WHY PERON CAME TO POWER

This combines a lengthy introduction by the editor and an assortment of selected material from the writings of Ricardo Levene, George Pendle, Gino Germani, John J. Johnson and other widely respected commentators on Argentine affairs. It is a collection of largely retrospective judgments and analyses and a useful supplement to George Blanksten's Peron's Argentina (1953). Peronism is still a very present factor in Argentine politics, accounting for a third of the nation's electorate. Thus the reader is not merely revisiting the historical period when Peron was either the power behind the throne or actually held the presidency, but is told why Peronism has been an ineradicable factor in Argentina thirteen years after his ouster. The editor takes a middle road between those who attribute all of the nation's present-day tribulations, or all of its improved social restructuring, to the Peron era; even so, his contributors tend to be ever mindful of the cheap, descamisados (shirtless ones)--oriented solutions of the period that proved in the long run very costly to the nation without solving any of Argentina's basic problems. A professional study that deserves to be an accepted part of the new writings on Latin America.