Argentina’s populist movement, led by Juan Perón, welcomed people from a broad range of cultural backgrounds to join its ranks. Unlike most populist movements in Europe and North America, Peronism had an inclusive nature, rejecting racism and xenophobia. In Peronism as a Big Tent Raanan Rein and Ariel Noyjovich examine Peronism’s attempts at garnering the support of Argentines of Middle Eastern origins – be they Jewish, Maronite, Orthodox Catholic, Druze, or Muslim – in both Buenos Aires and the interior provinces. By following the process that started with Perón’s administration in the mid-1940s and culminated with the 1989 election of President Carlos Menem, of Syrian parentage, Rein and Noyjovich paint a nuanced picture of Argentina’s journey from failed attempts to build a mosque in Buenos Aires in 1950 to the inauguration of the King Fahd Islamic Cultural Center in the nation’s capital in the year 2000. Peronism as a Big Tent reflects on Perón’s own evolution from perceiving Argentina as a Catholic country with little room for those outside the faith to embracing a vision of a society that was multicultural and that welcomed and celebrated religious plurality. The legacy of this spirit of inclusiveness can still be felt today.

Argentina’s populist movement, led by Juan Perón, welcomed people from a broad range of cultural backgrounds to join its ranks. Unlike most populist movements in Europe and North America, Peronism had an inclusive nature, rejecting racism and xenophobia. In Peronism as a Big Tent Raanan Rein and Ariel Noyjovich examine Peronism’s attempts at garnering the support of Argentines of Middle Eastern origins – be they Jewish, Maronite, Orthodox Catholic, Druze, or Muslim – in both Buenos Aires and the interior provinces. By following the process that started with Perón’s administration in the mid-1940s and culminated with the 1989 election of President Carlos Menem, of Syrian parentage, Rein and Noyjovich paint a nuanced picture of Argentina’s journey from failed attempts to build a mosque in Buenos Aires in 1950 to the inauguration of the King Fahd Islamic Cultural Center in the nation’s capital in the year 2000. Peronism as a Big Tent reflects on Perón’s own evolution from perceiving Argentina as a Catholic country with little room for those outside the faith to embracing a vision of a society that was multicultural and that welcomed and celebrated religious plurality. The legacy of this spirit of inclusiveness can still be felt today.

Examines the history, origins, and contemporary directions of Peronism, an important populist movement in twentieth-century Latin America. This volume clarifies many misconceptions about the nature of Peronism and explains how it has influenced Argentine politics and civil society.

Peronism, the Argentine political movement created by Juan Perón in the 1940's, has revolved since its inception around a personalistic leader, a set of powerful trade unions, and a weakly institutionalized political party. This book examines why Peronism continued to be weakly institutionalized as a party after Perón was overthrown in 1955 and argues that this weakness has impeded the consolidation of Argentine democracy. Within an analysis of Peronism from 1943 to 1995, the author pays special attention to the 1962-66 and 1984-88 periods, when some Peronist politicians and union leaders tried, but failed, to strengthen the party structure. By identifying the forces that led to these efforts of party-building and by analyzing the counterforces that thwarted them, he shows how these failures have shaped Argentina's experience with democracy. Drawing on this interpretation of Peronism and its place in Argentine politics, the book develops a distributive conflict/political party explanation for Argentina's democratic instability and contrasts it to alternatives that stress economic dependency, populist economic policies, political culture, and military interventionism.

In nearly every account of modern Argentine history, the first Peronist regime (1946–55) emerges as the critical juncture. Appealing to growing masses of industrial workers, Juan Perón built a powerful populist movement that transformed economic and political structures, promulgated new conceptions and representations of the nation, and deeply polarized the Argentine populace. Yet until now, most scholarship on Peronism has been constrained by a narrow, top-down perspective. Inspired by the pioneering work of the historian Daniel James and new approaches to Latin American cultural history, scholars have recently begun to rewrite the history of mid-twentieth-century Argentina. The New Cultural History of Peronism brings together the best of this important new scholarship. Situating Peronism within the broad arc of twentieth-century Argentine cultural change, the contributors focus on the interplay of cultural traditions, official policies, commercial imperatives, and popular perceptions. They describe how the Perón regime’s rhetoric and representations helped to produce new ideas of national and collective identity. At the same time, they show how Argentines pursued their interests through their engagement with the Peronist project, and, in so doing, pushed the regime in new directions. While the volume’s emphasis is on the first Perón presidency, one contributor explores the origins of the regime and two others consider Peronism’s transformations in subsequent years. The essays address topics including mass culture and melodrama, folk music, pageants, social respectability, architecture, and the intense emotional investment inspired by Peronism. They examine the experiences of women, indigenous groups, middle-class anti-Peronists, internal migrants, academics, and workers. By illuminating the connections between the state and popular consciousness, The New Cultural History of Peronism exposes the contradictions and ambivalences that have characterized Argentine populism. Contributors: Anahi Ballent, Oscar Chamosa, María Damilakou, Eduardo Elena, Matthew B. Karush, Diana Lenton, Mirta Zaida Lobato, Natalia Milanesio, Mariano Ben Plotkin, César Seveso, Lizel Tornay

Although Juan Peron changed the course of modern Argentine history, scholars have often interpreted him in terms of their own ideologies and interests, rather than seeing the effect of this man and his movement had on the Argentine people. The essays in this volume seek to uncover the man behind the myth, to define the true nature of Peronism. Several chapters view Perón's rise to power, his deposition and eighteen-year exile, and his dramatic return in 1973. Others examine: opposing forces in modern Argentina, including the church and its role in politics; the conflict between landed stancieros and urban industrialists, terrorist activities and their populist support base; Peronism and the labor movement; and Evita Perón's role in advancing the political rights of women.

Perón and Perónism, is unique, especially among English language books, insofar as it is not so much a biography of the remarkable Argentine president, but an explanation of Perónism in theory and practice. While the lives of Juan, and especially Eva, Perón are relatively easy to access, seldom is it that a biography of the Peróns, or even a scholarly history of Argentina, details the doctrine of Justicialism. In Perón and Perónism, Bolton draws on primary documents and speeches to define the Perónist doctrine that has moved the hearts and minds of the majority of Argentines for generations. Perón is shown to have been not only a great leader, who built the foundations of modern Argentina, but a philosopher who drew upon various philosophical schools, from Classical Greece onwards in synthesising a 'third position' that transcends capitalism and communism, Right and Left, and exposes 'demoliberalism' as a fraud. Here we also see a man of vision, an exponent of geopolitical blocs to counter globalist hegemony, whose ideals remain profoundly relevant in the age of globalisation.