Peronismo and the Body
Look at the all the films to see how her body is constructed
Integrate peronism and its history
Integrate the philosophy of peronismo
The history of Eva Peron’s body
Use the films to see how
Body, peronismo, popular culture? connection between peronismo and Bo/Sarli
-role of peron and the church and sexuality
Daniel James, “Peron and the People”
- siding with lower classes
- James develops a nicely argued piece about the philosophical ideology behind Peron
- he contextualizes the beginning of the Peron movement to the “decada infamy” began after the 1930 coup on Yrigoyen.
- ISI by the mid 1930s argentina was an industrialized economy - the effects of this new economic reality meant that “new members were now drawn from the interior provinces of Argentina …They were attracted to the expanding urban centres… By 1947, some 1,368,000 migrants from the interior had arrived in BA attracted by he rapid industrial expansion.” 274
- this rapid expansion of the economy did not benefit the working class - James argues that in fact there existed cynicism and fear of loosing jobs
- coup of 1943 - Peron was the secretary of labour
- he began to address some of the concerns of the working class and eradicating the competitors in the working class
growing working class support for person first crystallized on October 17, 1945 demonstration that secured his release from confinement and launched him on the path to victory in presidential elections of Feb 1946
-before Peron - influence of organizationally fragmented labour movement on the working class was limited
-argues that from 1943 to 1946 improvements in the working conditions and social legislation but it’s from 1946-1955 where most profound effect on the working class’ position in argentine society
-increase in the organizational strength and social weight of the working class
-rapid increase in the extension of trad unionism 1948 risen to 30.5% and in 1954 to 42.5%.
-contracts in period from 1946-48 regulated wage scales and job descriptions and also included a whole array of social provisions concerning sick leaves, maternity leave and cations
-very important was the role of the state in overseeing and articulating this structure of the trade unions- gave the union rights and most importantly made the state the ultimate guarantor of and overseer of this process
-unions conduits of government policy among the workers
-role of incorporating the working class into the state
-at first saw workers as inexperienced dupes
-revisionists saw them as logical involvement of labor in a state directed reformist project that promised labor concrete material gains- shift from passive manipulated mass to class conscious actors being a realistic path for satisfaction of material needs
BUT james argues that there is a new allegiance - that’s why examines political vision of Peron and nature of his rhetoric
-appeal was Peron’s ability to redefine citizenship - started with Yrigoyen -struggles against the oligarchy which was undone during the decade inflame mainly in the provinces - not the capital
system of institutionalized fraud and corruption
- cynicism - crisis of legitimacy
- rights of citizenship had long existed since the saenz pena law of 1912
- -peronism was a claim of reestablishment of recognized rights
- recast the issue of citizenship in a new social context
- extended citizenship to participation in social and economic life of the nation
- not in the abstract “liberty” democracy etc. - he argued that these masked inequities
- beyond philosophical idea of democracy - real life focus in material conditions
- premised recognition of the working class as a distinct social force that demand recognition
- the state was a space where the workers as a class (not isolated individuals) could act politically and socially to establish corporate rights
- elements of personalist caudillismo but the basis for the support is that affirmation of the social and organizations strength of the working class
- also absorbed strands of nationalist thought Argentina potency in contrast to Argentina granja
- this dichotomy was not accurate
- working class recognized in his espousal of industrial development a vital role as an actor in greatly expanded public sphere
- made social justice and national sovereignty credible interrelated themes rather than simply enunciated abstract slogans
- the people became the working people the nation and the workers
- nationalism in terms of concrete economic issues
- -glorified everyday and the ordinary as sufficient basis for the rapid attainment of a juster society
- appeal was plebeian eschewed need for enlightened political elite
- tango lyrics and la vieja
- adjectives chabacano and burdo to describe his supporters and Peron
- -utopian but credible
- Peron cumple
- present with the past - saviour from that past humiliating and frustrating time
- -reality where everything is corrupt and bad
- while commercialization can cloud and make a tenuous relationship between the people and the culture - BUT the immense popularity of these tangos among the working class attest to the fact that whatever the manipulation of the culture industry- responded to certain attitudes and experiences recognized as authentic
- CONTINUATION IN THE BOOK
- peronist discourse ability to articulate these unformulated experiences was the basis oaf its heretical power
- descamisado - terms now become central to the new language of power
- working clothes and took term inverted by Peron
- “Wel with Peron we were all machos”
- attenmpt to instituionalize and control the heretical challenge and absorb the challenge within a new state sponsored orthodoxy
- from state to works to go peacefully “from home to work and from work to home”
- -iculcate notions of class harmony
- efficacy of official ideology depended on its ability to tie in with working-class perceptions and experiences
- marked critical conjuncture in the emergence and formation of the modern argentine working class
- its existence and sense of identity as a coherent national force
- rehtoric as a most convenient vehicle to satisfy its material needs
- remained a heretical voice giving expression to the hopes of the oppressed with the factory and byond as a claim for social dignity and equality
- recognized the dangers of such ambivalence
Religious Liberty in Argentina during the First Peron regime, 1943-1955 David D’Amico
- confuses the military government with Peron - conflation of dates and events - history
- does not substantiate his opinions
- many are just opinions without real evidence
- from a protestant perspective and looking at protestant liberties
- Catholic Action - organized in the 1930s fostered a hierarchy - nationalistic, right wing and fanatic- produced harassment of masons jews protestants and communists
- Peron’s role in religious intolerance
- letter issued by the archbishops in jan of 1945 - suggested the changes that would take place one month later and catholic religious instruction in public school had been instituted by he provisional military government
- 1943 protestants sponsored 10-15 radio programs throughout Argentina
- feb 18, 1945 all broadcasts were suspended
- because: 1. radio waves belonged to state 2. catholicism is religion established by the state
- 3. radio cannot be used to propagate views contrary to state 4. freedom of worship does not imply freedom to propagate evangelical views
- 1949 the broadcasts were suspended for 5 years
- 1947 the government purchased all private radio stations for national security
- 1949 to 1954 freedom of press suffered and so did the radio programs
- Peron in power from June 4, 1946
- effected freedom to propagate by radio, to move and act without government checking personnel, finances, and property; to buy property and erect churches; compulsory catholic religious instruction in public schools and restrictions in evangelization of aborigines (THATS what he says!!!)
- last year of Peron’s regime liberty was curtailed for catholics
- claims that P endorsed religious instruction in public schools before 1946 election gave government money to endow seminaries and episcopal palaces subsidized eucharistic congresses raised the salaries of clergy and used clergy in government agencies
- Catholic action was a significant political force after coup of 1943
- 1954 there was a shift- why?
- public pronoucements legislation offensive to the church physical persecution of clergy and burning os church
- suppressing commission for religious instruction and legalizing both divorce and prostitution
- activist priests were imprisoned, religious holidays canceled and and in April 1955 religious instruction in public school was suspended
- may 1955 he was calling for constitutional convention to disestablish the church
- overthrown in September
- expulsion of papal nuncio from Argentina and Pope Pius xii excommunication of Peron
- church’s alliance with the military and oligarchy to overthrow Peron was resented by peronistas
Review in Chasqui about Feminine body, mourning and nation by Viviana Plotkin
lots of good references for scholarship on Eva - look up for this scholarship
Beatriz Sarlo - La pasion y la excepcion 2003
Alicia Dujovne Ortiz Eva Peron 1995
Education and the Church-State clash in Argentina, 1954-55 Virginia Leonard
argument is that Peron’s conflict with the church was purposeful and
The New Cultural History of Peronism
“Introduction” -Karush and Chamosa.
-gives a good overview of the scholarship on Peron
- what are the peronist strongholds: industrial belt and secondary cities, small towns and rural communities and not in high and middle income urban districts
- many of central images and rhetrical moves remain staples of political discourse
- Halperin suggest the transformation was radical enough to sow seeds of brutal and seemingly unending conflict for decades
- define it as cultural is to reframe it as an object of historical inquiry
- he got into power with help of army, press, academia and the church who had aspirations of upward mobility but once economic development allowed this group meet its expectations the sectors abandoned the class alliance - Di Tella
- Laclau talks about popular democratic interpellations oppositional to the ideology of the dominant bloc
- Laclau and Ipola had uncovered the importance of peronist language
- Daniel James -why Peron’s rhetoric and political style appeal to the people- bottom up approach resurrected the pioneering research - focus on reception revealed potential for a culturalist approach
- popular consciousness is not determined by interests that are in some way prior to discourse nor is the state an autonomous and omnipotent actor able to shape identities - cultural history must reconceptualize this encounter
- there have been some good cultural analysis but their reliance on relatively simplistic historical accounts have weakened their arguments i.e. cultural studies is not historical enough
- actors engaged with multiple discourses in a struggle over meaning avoids dominance and resistance more dynamic process of hegemonic processes
- he proposes cultural history as a way of studying politics -encounter between masses and state
- constructed own identities with engagement with peronist project as they pushed and pulled it in new directions
- threat to the enemy was the invasion of the migrants and attract on traditional hierarchies
- gendered aspects of peronist discourse
- intersection between state, market and masses
- -contraditions that characterized peronism toppled class hierarchies yet upheld bourgeois respectability and aesthetics
- mobilized the masses yet it instituionalized itself and allowed the masses to have power within the state
- embraced the cabecitas engross but it emphasized snappishness
“Populism, melodrama and the market” M Karush
-revisit the period before 1943 to uncover cultural elements that provided discursive material out of which the heretical appeal was built
-traces connections melodramatic mass culture in 1930s and political appeals crafted by person between 1943 and 1946
-argues that Peron was able to appropriate discursive elements that circulated in mass culture and refashion them into powereful political appeal
commercial imperatives reinforced the heretical meanings implicit in argentine melodrama encouraged conformism and quest for upward mobility
populism was outcome of particular pattern of mass cultural development
-basis for his discourse idea poor as teachers of the rich - one asectct of peronism’s heretical inversion of hierarchy and anti intellectualism characteristic of the movement
BO WAS ANIT INTELLECTUAL TOO
-binary moralism is moleramatic and he argues lies in the mass culture of 1930s
-1930s (influenced by Irigoyen) wealth functioned as a sign of malice - tango plot
uses films to show this
-Peron’s insistence on equating workers, pueblo and nation reproduces mass culture’s depiction of hard working long suffering poor as authentic argentine
-use of lunfardo and his tango tropes
-he argues that Peron appropriated and rearticulated discursive elements and in so doing transformed them
-catholic social thought offered one possible source for this notion as well for rejection of individualism and bourgeois materialism
-catholicism experienced a resurgence in 1930s
-Manuel Romero and Luis Cesar Amadori and in tango Francisco Lomuto and Enrique Santos Discepolo promoted peronismo
-pressure to compete with jazz reinforced the authenticity of tango
-three claims of authenticity in tango: rooted in the past, it was melancholy and rooted in popular not elite culture= sadness, resistance to moderbnity and affiliation with plebeian
-tango and melodrama = systematically depoliticized social conflicts and contradictions by transposing them onto stories of frustrated love
-during the 1930s a new international tango became popular told stories of love and betrayal less rooted in the suburbs
-market power of hollywood tightened local cinema’s claim of argentine popular culture
-effort in the late 1930s to attract more elite audiences
-but melodrama persisted
-society divided between selfish rich and noble poor
-Romero transformed class conflict into morality tales but insisted on siding with poor
-poor represented the nation and the past
-mass culture was ambivalent oscillating between heretical and conformist views
-says that ambivalence originated in mass culture of 1930s
-peronismo gave collective a sense of upward mobility without them thinking they were selfish as it was not frame in individual mode