In political analysis, and especially in daring looks to the future, it is never convenient to mix wishes with reality. And in the same way that someone spoke of the feigned desires of Peronism, it is now possible to deny the tombstone prepared to bury him without extenuating circumstances in the coming months.
Despite the fact that the most fanatics do not like it, Peronism did not build Contemporary Argentina, but rather is a child of it. He is a direct descendant of a long national tradition and that is why, even in difficult situations like the current one, he offers a certain guarantee of survival.
I am referring to something linked to the egalitarian imaginary of our national conformation, no less fictitious, but very guiding. A commoner root, which should never be confused with the guaranguería, quite the opposite. The pride of a humble origin, and a dignified and very laborious trajectory that goes through our generations to ascend without despising or hiding that root. But especially that effort of a family, neighborhood, local lineage and so on until becoming “a new and glorious Nation”, or even believing that we were “doomed to success”, deserving of a destiny of greatness with tangible foundations: that privileged land of God. But to which the Most High endowed it with its prim inhabitants (Francisco Dixit humorously).
From this assumption, Peronism and its ideals were already in our DNA, which is why it permeated even the most furious anti-Peronists, and not only, in the words of the General exiled in Madrid of Francoist Developmentism with that “In Argentina everyone is a Peronist, Well, even the opponents are defined by my last name”
One of the elusive fathers of our Sociology in Argentina, Juan Agustín García (1862-1923) already said it epigrammatically: “A voice resounds from the bottom of the pampa, here nobody is more than nobody” and that assertion with a tone of prophecy Biblical, it governs us even in our daily disorder, sometimes for the better and other times for horror.
I disbelieve in the disappearance of Peronism, because I have seen it surrounded by funeral wreaths on other occasions. But we continue to debate it. Now, if luck is very adverse in the next electoral appointment, I suspect that it will survive mutating, and even returning to lick the “modern” wounds of this 21st century, to its very diverse provincial strongholds, where it was born mutating from conservatives and radicals. , of Catholics and trade unionists, to emerge again and again. I leave the value judgment to the reader.
*Dr. Mariano Eloy Rodríguez Otero holds the Chair of Contemporary History and History of Spain at the UBA and at the Joaquín V. González Institute.
by Mariano Rodriguez Otero
