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  • The New Cultural History of Peronism: Power and Identity in Mid-Twentieth-Century Argentina
  • Kristen L. McCleary
The New Cultural History of Peronism: Power and Identity in Mid-Twentieth-Century Argentina. Edited by Matthew B. Karush and Oscar Chamosa. Durham: Duke Univesity Press, 2010. Pp. viii, 309. Bibliography, Index. $84.95 cloth; $23.95 paper.

This edited volume of eight published essays, which also includes a succinct historiography of Peronism (in the editors' introduction) and a thoughtful afterword by Mariano Plotkin, expands our understanding of the first two presidencies of Juan Domingo Perón (1946–1952 and 1952–1955) by focusing on the intersection between culture and cultural reception in an era of increasing commercialism. The essays grew out of a conference panel and share an intellectual debt to Plotkin and Daniel James, who were among the first scholars to explore Peronism through a cultural lens. While the contributors to this volume are primarily historians, they provide an interdisciplinary approach to understanding Peronism by including in their inquiries beauty pageants, folklore, political demonstrations, political rhetoric, visual imagery, and the study of emotions.

Focusing on the interactions among culture, politics, and audience reception, these essays have theoretical frameworks but do not suffer from the weight of unwieldy theoretical jargon. Most are very accessible to undergraduate students, a feat managed without the sacrifice of analytical heft. Overall, this volume offers nuanced understandings of the complex ways in which Peronism transmitted its political messages, how those messages [End Page 561] were received and remembered, and how Peronism's emphasis on language and pageantry contributed to a fragmentation of society, while at the same time opening a small space for inclusion of a broader ethnic identity for the Argentine nation. The authors all agree that Perón's vision of social revolution fell short and emphasize the limits to deep social change implicit in much of Peronism's political rhetoric.

Contradictions highlighted by the essays reveal the malleability of Peronism and its ability to mean many things to many audiences. Matthew Karush's chapter, for example, emphasizes Perón's incorporation of lunfardo, urban street slang derived from tango lyrics, into his speeches. Karush argues that Perón deliberately employed working-class vocabulary and idioms, even the structure of melodrama, to appeal to his strongest base of support. In contrast, Eduardo Elena emphasizes the very different rhetorical strategy employed in the magazine Argentina. Elena argues that the magazine tried to establish a cultural orthodoxy, by which he means a kind of social behavior code meant to shape the ideal Peronist adherent. The code stressed nationalism and rejected commercialism and foreign influence. Ultimately, Elena shows that Peronism allowed room for even the voices of conservative Catholics who wished to rid the nation of the same cabecitas negras usually embraced by Peronism.

Three of the essays explicitly assess the relationship between Peronism and racial and ethnic identities. Each offers a complex understanding of how Peronism offered some inclusion of ethnic or non-European identity, but ultimately privileged social class over ethnic discourse. Oscar Chamosa provides a fascinating account of how Perón embraced folklore that tended to challenge Argentina's identity as a white nation by including music that had developed in the indigenous and mestizo regions of the northeast. Natalia Milanesio deconstructs the ways in which Perón's enemies used racist and classist language to respond to the perceived threat of an invasion of working classes into the capital city. Diana Lenton analyzes historical memory through her essay on the Malón de Paz of 1946, when indigenous peoples from northeastern Argentina traveled via caravan to demand redistribution of their native lands from the Peronist government.

The volume seems to be intentionally light on Eva Perón. Only Anahi Ballent's "Unforgettable Kitsch" explores her impact as part of Perón's rule. Arguing that Evita was the most important visual icon of the movement, Ballent explores the architectural messages embodied by buildings designed for the Fundación Eva Perón. Mirta Zaida Lobato, María Damilakou, and Lizel Tornay round out the inquiry into the movement's inclusion of women, stressing the symbolic aspects of women, work, and pageantry.

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