Creating Charismatic Bonds in Argentina: Letters to Juan and Eva Perón by Donna Guy (review)

Although other historians of Argentina have examined letter writing to the Peróns, Creating Charismatic Bonds is the first book-length study of the subject. Guy places charisma—a slippery concept that the most recent analyses of Peronism have eluded—at the center of her examination by asking what role letters played in forming and maintaining the relationships with the people and shaping the leaders’ charismatic personalities. Broadly defined, charisma alludes to a set of qualities that enables leaders to establish strong personal and emotional bonds with their followers. Early studies of Peronism have defined President Juan Domingo Perón as a classic example of a populist leader whose charisma attracted people, built relationships with them, and created one of the most powerful and enduring political parties in the region. Biographies of first lady Eva Perón have also emphasized her charismatic appeal as well as her pioneering involvement in governmental matters. Whereas early studies generally approached charisma as a top-to-bottom strategy to manipulate the uneducated masses, Guy argues that letter writing shows the rationality and self-interest of Peronist followers as well as the reciprocal relationship between the ruler and the ruled that legitimatized a political system—two important conclusions reached by the latest scholarship of Peronism.

The book is divided into six chapters reflecting the contents of the letters. Four chapters deal with letters fundamentally addressed to Evita in which the writers asked for a spot in the temporary shelters for women and children run by her foundation and other charitable institutions and pensions for the elderly and the infirm. These letters provide a window onto women, the nonunionized working class, the poor, and inhabitants of the interior. Guy affirms that these letters reveal a historical pattern of citizens approaching governmental authorities in search of help, but her introduction of President Hipólito Yrigoyen and the Radical Party as a precedent is brief. The other two chapters examine letters written to Perón by both individuals and organizations to express needs and make policy recommendations for the government. The content of these letters is novel; Perón was the first president to invite citizens to make suggestions for economic and social policies, fundamentally as part of his second five-year plan for governing.

Guy does not read the letters as texts or cultural artifacts; nor does she interrogate communicational discursive strategies or perform a textual analysis of patterns, structures, and scripts. Methodologically, she organizes and examines the letters in terms of their content, with extensive quotations that vividly reflect the suffering as well as the endurance and determination of the unprivileged sectors. In many cases, she offers rich descriptions of the petitioners’ situations—especially among those requesting assistance for children or charitable help—since the archived files provide not only the letters but also documents from social workers or government officials, responses from the state or the foundation, and, in some instances, reports about how situations were resolved.

Guy stresses the letters as tools to bypass the bureaucracies and secure direct communication with the leaders, but, overall, her emphasis on the requests and the stories behind them moves the analysis away from the role of correspondence in creating a charismatic bond. As a result, the book reads more effectively as a social history of the struggles, demands, and suggestions that the unorganized poor voiced to the political leadership and their inadvertent assumptions about rights, the relationship between citizens and the state, and patronage than as a resignification of charisma and its role in constructing Peronist leadership.