When Democracy Breaks: Scott Mainwaring on Argentina

March 24th, 1976 is the coup and it unleashes wild celebrations in establishment Argentina and almost no opposition…. Of course, this unleashed the most ruthless dictatorship in Argentina’s history and in recent South American history as well.

Scott Mainwaring

Key Highlights

• Introduction – 0:20
• Democratization in 1973 – 3:41
• Democratic Erosion – 18:30
• Breakdown – 39:08
• Argentina Today – 43:18

Well, it’s a very good question. Basically, what happened was the previous dictatorship failed. It wasn’t that the generals were desperate to bring democracy back. In fact, not many actors were desperate to bring democracy back, but they were desperate to be done with the dictatorship. Why did the dictatorship fail? It’s such an interesting story. There were three generals who ruled from 1966 to ‘73. The first, Juan Carlos Onganía, presided over probably the period of most rapid economic growth that Argentina had seen in generations. So, you’d think wow. I mean, after many failed democracies maybe a successful economic period would bring people around. But in fact, what happened was… This was a period of great effervescence in the world, of course, 1968 in Paris, the late sixties in the US. I mean, all of this effervescence, this feeling that we can create a better world.

In Argentina in 1969, there were massive mobilizations against the dictatorship. The most famous was called the Cordobazo because it took place in Córdoba, which at the time was the seat of the automobile industry in Argentina. It was either the second or third largest city after Buenos Aires and also the home to one of the largest universities in the country, the University of Córdoba. Both the workers and the students engaged in these massive demonstrations. They burned down several blocks of Córdoba. They held off the police and the military for many, many hours. This created an after effect. There were similar demonstrations in Rosario, also the second or third biggest city at the time, a large industrial city about 125 miles east of Córdoba and several other cities as well.

At this point, the dictatorship just completely fractured. Not too long after that, there was a coup against Onganía. That general, I think, lasted 10 months. There was a coup against him. Then finally, the third general, Alejandro Lanusse, took power already with the project of convoking elections at some point. Lanusse still harbored this idea that he could hold elections without Juan Perón who had been the democratically elected authoritarian populist from 1946 to ‘55. Although Perón came from a military origin, by 1955, when there was a coup against him, the military had turned sharply against him. He hadn’t learned the lesson that Hugo Chavez and Nicolás Maduro did. Purge ruthlessly. Throw all of the dissident military folks in jail. Torture them. Promote loyalists.

So anyhow, Lanusse quickly entered into negotiations with Perón. But Perón just outfoxed Lanusse one time after another. Lanusse thought that he could impose conditions on Perón, but he just utterly failed. Perón had all the aces in his hand. So, Lanusse caved one time after another. The only ace that Lanusse ultimately held was he insisted that presidential candidates be in the country for… I don’t remember exactly the length of time. Perón didn’t want to abide by those conditions, so he didn’t. So, instead, Perón designated a candidate, Héctor Cámpora, who ran and won in a landslide and then seven weeks later resigned so that Perón could run.

That’s in brief the story. It wasn’t that democracy triumphed so obviously. However, after that dictatorship pretty much across the board, different sectors of Argentine society were willing to give democracy a chance. That was new. That was different compared to the past two failed experiments with democracy.

Well, Perón was a classic leftist populist. He came to power in 1946, as I said, in free and fair elections. He quickly turned in a profoundly authoritarian direction. You know, sometimes generals will go along with a leftist authoritarian turn. For reasons that I couldn’t quite tell you, the Argentine generals did not go along with that. The Argentine establishment hated Perón. Big industry, agriculture, the church, the Catholic church, across the board, these establishment actors hated Juan Perón. So, the military had a failed coup in 1951 and then a successful coup in 1955. By 1955, the clear dominant position in the Argentine military was Perón is the devil. We have to keep this guy out. The next semi free elections in Argentina were 1958. They banned Perón. Then in 1962, when in gubernatorial elections, some Peronistas ran pretty well.

The generals had a coup against that semi-democratic government and then in 1963, with new elections again, they proscribed Perón again. By the 60s, this is the height of the Cold War in Latin America after the Cuban Revolution. This was not true across the board, but most Latin American militaries turned in a very rightwing direction and were influenced by this ideology, which was also a reality, that the world was divided between communism and capitalism and communism was the great enemy. So, anything that came close to leftist positions at that time was complete anathema to the Argentine generals and to the generals in most of the region. Peru was an exception. There was a leftist military coup in 1968 in Peru, but the great majority of these militaries swung very far in a rightwing authoritarian direction in the 60s.

Both. When he was out of power, he fought for democratic elections. But when he was in power, he was a classic authoritarian. Especially from 1946 to ‘55, he relentlessly persecuted the political opposition. He relentlessly persecuted the opposition press, which was most of the press. He was the opposite of a democrat in office. As I said, especially from 1946 to ‘55, he worked against successive dictatorships. After 1955, he encouraged his allies to mobilize against those dictatorships. But he also mobilized against, understandably perhaps, the semi-democratic regimes in which he had been electorally proscribed and Peronistas had not been allowed to run candidates. So that’s inevitably an unstable equilibrium when you say that the biggest party which would win free and fair elections can’t compete.

He took a somewhat democratic turn in the 70s. From 1973 to ‘74 when he died, he was clearly less authoritarian than he had been from 1946 to ‘55. He was much more open to dialogue with the main political opposition. But still, even after it was clear that the generals were going to cede power to him. He encouraged leftwing political violence, leftwing political terrorism. He never was a full convert to democracy. When Héctor Cámpora won and then later when he was in office, one of his primary advisors was this far rightwing character named José López Rega. And Lopez Rega formed rightwing death squads. They were Peron’s way of working against the leftwing guerrillas. But a true Democrat doesn’t support leftwing terrorism knowing that a transition to democracy is coming and also doesn’t support rightwing death squads.

So, I feel like as Argentina is democratizing, that it’s got this conundrum. It is afraid to allow Juan Perón into power, partly due to his politics. But I can imagine there was another sense in that he would be a threat to democracy. If you try to create those institutions, try to democratize the country, bringing Perón into the system could undermine the democratization process. I mean, it definitely feels a bit like a paradox, to be honest, The idea that Perón is both a representation of democracy, because it’s the people’s will to bring the Peronists into power, but at the same time, Perón’s background is something that many Democrats would recognize as a threat to the democratic system.

So, as we’re looking at 1973, they’re trying to deal with a very delicate situation to be able to transition because they’re trying to keep Perón out of power, but at the same time, try to create a democratic constitution. How democratic was this constitution really in 1973? How democratic was Argentina as they’re making this transition?

Well, the constitution was democratic enough. I don’t think that was where the problem was. But you are right. It’s an eternal paradox or dilemma for democracy. Democracy can enable the election, the free and fair election, of authoritarians. Perón, in that respect, is an incredibly interesting example. Of course, very far from the only one. I mean, even though Germany’s democracy had eroded very severely by early 1933 to such a degree that we could say that it was already a competitive authoritarian regime. Still, Hitler won elections that were relatively free and fair. Within weeks, of course, the Reichstag fire gave rise to a rapid turn toward totalitarianism.

I don’t know enough about the Egyptian case in 2011, but certainly the opponents of the Muslim Brotherhood saw that party as authoritarian from the word go. I don’t know to what degree that perception is justifiable, but let’s say that it is. In any free and fair elections, the Muslim Brotherhood would win, but then everyone in the opposition thought, well, this is going to be a quick turn toward authoritarianism.

That is what the opposition to Perón believed from 1955 until 1970. In 1970, Perón and his arch rival, Ricardo Balbín, who was the leader of the Radical Party – despite the name, I should clarify for the English-speaking audience, that it’s a centrist party – had negotiations and came to an agreement that they would fight together against the dictatorship and for democracy. That was a turning point for the opposition to Perón and I think that was also very fundamental in Perón’s movement in a democratic direction.

Well, the main reason for which I wrote that is the protection of rights had profoundly deteriorated. That was very uneven across the national territory, but if leftist forces kill, it’s equally deplorable as when rightist forces kill. But the left was out of power. So, you could say that where the left was killing, that was not necessarily a deterioration of democracy. But when the state kills and when death squads sponsored by the state kill in large numbers that represents grave infringements of democratic rights. In addition, by the second half of 1975, the military was completely on its own in the sense that there was no civilian control over the military by then. The military was determining who should be promoted. The military was completely dictating the terms of what they called the war against subversion, efforts to control the leftwing guerrillas.

The military was effectively completely in control of human rights policy. In one province, Tucumán, the military had already undertaken a scorched earth policy. One of the guerrilla organizations controlled maybe something like a third of the territory of Tucumán. The military there began the policy that became state policy across the national territory after the coup in 1976: Torture, kill, disappear people in large numbers. And in addition to all of this, the Argentine constitution had this provision called interventions. So, the president could remove state governors. Now that’s constitutional, but if you start removing several democratically elected governors, is it democratic? That’s a different question and I think the answer is no.

In addition to all of that, in the province of Córdoba, which I mentioned earlier, the main hotbed of leftwing labor activity and one of the hotbeds of leftwing student and guerrilla activity, there was a police coup against the governor. The police just decided we don’t want this person to be governor anymore and Perón allowed it. Not only allowed it, he blessed it. So, there were just massive infringements of several of the main principles of democracy: Military subordination to civilian rule, protection of rights, free and fair elections. Well, the elections had been free and fair, but they were no longer respected.

Well, he was a chameleon. He was a real leftist from 1946 until at least ‘49, maybe ‘51. Then his economic policies induced an economic crisis. In economic policies, he turned toward the center at that point, but he still governed with a leftist… Well, I don’t know if I should call his coalition a leftist coalition. The main base was labor and the unorganized poor in Argentina. In 1973, he still had the full support of the biggest leftwing guerrilla organization when Cámpora was elected and took office and the full support of labor and most of Argentina’s poor and also most of the leftwing student groups.

But from ‘73 to ‘74, he really governed, well, his economic policies were, I would say, center left, very statist, but his orientation in other respects really clamped down on the far left. He had allies on the far right during the ‘73 to ‘74 period. So yes, he was a chameleon. I would change one thing that you said, though. Argentina from the late 40s on, maybe even from 1946 on, was profoundly divided between the pro-Perón and the anti-Perón forces. He had massive and fervent support and fervent opposition as well. In that respect, until 1970, almost like the US today in terms of the extreme polarization. But Argentina was more polarized ideologically than the US. The US has a very deep identity polarization and some ideological polarization, but Argentina in those years was profoundly polarized ideologically as well.

You know, you could go back to even 1930, but if we start with Perón’s rise to power, that period, 1946 to ‘55, was profoundly polarizing because on the one hand, he incorporated organized labor and mobilized labor in a very profound way and gave labor a lot of rights that it had not hitherto had. On the other hand, the Argentine establishment hated this man partially because he gave labor a lot of rights. He persecuted the political opposition. In terms of economic policies, he was very, very statist, and businesses don’t like hyper statist economic policies. They don’t like expropriations. I think the fact that he induced a big economic crisis, of course, also turned sectors of Argentina against him. So, I mean, I think that was a profoundly polarizing period.

Then after that, you proscribe Peronismo, which has other polarizing effects. You’re saying you’re the biggest electoral force, but you don’t count. You can’t vote. Then in the ‘60s, on top of all of this, you get the effects of Peronismo, the Cold War, and the Cuban Revolution. So, the effect of the Cold War pushes the Argentine military and the Argentine right in a further authoritarian direction. The Cuban Revolution could happen here. Well, no, it couldn’t have happened in Argentina, but people believed that it could have. The Argentine left had been a Peronist left mostly, but not a revolutionary left.

But in the late 60s, you see, in tandem with the Cordobazo, these massive riots in 1969, you see the emergence of a revolutionary left in Argentina, of a revolutionary labor movement that believed in Juan Perón. At least some of these leftist labor leaders did, but they were revolutionaries. So, this was not the biggest part of the labor movement, but it was an important and extremely disruptive part of the labor movement.

Yeah, it’s an excellent question. I think the democratically responsible thing to do would have been to name a capable vice president in case he were to die, but that’s not what he did. I think the main reason for nominating Isabel Perón as vice president was that Perón loved loyalists and she was the ultimate loyalist. It was also a way of muting potential tensions within the Peronista movement and the party at that time. This was not so true historically from 1946 to ’55. But by 1973 to 74, I think it is correct to say that Peronismo at that time, even until 76, was the most ideologically heterogeneous political party that has ever existed under democracy.

It included these far rightwing figures such as López Rega and the far left such as the Montoneros and the Peronista Youth, the Juventud Peronista, which was not part of the Montoneros, but there was a fluid relationship between the two. Many of the students who had been involved in the Peronista Youth later migrated to the Montoneros. So, I think it’s that combination of wanting the ultimate loyalist and wanting to avoid conflict. If Perón had nominated a leftwing Vice President in 1973, I think he realized that the right, the Argentine right, which had allowed him back into power with some dismay, but they’d allowed him back in, would have been utterly dismayed and that coalition would have started to disintegrate even before he took office.

If he had nominated someone from the right, the Peronista right to be his vice president, that would have just shocked much of his core. So, the safe and smart thing would have been to nominate a capable person from the Peronista center. But why he didn’t do that, I think he just didn’t want to adjudicate among the competing forces within his own movement.

You know, we could think about two main parts of the labor movement at this time, neither of which really defended democracy. There was the mainstream labor movement, which was Peronist loyalists. For example, they supported the death squad activities against the leftwing labor leaders. So, part of this was just professional and political competition. If you kill my rivals who are leftists, that’s fine. That’s great. They were above all Peronist loyalists and the way in which they failed to respect or to really do what was democratically optimal was that they constantly pushed for wage increases and other labor concessions. Many of the other concessions, you and I would sit here and think was a great thing, such as greater safety on the shop floor.

One of the things that did democracy in in this time period, I don’t think was the most important, but one of the things was Perón’s economic policies led to a huge economic crisis with a hyperinflationary burst in mid 1975. Labor could have exercised more restraint. They could have exercised the wisdom that it’s important to protect democracy, so we need some democratic restraint and at this time that means not pushing for 100 percent wage increases.

The leftwing part of the labor movement, which existed but been very minor until 1969 were either revolutionaries or very far on the left and they engaged in massive floor shop strikes, violence within the factories, so they raised fear on the right. This is a revolutionary labor movement and mainstream establishments and businesses don’t like revolutionary labor movements that are highly disruptive. So, both parts of the labor movement, for different reasons, were not favorable to democracy at this time.

So, what I’m hearing from you is that during this period, from 1973 until 1976, we’ve got political elites who are somewhat ambivalent towards democracy, with Juan Perón and his wife who succeeds him. They like the idea of elections because it brings them to power, but they don’t actually govern very democratically. The military seems to be a little bit skeptical of democracy. Not only have they had multiple coups over the course of Argentine history, but they don’t want to allow the most popular politician to run for political office. Then on top of that, we have labor who doesn’t seem to step up and defend democracy either. I mean, who is defending democracy during this period?

Scott Mainwaring

I should maybe note that by 1973, the dominant faction of the military, which was headed by then President Alejandro Lanusse, were willing to give Perón a chance. They were willing to give democracy a chance, but they quickly turned against democracy. When I say quickly, I think that the economic crisis in 1975 was possibly a turning point, but even more important than that for the military was the relentless violence, the relentless leftwing violence. The military felt our civilization is at stake. Things have gone profoundly wrong. I don’t think that was an inevitable outcome. I think it would have taken stellar democratic leadership to avoid that outcome and that’s not what Perón and certainly not what Isabel provided. Who were the Democrats? In my reading of the history, I would say a small part of the Peronist party.But the main democrats were the Radical Party. I would not have, in an unqualified way, said that they were democrats between 1932 and 1970. But when Ricardo Balbín negotiated with Perón, he did so knowing that he would lose the elections against Perón. He had decided that losing to Perón was better than dictatorship. Balbín won something like 21 percent of the vote in the two 1973 elections. It wasn’t a really big political force. As violence became the language of Argentine politics after the transition in May 1973, the voice of the Radical Party just got lost. It became an almost, not quite an irrelevant actor, but the actors that really mattered were the revolutionary left, the military, the rightwing death squads, and the Peronist movement and party.

Well, the generals had been planning a coup for many months by March 24th, 1976. There was a failed coup in December of that year. I think it was December 20th or something, 1975. But all of this was, maybe this is excessively cynical, but all of this was really a way of preparing Argentine society to desperately desire a coup. It’s not that everyone desired a coup in March 1976, but across the board, people felt this democratic experience has profoundly failed. And the most important parts of that failure in the Argentine imaginary were the seeming chaos, the great violence coming from both the left and the right, the economic crisis, and the sense that there was no government. Argentines felt that there was a vacuum of power, but that was an understandable perception.

So, March 24th, 1976 is the coup and it unleashes wild celebrations in establishment Argentina and almost no opposition. Even the Radical Party mostly by the end recognized that a coup was coming. Of course, this unleashed the most ruthless dictatorship in Argentina’s history and in recent South American history as well.

Yeah, not only among the political elite, but among other Argentine actors, labor, industry. I think it has to do again with the profound polarization that the Peronist period unleashed. Again, you could go back earlier than that and be correct to do so, but if establishment actors believe that free and fair elections will lead to a government that will quickly turn authoritarian and undermine their interests in a very deep way, that is a terrible recipe for democracy. It does not work. So, the example of Egypt in 2011 is probably very similar in that respect. Guillermo O’Donnell, the famous Argentine political scientist, referred to the period between 1955 and 1970 as an impossible game. It was impossible because the military, the Radical Party, and Argentine establishment actors vetoed Peronists. But the Peronists had the mobilizational capacity to undermine successive semi-democratic and authoritarian governments.

So, the formation of political actors and identities was such that the Peronists were not democratic and no one else accepted the Peronists, so they couldn’t be Democrats either. 1973 represented a real opportunity. It was a tightrope from the beginning, precisely because you had such a polarized society with a revolutionary left, a far rightwing that was initially quiescent but quickly reared its ugly head. Those are difficult conditions.

Yeah, excellent question. I mean, certainly, Millei’s discourse is very authoritarian. On the other hand, the situation that he confronts is radically different than the one that Juan Perón had in all of his presidencies in the following sense. I believe that Millei’s party, I might be off a little bit on this, but I think that his party has 8 of 72 Senate seats and 40 out of 257 seats in the equivalent of our House of Representatives. There are now three main political forces in Argentina. The other center right leaning party, the PRO, is supporting him so far. With that he does have a lot of support in Congress and among governors. But he doesn’t have the kind of unconditional power that Perón had.

Perón could do anything he wanted. He always had a 100 percent loyalist Congress with these overwhelming majorities. I believe that in his first presidency, there were no opposition senators. I think in the equivalent of our House of Representatives, the Radicals held maybe 14 seats out of 157 or something. So, you can do anything you want. Millei is democratically restrained by strong oppositions in the provinces, Argentina is a very strong federal system, in Congress, and this was not true historically, but starting in the 2000s under Néstor Kirchner, Argentina developed a very powerful Supreme Court. So, the court system is also an actor to reckon with in Argentina. All of which is to say that I think that if Millei had decisive majorities in the National Congress, he would be a threat to democracy.

But he doesn’t have that, so I don’t think he’s a threat to democracy. Regarding his economic policies we’ll have to see how successful or not he is. He’s certainly right that Argentina became excessively wedded to a very statist economic model. Some of his policies that he would prefer, at least he said he would prefer, are lunatic policies, abolishing a central bank. No, that is not a way to get sound fiscal policies, quite to the contrary. No economist in her right mind would say that’s a great idea. I do think that he needed to make some market-oriented corrections. We’ll see what happens with it.

Absolutely. I mean, I think the last dictatorship was such a disaster that it generated what I call a democratic shock. So, Peronists became wholescale converts to democracy. Some of the Peronist presidents wanted to reduce checks and balances. They wanted to govern without the constraints that they did. But they bought into democracy. They accepted electoral losses. The Radical Party, had become full converts to democracy in 1970 and remained that way. The labor movement mobilized on behalf of democracy at personal risk when there were military rebellions in the 80s and 1990.

Transitional justice and the construction of historical memory also played an important role in creating this sense that the worst democracy is better than dictatorship. The way that transitional justice was carried out after Alfonsín’s period, especially beginning the Kirchners, is very controversial in the sense that the Kirchners condemned the rightwing violence and condoned the leftwing violence. So that has caused some dismay, but still, if you compare Argentina, probably to any other country in the world, in terms of transitional justice and the construction of a memory about what the last dictatorship was, I think it’s probably the most ambitious democratizing effort in the world since the Nuremberg Trials and Germany’s efforts to construct a historical memory about the Holocaust and the Hitler period.