2023-11-15 03:01:00
It is irrelevant to debate whether history repeats itself. And, in his case, if he does it as a comedy or as a tragedy. Regarding the radicals, from their origins in the last decade of the 19th century until today, their divisions and confrontations form a substantial part of their nature.
That is why no one should be surprised that, for the presidential elections this Sunday, November 19, some radicals support Sergio Massa and others vote for Javier Milei. In this way they will repeat the mistake, the serious mistake committed in 1946, in the election that established the then Colonel Juan Domingo Perón as president.
It is a commonplace (and a historical falsehood) to say that Perón has triumphed cleanly. The truth is that he counted on the enormous resources of the State controlled by the military that deposed the civilian government on June 4, 1943. But it was not the only instrument he used to impose his candidacy. There were, in addition, two decisive factors that allowed it to add 1,478,000 votes and thus surpass the 1,215,000 of the coalition of political parties called the Democratic Union.
One of those factors was the pronouncement of the Catholic Church. All the bishops – with the exception of Monsignor Miguel de Andrea – instructed the faithful to vote for Perón, because he had promised that he would maintain the teaching of the Catholic religion in public schools.
The famous law 1,420 (which established compulsory, free, common and secular schools) had been repealed in December 1943 by the military dictatorship, and the Democratic Union established in its program that the first measure to be adopted would be to reestablish its full validity of that historic law. In addition, the Catholic Church prohibited its faithful from voting for parties that promoted binding divorce, which was another proposal of the anti-Peronist coalition.
A huge mistake
The other factor that had enormous influence at the polls was the colossal error committed by the Radical Civic Union by refusing to allow liberal parties and groups from the provinces to join the Democratic Union. Regarding the need to form a front that would prevent the triumph of Perón, who never hid his adherence to the ideology of fascism, the UCR put its old rivalries with those provincial parties first.
Offended by the attitude of radicalism and thus deepening the historical wounds, the anti-fascist groups fractured. Half of its adherents supported the Democratic Union and the other half, Peronism. In order to have even a rough idea of the incidence of the dogmatic attitude of radicalism, it must be said that the majority of the anti-radicals in the province of Buenos Aires, with almost all of their leaders, joined Perón’s ranks. And, with them, thousands of votes.
In our province, the traditional Democratic Party, that of Ramón J. Cárcano and José Aguirre Cámara (to mention only two of the most cultured political leaders that our country had), selflessly joined the democratic alliance, but the majority of the Catholics affiliated with that party joined Peronism.
This data is enough to measure the incidence of the radical error in the result: in 1940, in the provincial election for governor, the Democratic Party obtained about 100 thousand votes. On the other hand, in the 1946 election, his ticket for governor and vice president only obtained 70,000 votes, and the rest, made up of Catholic militants, voted for the Argentine Peronist candidate Auchter, who triumphed by just 180 votes.
After assuming power in June 1946, Perón ordered the dissolution of all political parties and groups that supported him and replaced them with the Single Party of the Revolution, which had him as supreme authority. At the same time, he began to designate his political adversaries as “enemies” and launched his cruel slogan: “For enemies, no justice.”
He dismissed the members of the Supreme Court of Justice, demanded that judicial magistrates be affiliated with the party of which he was supreme leader, and had extraordinary powers granted by Congress.
The Republic disappeared, its institutions were suppressed or replaced by business and union corporations, and the provinces and their feudal governments became dependencies of the central power. Today the authorities of radicalism (who surely ignore the past summarized above) are preparing to repeat that serious mistake.
The Italian sociologist Gaetano Mosca – one of the first who, in 1926, denounced that Benito Mussolini’s government would lead Italy to war and dictatorship – was right when he explained in his work that it was not enough for a nation to have rivers and lakes, with fertile lands, with a merchant navy, with crops, in short, with material wealth so that its State could guarantee the freedom and progress of the population. For the State to fulfill its mission of protecting the general interest – Mosca explained – it is necessary that it be led by a prepared, trained, cultured political class that does not allow itself to be corrupted… Anyway, it seems that the Italian sociologist was thinking in our country when he wrote it.
In short: radicals fight among themselves not because they have insurmountable rivalries or condemnable ambitions. They do it because they lack preparation, because they ignore Argentine history, because they are not informed or trained to understand that there are political decisions that can cause serious damage to the country.
* Lawyer
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#division #UCR #favors #Peronism