# First Lady of Tyranny **URL:** **By** David Hart **Published:** August 1, 1979 --- “The Perons were the only people promising any relief in Argentina, and their clever manipulation of the people brought them loyalty.” _Evita, First Lady: A Biography of Eva Peron_, by John Barnes. Grove Press, 208 pp., $8.95. Juan Manuel de Rosas, the creator of the first South American secret police, the man who first forged a semblance of unification from the quarrelling provinces of Argentina, and the butcher who drove thousands of Indians from their land by slaughtering them, described his success in holding onto power thusly: > I know and respect the talents of many of the men who governed this country.... But it seems to me that all committed a grave error; they governed very well for the cultured people but scorned the lower classes, the people of the fields, who were the men of action. I believe it is important to establish a major influence over this class to contain it and direct it, and I have acquired this influence. I am a gaucho among gauchos. I talk as they do. I protect them. I am their attorney. I care for their interests. This was also the strategy of the Perons. They were able to rule Argentina by buying the support of millions of poor, working class people who had legitimate grievances against the stagnant, near-feudal status quo, with its baronial land ownership, its poverty, its cruelly low wages in a land of considerable wealth. These were the reasons why the millions of descamisaderos, the shirt-less ones, were willing to follow the Perons. The Perons were the only people promising any relief in Argentina, and their clever manipulation of the people brought them loyalty. In a land where an aristocratic elite had a virtual state-granted monopoly of land ownership, it was not surprising that the peasants would support anyone who promised them land. Indeed, time and time again throughout the Third World, it is the legacy of feudalism, and the failure of the radical classical liberal movements of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries to bring their revolutions to the Third World, which sets the stage for modern despotisms in the name of “social welfare.” When the classical liberal movement died at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, the oppressed classes in Latin America and elsewhere turned to others who promised reform and fundamental change. In the 20th century, Argentinians turned to Juan and Evita Peron. They had reason to seek fundamental change, for the legacy of feudalism and colonialism was strangling them. In the province of Buenos Aires, 15 families owned one million acres of land each, land granted to them by the State; another 50 families owned 50,000 acres each. In Argentina itself, two thousand landlords owned the richest fifth of the land. Seventy percent of the farms in Argentina were worked by sharecroppers who were forced to pay over fifty percent of their income as feudal “rent.” The Argentinian people were also the victims of quite ruthless exploitation by the colonialist powers of Europe. The British had a particularly strong hold on the economy, controlling through political means two thirds of all foreign investment, the public utilities, meat packing, shipping, banking, insurance and the railways. A perfect example of the power and privilege of the British colonialists— and how they exercised it—is the forced closing of private bus companies in Buenos Aires in 1933 for the simple reason that they competed with the British-owned transport facilities. The Perons promised to end these feudalist and colonialist abuses, and won the 1946 election with overwhelming support from the peasants and working classes. These gullible people turned a blind eye to the Perons’ Jew-baiting, to their harassment of the opposition, and to the more than 100 murders committed during the election campaign. They voted for Peron because he had aligned himself with them, the descamisaderos. ## The rise of Evita Peron The story of Evita Peron is one of relentless opportunism in the pursuit of power and prestige. Born an “illegitimate child” in 1919, she climbed her way to the top by carefully selecting her sleeping partners. She attached herself to anyone who could advance her career—until a more powerful colonel or general came her way. After the June 1943 military coup, she advanced her career as a two-bit soap commercial “actress” by sleeping with President Pedro Ramirez, followed by the Minister of Communications, Colonel Anibal Im-bert—who considerably increased her income at the radio station where she worked—and then moved on to the real power behind the scenes: Juan Domingo Peron, the Colonel who had been Undersecretary of the War Ministry and the Secretary of the officers’ group which had staged the coup. No one thought Eva to be anything other than a terrible actress, yet she continued to be employed because of her closeness to the seats of power: film studios could, through her, acquire the film, gasoline and tires which were important to their work but were strictly rationed. Bad actress though she was, Eva had an indispensable role in Peron’s administration. She convinced him that a hitherto untapped constituency could keep them in power, people whom she diligently pursued, manipulated and converted to the Peron cause. She gave them minimum wages and improved living conditions; she gave wage increases to white collar workers, shop assistants and factory hands. She gave them four-week holidays, sick leave, protection from arbitrary dismissal, and an extra one-month’s wage bonus at Christmas, and created fiercely pro-Peron unions under the CGT—the General Confederation of Labor—to convince the workers that the new Peronist ruling class was their friend and protector. But in fact the Perons had a sophisticated philosophy of how to exploit the very workers they were supposed to be defending. The Perons thought the older conservative ruling classes had made the mistake of trying to take too much. Juan and Eva would not make that mistake. They gave to the workers and the impoverished with one hand, to win their support. With the other hand they bled the country dry. Typical of their success in winning loyalty was the case of Saturnio Astorga, who related to _Newsweek_ why, in spite of obvious corruption, repression and fascism on the part of the Perons, he would always remain faithful to the memory of Evita: > When I got married in 1948, my wife and I were so poor that a sip of milk was a luxury. We couldn’t spare a few pence each month for a bus ride to visit her parents. Then came the Perons. Evita gave me this house. My salary jumped fivefold. We lived like people. Thanks to the Perons, \[I\] was able to buy furniture and a refrigerator, \[my\] sons went to government-built schools and ate cheap lunches at government-subsidized cafeterias, \[my\] family enjoyed a fifteen-day paid holiday, and \[my\] medical bills were paid by the state. None of the politicians who have followed Peron have done anything for me. I am 100 percent Peronista, and always will be. As one might infer from this welfare-state bribery of some classes to gain their support, Peron took as one of his models none other than Mussolini, claiming that “Mussolini was the greatest man of this century. But he committed certain mistakes. I, who have the advantage of his precedent before me, shall follow in his footsteps but also avoid his mistakes.” His other model was the British empire, and the following statement of his—wherein he also defended the corruption of his wife’s brother—makes one wonder about his actual motives in opposing British investment in and political control of the Argentina economy: “The British Empire was built by good men and pirates, and I’m going to build the Argentine empire with good men and pirates.” As long as Peron controlled the army, which he did by appointing an entire new class of junior officers who were loyal to him for their positions, and as long as his wife controlled the media, he could ignore the traditional power elites because he had the millions of descamisaderos at his side who would march in the streets if his power were threatened. Evita was a skilled manipulator. She would meet with hundreds of descamisaderos in her office, listen to their grievances, and give them presents of money or promise to right particular wrongs for them. But she was even more skilled in her control of the press, the radio and the pro-Peron unions. The government forced all local radio stations throughout the country to transmit her evening fireside chats. She owned or controlled the four principal radio stations in Buenos > “The Perons were able to rule Argentina for nearly a decade by cynically buying the support of millions of poor, working class people who had grievances against the status quo.” Aires and was able to censor the news in thirty-three other stations throughout the nation. She also owned two large Buenos Aires daily newspapers which always ran stories about her, and continually kept her picture on page one. Barnes describes her power over the media thusly: > ... her control of radio stations and newspapers, her presence permeated every town and home in Argentina. There was no escape. Her picture dominated the hoardings. Her thoughts were broadcast every few hours throughout the day on nationwide radio. Her name graced the country’s largest gas works and its biggest passenger liner... \[and\] a new downtown Buenos Aires underground station, where the words “Eva Peron” were bordered with light and her portrait in colored tile gazed on all passersby. By 1951 the control was more complete: nearly one hundred newspapers which had failed to conform to her whim were closed. “Shortages” of newsprint, “excessive noise,” “blocking traffic” and “insufficient first aid facilities” closed many opposition papers which dared challenge the myth of Eva Peron. Student opposition was also crushed ruthlessly. By October 1954, four thousand political prisoners were being held in the Villa Devoto Prison, on Martin Garcia island, in Neuquen prison and even in requisitioned private homes in the suburbs. Peron eventually nationalized the six universities and outlawed student political activity completely. Thousands of other opponents either disappeared or fled the country. Opposition trade unionists who refused to join the Peronist CGT were sent to concentration camps in Patagonia. In fact it was not until the economy was nearly in ruins as a result of their policies that the Perons lost much of their labor support. Until that day, Eva’s control of the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare, and her pay increases by decree won over the majority of the organized workers. Five million out of a total of seven million organized workers had joined the CGT. And political control was even extended to the telephone system, which they said may not be abandoned to the thoughtless or irresponsible. Employing the telephone to insult or offend is a crime which deserves punishment by justice. The long arm of the law and the Department of Posts and Telegraphs watch over the use of the telephone, that its noble and social purpose should not be misused. Such irresponsible criminals will be punished. ## Confusion of their opponents Peron’s opponents were confused because his brand of authoritarian rule was new to the South American continent. He was not a run-of-the-mill strongman, at least while Eva was alive and running things. Looking back on the years of rule by the General and his wife, an opponent recalls that “On this continent we are accustomed to the dictator-type of rulers—arrogant strongmen. It is a woeful tradition. But this man Peron, he was a dictator of a different type. He was subtle, devious, charming. He did not come out in the open and crack skulls. He did his work silently and cynically. You see, there was so little we could put our hands on—everything he did was in the name of democracy and social betterment—and yet we sensed the smell of evil in the air, and the thin edge on which we walked.” In fact, corruption and exploitation were everywhere. Eva’s supreme creation, used to exploit the workers in the name of their own welfare—much like the American Social Security System, in fact—was the Social Aid Foundation. Barnes describes it as “the most gigantic protection racket-cum-slush fund the world had ever seen.” Its purpose was to compete with the high society charities which had turned their backs on the illegitimate Eva and refused her entrance to their circle when she first came to power. The Foundation’s income grew to fifty million pounds per year and eventually became the country’s largest enterprise. It was funded by “voluntary” contributions from all members of Argentinian society. It took one percent of all the wage increases Eva had granted; unions contributed money from their own funds; twenty percent of the state lottery went into its coffers; and companies were blackmailed by government inspectors into contributing—and if they refused to do so, judges would give part of the imposed fine to the Foundation. The Foundation’s function was to build schools, hospitals, nursing schools, and to give foreign aid to Israel and to Washington—much to their embarrassment—while providing an unobtrusive means of funneling millions into Evita’s private bank account. When asked why she did not keep accounts of the Foundation’s contributions, Eva said merely that “Keeping books on charity is capitalistic nonsense. I just use the money for the poor. I can’t stop to count it.” Naturally, because of this, it is impossible to estimate how much she and her husband stole from the Foundation in the name of “charity.” One Swiss account that was discovered in her name held more than six million pounds in cash and jewelry. When Peron was finally ousted in 1955, an inspection of his property revealed “Eva’s breathtaking and priceless collection of jewelry, his 16 custom built sports cars of every foreign make, his . . . cupboards crammed with hundreds of suits and uniforms. Police said they found five million pounds in cash in various safes in the two Presidential mansions, the San Vicente \[holiday home\] and two apartments, one of them a lovenest with bedrooms lined with mirrors and carpeted with white bearskin rugs.” Eva’s family also made a handsome profit from her years in power. She had appointed her brother as Peron’s private secretary in order to control who had access to the President; he retired with a fortune of twelve million pounds. Not bad for a twelve pound a month salesman. Her mother’s boy friend was made Minister of Communications; her elder sister Elisa was given political control of the town of Junin where Eva grew up; Elisa’s husband was elected to the Senate; another sister’s husband was made Governor of Buenos Aires province and a member of the Supreme Court; another relative, who had been an elevator operator in the Hotel at Junin, was made Director of Federal Customs. It is as though Billy Carter had been appointed Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, and Miss Lillian to the U.S. Supreme Court. When Eva died, cracks had begun to appear in the edifice she and her husband had created. They had spent the considerable wealth that Argentina had accumulated during the war and immediately afterwards from beef and grain sales to Europe and the U.S. In 1945 Argentina had billions in foreign exchange, a gold backing of one-and-a-half pesos and a exchange rate of four pesos to the U.S. dollar. At the end of the Peron reign, they had spent all the foreign reserves and had so inflated the pesos that it now exchanged at sixteen to the dollar. Beef shortages and the need to import grain revealed how they had wrecked the strong Argentinian economy. Living standards had declined to the levels of the years before the military coup, the military had grown weary of taking orders from a “mere woman,” and Eva’s illness—cancer of the uterus—had weakened Juan Peron’s hold over the country. But the myth was still very strong when she died in 1952. Millions went to see her lying in state, her autobiography was made a school textbook, monuments were planned to commemorate her life, and a national day of remembrance was decreed. Thousands were injured in the hysteria of the period of mourning. The Post Office promised that only stamps with her face on them would be sold for the next twelve months, and Peronista Party officials were instructed to wear a black tie of mourning at official functions for the rest of their lives. Without Eva beside him, Peron had a less than secure hold on the reins of power. He resorted to the traditional strongman tactics of control and repression. He lacked the sophistication of his wife and was eventually forced out of office and had to seek refuge in the only havens of fascism that still remained—in Paraguay, Somoza’s Nicaragua, Venezuela, Trujillo’s Dominican Republic, and finally Franco’s Spain. The tragedy of the Peron phenomenon is that a traditional parasitical ruling elite cloaked its desire for power and wealth behind the rhetoric of “social justice” for the poor and the dispossessed. Eva Peron perceptively used the descamisaderos’ grievances for land, jobs and improved living conditions, the end of foreign colonial domination of the country, and their desperate need to find someone who cared about their suffering, to line the pockets of her husband and family. Of course there was no endless source of funds that she could draw upon to finance her “Social Aid Foundation,” and when she had bankrupt the country, Peron had to resort to the tried and true methods of dictatorship. The myth of Eva Peron still survived because the masses of the people remain ignorant of the free market and the necessary restraints that this places on economic development. One cannot create prosperity out of thin air. The lesson for libertarians is that in the Third World, unless they promise radical and fundamental changes in the political systems which oppress people, unless they promise radical land reform based on their entitlement theory of justice in ownership, the end to imperialist and colonialist control and exploitation through the end of state-granted privileges, the end of conservative control of politics and the economy, and the freeing of the economy to permit open access to jobs, investments and land, then the libertarian appeal will fall on deaf ears. Because the classical liberal revolutions did not touch these countries, these are very real issues, the issues which fire the peasants, and if the libertarians do not make their case for radical private property and the free market, then the people of the Third World will instead turn to whoever does promise them change and reform, whether of the left or right, in their desperate effort to improve their own lives, lives made so miserable by the legacy of parasitic governments across the globe. David Hart, of the history department of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, writes frequently for LR.