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Peronist Consumer Politics and the Problem of Domesticating Markets in Argentina, 1943-1955

2007; Duke University Press; Volume: 87; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-2006-089

1527-1900

Eduardo Elena,

Politics and Society in Latin America

During a 1947 national radio broadcast, Argentine president Juan Domingo Perón explained to his listeners why the prices of goods at local shops and street markets were climbing higher. Perón noted that inflation was a worldwide problem in the postwar period, but he condemned in particular the “egotism, greediness, lack of human solidarity, and absence of patriotism” of certain Argentine business owners. “They are the ones,” the president exclaimed, “who stir up the river to reap gains as fishermen, who lay the foundations for black markets, who speculate and profit from the labor and blood of the immense majority of inhabitants.”1 Perón’s moralistic distinction between the virtuous, laboring pueblo and a cabal of greedy adversaries seems familiar enough. Scholars have emphasized the importance of this type of political discourse in populist movements, and leaders like Perón are famed for their impassioned attacks on vendepatrias, oligarchs, corrupt politicians, imperialists, and other enemies of “the people.” In this case, however, Perón focused not on elite landowners or foreign trusts, but rather on the quotidian world of commerce and consumption — a dimension of the history of populism that has received far less attention. Throughout Perón’s presidency (1946 – 55), the national government buttressed this rhetoric with an array of policies intended to impose order on market forces, punish commercial criminals, and uplift consumers. Likewise, Peronist authorities appealed to the population’s concern with unfair exchange to build a partisan following; in the process, he elicited both widespread enthusiasm and intense resentment among Argentines.This article investigates the political controversies of state campaigns to defend consumers against “unjust” commerce in the Peronist era — what can be called the period’s consumer politics. As part of a larger project on the history of Peronism and consumption, the essay focuses on two major themes concerning state interventions in the marketplace. First, from the earliest days of Perón’s presidency, public officials drew on existing cultural norms regarding the morality of commerce. Within their package of labor and social reforms, Peronist leaders adapted these traditions to justify expansive regulations on the supply, prices, and distribution of goods. Second, over time Juan and Eva Perón intensified their efforts to define the responsibilities of Argentine citizens as ethical consumers, encouraging men and women to adjust household spending to the needs of the nation and the partisan movement. The interplay between these two impulses — disciplining commerce and mobilizing consumers — offers new insights into the ways Peronism shaped roles for Argentine citizens as economic and political agents.The righteous tone of Peronist attacks on commercial wrongdoing inevitably calls to mind E. P. Thompson’s famous discussion of the “moral economy.” There are, of course, obvious contrasts between the food riots of eighteenth-century England and Peronist attempts to regulate merchants — differences so great that they stretch Thompson’s definition of the moral economy too far.2 In the Argentine case, ideas about economic fairness formed part of a political landscape marked by greater state presence in working-class life, growing consumer aspirations, and modern mass politics. Nevertheless, Thompson’s work provides a crucial point of departure, above all, in its insistence on exploring the cultural complexity of seemingly straightforward material struggles. Rather than presenting a portrait of a unified moral economy, this essay addresses the differing and often competing attitudes toward commercial morality that circulated throughout Argentine society. It focuses on the praxis of consumer politics, highlighting the divergences between discursive idealizations and state enforcement through various sources: internal government documents, news reports, Peronist propaganda, and public correspondence, among others. As we shall see, the Peronist approach to defending consumers evolved in relation to changing economic conditions, and Argentines responded to state initiatives in ways that ranged from pressuring authorities for deeper reforms to opposing public intrusions into private affairs.Placing the issues of commerce and consumption at the center of analysis expands our understanding of Peronism and populism in new directions. At one level, complaints about price-gouging merchants can be viewed through the familiar lens of the regime’s relationship with organized labor. Consumer policies were aimed primarily (though not exclusively) at the urban working class, and officials often treated “consumer” and “worker” as overlapping categories. Despite the extensive literature on union organizing and workplace conflicts, the impact of Peronism on the lives of laboring Argentines in other spheres — such as the marketplace and home — is still poorly understood.3 Moreover, Peronist authorities reached out across the country to a wide population of consumers, who were subsumed within Perón’s favorite political keyword, “el pueblo,” and which included lower-middle-class employees, self-employed artisans and traders, rural laborers, and, most importantly, housewives. Protecting the household economy became a key issue in carving out a partisan identity for Argentine women. Commercial management was no dry technocratic matter. As state authorities made their presence felt in the marketplace, the prosaic took on political significance, and mundane objects — a hunk of cheese, a square of cloth, a loaf of bread — became contested symbols of the achievements and failures of Peronist social justice. The seemingly unremarkable clutter of the street market offers access to the importance of Peronism in everyday life, as well as the social and gender dimension of populism more generally.In addition, this study advances scholarly debates on the relationship between national politics and consumption in the postwar world.4 The consolidation of commercial markets and the intensification of mass consumption in twentieth-century Latin America brought countless innovations — from changes in daily diets and novel forms of entertainment to shifts in domestic production and patterns of international trade — that altered, but by no means overturned, existing social orders. As a handful of recent works have suggested, commercial culture opened new avenues for self-expression to individuals from diverse backgrounds and served to recast (and in many cases, strengthen) national identities.5 A similar story can be told as well for Peronist Argentina.6 Yet commerce was also a profound source of anxiety and generated intense debate and political organizing around the dilemmas of economic fairness. Even as Latin Americans embraced novel commercial goods and services, many supported state action to regulate economic exchange — in part, because of their all-too-frequent inability to participate fully in the modern marketplace.Peronist consumer politics represented, then, part of a broader drive toward “domesticating markets.” Domestication involved taming commercial exchange to benefit popular-sector families and, in turn, bringing household economies in line with national priorities. State authorities targeted both the suppliers of goods and their purchasers, in keeping with their overarching goals of increasing national autonomy, harnessing economic progress, and ameliorating social inequalities. Notwithstanding the distinctiveness of Peronist politics, Argentine officials were hardly alone in this pursuit, as populist, leftist, and revolutionary movements throughout the region regulated commerce and responded to social concerns about unfair markets.7 The Peronist case reveals the great challenges encountered in pursuing these objectives. Like many of his peers, Perón confronted the consequences of rapid social reform and the gap between making promises and altering social practices. Although his regime enjoyed majority support, there were constant tensions between state efforts to create loyal citizens and the behavior of the Argentine populace.8While the subjects discussed in this essay — such as price controls and consumer-education propaganda — are important in their own right, they are even more valuable as a window into the crucial historical problem of how Argentines developed understandings of social injustice and, in certain contexts, sought political solutions. I begin by tracing the origins of the Peronist ideal of “just” consumption within a longer historical trajectory; I then examine government policies to eliminate the crime of commercial “speculation” and conclude with an analysis of state campaigns to inculcate thrifty habits. I do not wish to suggest that all attempts at economic regulation are inherently flawed; as the debacle of neoliberalism in Argentina and elsewhere in the region clearly shows, the supposedly free hand of the market can cause as much damage as the grip of state planning. Rather, I seek to contribute a historical dimension to contemporary debates on the market economy, revealing how Argentine government authorities, social movements, and “ordinary” citizens grappled politically with the upheavals of ever-widening commerce.Perón liked to emphasize the groundbreaking nature of his reforms, contrasting the apathy of earlier governments with the vigor of his administration’s initiatives. Yet the fact that Perón inveighed against unfair commerce was not a novelty, nor was the fact that his administration attempted to manage economic activity. Concern with the ethics of exchange can be seen as a central theme in Argentine history, one that stretches back to merchant frustrations with the inequities of mercantilism on the eve of the 1810 revolution. Peronist consumer politics represented not so much a total departure from, as a significant reworking of, earlier traditions. Perón and his advisers adapted already-established discursive modes for criticizing the moral shortcomings of the market economy, while at the same time creating new institutions to control commerce. By combining these two elements, they shifted the balance of state commercial regulation from upholding merchant prerogatives toward defending the consumer interests of popular households. This strategy helped to generate partisan support for the Peronist movement, but it also raised expectations that political leaders had to meet.The specific origins of Peronist consumer politics can be traced to turn-of-the-century attempts to address the legacies of Argentine liberalism. Following decades of postindependence civil strife, nineteenth-century liberals succeeded in consolidating the legal institutions of a new republic, which reflected the yearning of merchant capital to secure protections for their property. The 1853 constitution and 1859 commercial code established the formal rights of property owners and apparently neutral rules of economic exchange that would free merchants from ideological and partisan interference.9 The consolidation of this legal system did not, however, mean that commercial power went unchallenged. The late nineteenth century saw the rise of movements that attacked the perceived immorality of traders and markets. Anarchists and other leftists drew attention to capitalist avarice that threatened workers and directed protests against “unscrupulous” merchants and “especuladores” (speculators) who created artificial shortages and raised prices on rent, food, and other necessities.10 The electoral reform of 1912 ushered in more-democratic politics, and the Socialist and Radical parties attempted to court working- and middle-class voters (especially in Buenos Aires and other littoral cities) with complaints about the high cost of living. From the other end of the ideological spectrum, right-wing nationalists and Catholics lamented the materialism of modern times and the vulnerability of the family to market pressures.Despite these widespread complaints, there was little sustained commitment to government regulation on behalf of consumers. The electorally dominant Radical Party was best positioned politically to address consumer demands during the 1912 – 1930 period. They faced, however, a classic bind: in order to favor urban consumers in Argentina, they had to confront the rural producers whose beef, grains, fuel, and other staples represented a lion’s share of ordinary household consumption. Although Radical politicians complained that high prices threatened the pueblo, they took pains not to antagonize landowners — aside from tentative initiatives to reduce prices on goods such as sugar.11 The Socialists offered forceful critiques of merchant profiteering, but they were suspicious of government economic regulation (at least as carried out by other parties), which they feared would benefit producers at the expense of consumers. Given these options, the Socialists favored the formation of consumer cooperatives and open trade to ensure competition that would push prices lower. Conservative and religious commentators backed limited reforms (like urban rent controls) but otherwise viewed proposals for greater economic management with intense skepticism.12Notwithstanding these political obstacles, the 1930s witnessed a fitful increase in government regulation of the marketplace, typically in reaction to outside economic shocks. In response to the worldwide depression, Argentina’s rulers established organizations such as the Banco Central and the Juntas Reguladoras (agencies that managed the trade of grains and other commodities) to retool the agro-export engine of liberal Argentina. Fearing wartime disruptions, in September 1939 congress also approved measures to establish emergency price controls on food and urban rents. These initiatives, however, were assailed from left-wing quarters as government handouts to producers or as simply ineffectual. During the early 1940s, for instance, the Confederación General de Trabajo (CGT) staged rallies in major cities and provincial union halls in their national “Campaign against the Cost of Living.” Along similar lines, an organization called the Junta Popular Pro-Abaratimiento de la Vida y Contra los Monopolios (Popular Committee for Reduction in the Cost of Living and against Monopolies) held meetings in Buenos Aires city, including a “Congress against the High Cost of Living” in March 1943. Supported by leftist politicians, these critics heaped scorn on public officials for not implementing laws against price gouging and turning a blind eye to profiteers, who were denounced as the “sharks of capitalism” and the “Mafia of Lucre.”13In his dramatic rise to the presidency between 1943 and 1946, Perón drew on these traditions of growing state regulation and cost-of-living activism. He was a member of the “June Revolution” military government that founded new state agencies and expanded the scope of older bureaucracies to manage Argentina’s economy. Military rulers employed existing price-control laws to ease pressure on urban shoppers and renters, even as they moved against organized labor and the Left. At the same time, Perón borrowed from traditions of criticizing commerce to forge his own political movement within the military government. Compared to his predecessors, Perón placed a heavier emphasis on the state’s responsibility to meet material needs and spoke in appealing terms about the good life that awaited popular households, both as workers and consumers. During a July 1944 speech on the “popular economy,” Labor Secretary Perón lamented that previous governments had failed to restrain the rising cost of living: “We are a dignified and proud country; and none of its children should have to tolerate ever again that Argentine workers be converted into shabby people [gente astrosa] so that a group of privileged individuals can hold onto their luxuries, their automobiles, and their excesses.” Perón stressed that the “people” merited greater access to the nation’s economic bounty and proclaimed that his party was “convinced that the economic aim of a country should not be only profit [lucro], but rather the satisfaction of all the necessities of its inhabitants.”14 In this manner, the Peronist critique of economic injustice linked the spheres of labor and consumption, contrasting the frivolous consumerist luxury of the rich with the public duty to satisfy the working population.Throughout the 1943 – 46 period, the Peronist movement approached the issue of consumption from multiple angles. Perón painted a portrait of a socially just “New Argentina” where ordinary citizens, as a result of their productive contributions to society, would eat, dress, and live better. Unions seized upon these promises to demand better living standards, which in gender terms meant boosting the status of male breadwinners as household providers. Consumption was integral as well to the Peronist ideal of an inward-oriented national economy. Policy experts feared that the postwar transition would bring domestic unemployment, social unrest, and international disruptions to trade. In new planning agencies, officials mapped out strategies to augment national economic independence by deepening industrialization.15 The state’s responsibility would be to guarantee that income flowed to members of the working class, who as laborers would raise production and as consumers would prop up domestic demand.The specific social and economic characteristics of Argentina explain, in part, the importance of consumption as a political issue in the Peronist era. Compared to other Latin American societies, rural peasantries represented less of a social force in Argentina, where contract agriculture and proletarian harvest labor predominated in the countryside. For most Argentines, the precarious balance between wages and prices shaped daily experience. A large working and middle class was concentrated in the urban centers of the littoral region, especially the Buenos Aires metropolitan area, where one-third of the national population lived.16 The Argentine economy produced foodstuffs and light manufactures that were the core of everyday consumption — in contrast to the tropical fruits, coffee, or mineral ores that drove the economies of neigh-boring countries. Buenos Aires and other cities boasted an enormous variety of commercial enterprises: everything from foreign-owned department stores and movie palaces to corner groceries and dressmakers. These characteristics did not predetermine the actions of Perón’s government, nor do they mean that politicians elsewhere in Latin America at this time were not also concerned with addressing the consumption needs of their populations. But the socioeconomic context of mid-1940s Argentina did condition the options available to Peronist leaders and presented clear incentives for satisfying the needs of predominately urban consumers.Upon assuming office in June 1946, Perón moved quickly to realize his vision of a New Argentina. State officials pursued aggressive measures designed to increase workers’ share of the national income and, by extension, their ability to consume goods and services. Real wages soared nearly 40 percent between 1946 and 1948, reaching all-time high levels, thanks largely to labor organizing and cooperation between unions and the government in contract negotiations.17 In addition to redistributing income, Perón’s administration intervened to boost consumption among urban popular sectors. Federal agencies compelled producers to lower beef prices, subsidized meat packinghouses, and covered the deficits incurred in supplying beef to the city of Buenos Aires; they also offered subsidies to reduce prices on oil, sugar, and flour.18 In Buenos Aires city, federal authorities expanded a network of “ferias francas” (open-air municipal markets that sold food at reduced rates). The continuation of the rent freeze begun in 1943 meant that urban tenants in Buenos Aires and other cities had more disposable household income, and tenant farmers (arrendatarios) benefited from similar controls and antieviction measures.The first few years of the Peronist rule were boom times. Near-full employment extended the benefits of economic prosperity to nonunionized workers and sectors of the middle class. This growth did not affect all regions equally, but in areas such as the city and suburbs of Buenos Aires, spending power manifested itself in a vibrant commercial marketplace. Statistics on retail sales in metropolitan Buenos Aires indicate that businesses catering to the working and middle classes expanded during the initial 1946 – 49 period, and Argentines flocked to restaurants, clothing stores, and movie theaters.19 Peronist officials naturally took credit for these changes, taking every opportunity to extol the abundance enjoyed by the pueblo thanks to state planning.Yet even for Buenos Aires residents at the height of the boom, the New Argentina was less than a consumer’s paradise. Prosperity had its paradoxes: better salaries for the majority meant that individual consumers were often unable to find the products they could now afford. Shoppers encountered frequent shortages and long lines at stores, and high prices for textiles and other manufactured goods dampened the celebratory mood. Contemporaries used the metaphor of a “carrera” (race) to describe the unsettling competition between prices and wages. Increases in worker salaries fanned the fires of rising prices, in conjunction with other factors such as the rapid surge in government spending. Moreover, the pressures of postwar inflation were felt across the globe, and Argentina’s increasingly inward-oriented economy was not entirely immune to these larger forces.20 As a result of these causes, the cost of living climbed steadily between 1945 and 1951, with annual inflation ranging from 8 percent to a peak of 49 percent — a disquieting novelty at that time. Peronist leaders had the unenviable political task of refereeing this “race.” With each increase in prices, newly empowered unions clamored for better contracts from employers and the government. Labor negotiations may have directly affected only worker paychecks, but all Argentines were subject to the consequences of inflation that could accompany wage increases.The Peronists brought together traditions for criticizing economic exchange and an expanded regulatory apparatus when they burst onto Argentina’s political stage. But unlike previous opponents of commercial greed, the Peronists were now in command of the central government, and they pledged to do more than issue declarations against the “Mafia of Lucre.” Salary increases and social policies were not enough; they required complementary efforts to restrain the rising cost of living. Perón’s government never declared a specific right of all citizens to protection from commercial exploitation.21 Yet this ideal constituted part of a looser set of entitlements to a “dignified life,” proclaimed as a public duty in Perón’s speeches, celebrated in propaganda, and asserted by labor unions and other social actors. Perón’s political self-image centered not only on promising reforms like traditional politicians but also on delivering concrete improvements — “Perón cumple,” the famous slogan went: Perón delivers. Would salaries keep pace with the growing cost of living? Would the government continue to provide new “social conquests”? How long would the prosperity last, and who would benefit? The inability to answer these questions created a growing climate of uncertainty.Over the 1946 – 55 period, the Argentine government responded to these concerns by increasing its regulation of economic activity. But viewing these measures solely from the perspective of economic policymaking, as has been the norm, fails to appreciate their political and cultural dimensions. As framed by the metaphors of Peronist propaganda, commercial laws became weapons in a war against capitalist greed. The line between economic policy and mass politics was hard to distinguish in Peronist Argentina, and officials used government and media resources at their disposal to shape public opinion. Speeches and decrees presented national audiences with straightforward explanations of commercial wrongdoing; public enforcement of state regulations and visual propaganda reinforced official pronouncements. Although these actions were not always in sync, Peronists proclaimed a new balance of power in the marketplace, where the state and consumers banded together to defeat the commercial enemies of the people. Political authorities emphasized the importance of protecting consumption to the vitality of the nation, the ethics of a socially just order, and the triumph of the Peronist movement.Peronist policymakers spun an imposing regulatory web over commerce. After assuming the presidency in June 1946, Perón immediately announced the “Sixty-Day Campaign,” a package of price controls limiting the cost of consumer “necessities,” including food, clothing, and household goods. Announcements of official prices filled the pages of daily newspapers, and the government backed the controls with calls for merchant compliance and police inspections of stores, initially only in the city of Buenos Aires.22 The campaign ended after two months, with Peronist officials claiming success; this was, however, a fleeting victory, and prices crept upward once again. Two laws passed by congress in August 1946 (12.830) and April 1947 (12.983) provided federal agencies with new price-control weapons. The first law gave the executive branch authority to fix maximum prices, restrict exports, and ration import permits. The second law allowed officials to freeze prices, seize merchandise, and detain suspected “speculators” for up to 90 days. In the years that followed, federal officials added to this legal arsenal, capping profit levels for manufacturers and imposing occasional price freezes.23As labor secretary, Perón had pledged the state’s responsibility to help Argentines meet basic subsistence needs. Once in office, however, the president’s ideal of “dignified” living standards encompassed additional spheres of consumption. Government agencies mandated that all food vendors — neighbor-hood dives and five-star restaurants alike — offer a special “economical menu” for their customers. By the end of Perón’s first term, regulations determined the prices of a haircut, a movie ticket, and a cup of coffee. This shift from satisfying basic material needs to indulging other commercial desires reflected the social reality of postwar Argentina, as higher incomes meant that more consumers could afford goods and services previously out of reach. State regulations kept pace with the rising consumer aspirations of popular households.Each round of price controls was met with a flurry of speeches and public events. Propaganda about commercial regulation reached national audiences through multiple private and partisan channels: newspapers, radio, newsreels, pamphlets, and political party meetings. On the one hand, officials employed the technocratic language of economic efficiency in their public presentations of consumer-protection measures. Laws streamlined commerce by reducing “middlemen” (mainly wholesalers and transporters) suspected of hoarding goods and adding unnecessary costs to the traffic of commodities. Perón, however, made it clear that his government did not intend to eliminate private property altogether, and he argued that speculators were a minority of the otherwise respectable business community.24 In practical terms, it made political sense not to alienate potential supporters among the countless traveling salesmen, kiosk and pushcart operators, and shop owners of Argentine society. Perhaps for this reason, officials did not resort to overt ethnic stereotyping of merchants — although Law 12.830 did allow specifically for the deportation of foreign lawbreakers, and there was a fine line between economic nationalism and xenophobia. Contrary to what one might suspect from a man who courted the fascist Right, Perón resisted engaging in anti-Semitism or immigrant baiting in his nationalist proclamations against cupidity.On the other hand, measured arguments were overshadowed by the aggressive tone of Peronist propaganda. Reflecting his long career as an army officer, Perón often referred to commercial controls as the “War against Speculation” and “War against Usury.” These campaigns focused on the insatiable avarice that propelled businesses to prey on laboring men and women. Playing on the popular culture of their audiences, Peronist leaders described the problem of containing inflation as a battle between good and evil, blending military and religious imagery. During the initial Sixty-Day Campaign, for instance, Eva Perón prevailed on women to follow the state’s lead in stamping out high prices. “Our home, our sacred space [recinto], the altar of our emotions, is in danger,” warned Evita. “Over it hovers threateningly the unspeakable machinations [incalificable maniobra] of speculation and usury.”25 The religious overtones of Evita’s statements highlighted the Manichean terms of consumer politics. There was a strong gothic quality to Peronist moralizing.26 Commercial exploitation was ghostlike: the specter of speculation hid in every corner of the market place and haunted the livelihoods of hardworking families. This spectral quality also explained why controls were needed in all areas of commerce; somewhere, behind a closed door, a merchant or manufacturer was scheming up an “unspeakable machination” to squeeze another peso from the pueblo.In these calls for action, Peronist leaders reached out to Argentine audiences of various types. Women were considered crucial in the fight against commerce