The Argentine political movement built around General Juan Perón and his wife Eva, which gave the working poor a voice, a welfare state, and an enduring loyalty, while critics charge it muzzled the press and built a personality cult — and which remains, eighty years on, the most powerful and most divisive force in Argentine politics.
On the night of 17 October 1945, tens of thousands of workers poured into the great square in front of Argentina's presidential palace. They had come from the meatpacking plants and slums of Buenos Aires, many in shirtsleeves, and they refused to leave until the government released the army colonel who had championed them. By dawn it had. That colonel was Juan Perón, and the crowd's loyalty made him president within months. The movement they founded gave the Argentine poor a welfare state, the vote for women, and a dignity they had never been granted. To its admirers it is the soul of the nation; to its critics it is a strongman's cult that traded liberty for handouts and became central to Argentina’s long argument over decline. Eighty years later, Argentina is still arguing.