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President Arturo Illia and the Argentine Military

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Thomas M. Millington
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Extract

Since 1930 the military has overthrown the Government of Argentina four times: in 1930, when General Uriburu overthrew the constitutional government of Hipólito Irigoyen; in 1943, when General Ramírez overthrew Ramón Castillo and initiated a confused series of events which led ultimately to the accession to the presidency of Juan Perón in 1946; in September, 1955, when officers of the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force combined their forces to oust Perón himself; and in March, 1962, when a small group of officers staged a coup which deposed Arturo Frondizi, the first elected president to follow Perón.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Inter-American Studies , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , July 1964 , pp. 405 - 424
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 1964

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References

1 La Razón, August 23, 1963, p. 1.

2 Primera Plana (Argentine political journal), December 25, 1962, p. 20. Memo from Gen. Ongania to Gen. Lorio, then Commander-in-Chief of the Army.

3 La Prensa, September 24, 1962, pp. 1, 3.

4 El Mundo, August 14, 1963, p. 8. Address given by Gen. Onganía to the Association of Announcers and Advertisers.

5 Ibid.

6 Primera Plana, November 20, 1962, p. 11, column 1.

7 The Peronist party is illegal in Argentina. Justicialismo or the Peronist Movement (Movimiento Peronista) are terms the Peronists use to represent themselves yet which do not connote organization as a political party; the terminology is selected to circumvent the law. Justicialismo is directed by a national body called the Junta Coordinadora del Movimiento Peronista.

The “62 Organizations”, which in addition to the remnants of the machinery of the former official Peronist party make up the Peronist movement today, refers to the Peronist labor unions. Perón consolidated monolithic support among the labor unions and maintained it through labor's representative body, Confederación General de Trabajadores (CGT). After Perón was overthrown in 1955, General Aramburu, provisional president of Argentina, intervened in the CGT and called for free elections among the labor unions. In those elections, sixty two of the unions returned Peronists to power, thus originating the name “62 Organizations”; the Socialist party won thirty-two of the union elections while the Communists won nineteen. Although the number of Peronist-controlled labor unions is today not exactly sixty two, that number has been preserved as the name for ideological purposes. The CGT has been recreated today, at the request of all labor unions, for the purpose of coordinating policies in the field of labor; all unions are represented. In the field of politics, however, they act separately. Only the Peronist labor unions, of course, belong to the Peronist movement as represented by Justicialismo.

8 The figure of 2,400,00 was approximately what the UCRP had received in earlier elections but in the July, 1963 elections, the UCRP had lost many of its traditional votes to UDELPA; some calculate as many as a million. In the July elections, however, this loss was more than compensated for by the votes of independents and Peronists.

9 El Mundo, August 16, 1963, p. 8, editorial by Mariano Grondona.

10 In the House of Deputies, the major representations are: UCRP, 71 seats; UCRI, 45 (divided approximately equally between the followers of Alende and the followers of Frondizi); Federación de Centro, 18; Demócrata Cristiano, 7; Socialista Demócrata, 5; Socialista Argentino, 5; Demócrata Progresista, 13; and UDELPA, 18.

11 Comentarios (an Argentine political journal), March 25, 1964, pp. 2-3. Reference is made here to declarations of General Guglialmelli, director of the Escuela Superior de Guerra, who is most identified with this new conception of the role of the military.