Argentina Is Not Doing Very Well
Its Political And Economic History Has Important Lessons For The Rest Of Us
“The big mistake is to think that money has absolutely nothing to do with inflation. This is a very odd viewpoint because inflation is a fall in the value of money”, Mervyn King (Baron King of Lothbury), former governor of the Bank of England[i]
Why would we be interested in Argentina? It’s a remote country that has lost its economic significance and unless the new President Javier Milei decides to take another stab at conquering the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas to the Argentinians), no danger will emanate from the country anytime soon.
Well, I think we should take an interest, not only because its economic history provides a wealth of lessons for the developed world’s societies. It is also an immensely beautiful country with wonderful people and we (many Europeans and the Japanese[ii]) share a cultural history with Argentina. Also, I am glad to tackle another subject that’s close to my heart, after having been preoccupied with Israel in the last few weeks.
From 2007 to 2014, I spent some of my happiest days in Argentina, holidays in privileged surroundings. Weeks on lush polo farms, the high life in Buenos Aires, horse trips through the Andes Mountains — a life not too dissimilar from Argentina’s upper class in the 1920s, when the country was in the top 10 of developed nations. But I also saw the cartoneros (waste pickers) of Buenos Aires, old women walking through traffic and begging for coins, abject poverty in the mountains — a little girl in a cabin with its face covered in soot, a Jack Russell defending a horse’s cadaver for food. On the other, sunnier side of society, whatever I was charged for hospitality was invoiced in Euros, always payable to bank accounts in Germany.
Argentina has a dizzying economic history. The Nobel prize-winning economist Simon Kuznets (1971) is said to have remarked that there were four types of countries: the developed, the underdeveloped, Japan, and Argentina.
During the era of mass migration (1850–1913), Argentina welcomed close to 6M immigrants, only behind the US which received about 30M immigrants. Earlier than other developing nations, Argentina achieved a literacy rate that was comparable to developed nations[iii] (close to 90% by 1950) — some of it due to a preference for educated immigrants from Italy and Spain. Its economy, as measured by GDP per capita was on par with or higher than European countries’[iv], driven by booming agricultural exports:
Argentina was the other land of unlimited possibilities and Buenos Aires was the Paris of the Southern Hemisphere. At some point, in the 1970s at the latest, Argentina shifted from steady growth to volatility and decline. Why did this happen and what can we learn from this? Was it Perón’s socialism? Was it military dictatorship? Was it inequality and poverty? Was it the heritage of colonial oppression? Was it a neglect of fiscal responsibility? Was it the dismantling of institutions? Was it the Latin American disease of revolutionary dreams and utopianism? Was it something that we may also experience in the United States or Europe? We need to find out.
Argentina’s Economy
“What Argentina needs, is a little more inflation”, Bernardo Grinspun, Argentina Minister of the Economy in Raul Alfonsín’s administration, Buenos Aires, 1984[v]
There are probably as many theories about Argentina’s economic decline in the last 80 years as there are proposed strategies for its recovery. As it’s often the case with calamities, there is a lack of reliable data.
The annual inflation rate until September of 2023 was 138%, but experts predict it to reach over 200% by this year’s end. The official USD/ARS (Argentinian Peso, Arg$ or ARS) is 1:360, but the real rate (available on the black market) is closer to 1:1000. Data for Argentina’s GDP, consumption or investment in local currency is almost impossible to find, every institution uses USD numbers for better comparison, in constant USD, adjusted for inflation and PPP (purchasing power parity). Questions about the economy will only receive viewpoints, ranges or a “it depends” as an answer. Economic data resembles a Heisenberg uncertainty.
After some searching, I found nominal GDP data in local currency (Argentina’s National Institute of Statistics and Censuses, INDEC as well as IMF). Argentina’s nominal GDP — not adjusted for inflation — was ARS 168B in 2000 and it’s been a whopping ARS 116,241B (or 116T) in the last 4 quarters, which equates to a nominal 28.5% growth rate per year — absolutely stellar. Too bad that all of or even more than this growth came from price increases which made nobody wealthier. Consumers pay higher prices, salaries increase with inflation, the government receives higher taxes, spends more money and nobody is better off in the end. Depending on the applied exchange rate (there are 15 different USD/ARS exchange rates), Argentina’s GDP per capita (it has 48.5M people) is either in a league with booming Mexico (USD 13,800) or still relatively poor Vietnam (USD 4,320) — in 2023 IMF numbers. Robert Shiller wrote a famous essay about this topic, titled “Why Do People Dislike Inflation?” (1997).
There is a big variance in how people are affected by the economic turmoil, depending on their possession of foreign assets, denomination and indexing of their incomes, nature of incomes (capital income vs. work income) etc. etc. One thing is certain: the average trabajador is much worse off today than in 2000. In the first half of 2023, the national poverty rate exceeded 40% (INDEC). For comparison, the US’s national poverty rate is around 12%[vi] (US Census Bureau).
Explaining The Mystery
“You have to understand the past to understand the present”, Carl Sagan
Argentina has gone through its own cycles, often self-induced, sometimes overlapping with the world’s cycles (WWI and II, the great depression) and distinctly Latin American cycles. It was a Spanish colony from the early 16th century until 1810. Contrary to its name (Argentina, made of silver, Italian), its wealth of silver deposits turned out to be a myth. Argentina’s wealth lay in its vast arable land (for comparison, it’s about 7 times bigger than California).
When the Spaniards arrived, the land had a low population density and was sparsely populated by native tribes. Subsequently, African slaves were imported through the port of Buenos Aires in large numbers, either for labor in Argentina or in other states (i.e., Bolivia’s mines).
Many Argentinians don’t consider their country to be overly burdened with a history of slavery, despite slaves having accounted for 30–50% of its population in the 18th century. The abolition of slavery began in 1813 (coinciding with Argentina’s newly won independence from Spain) and was fully implemented in 1861. Since then, there has been a tendency to omit the country’s black history[vii] and disregard or homogenize racial differences –and identifying as a “white republic”[viii]. Argentina’s former President Alberto Fernández claimed in 2021: “Mexicans came from the Indians, the Brazilians came out of the jungle, but we Argentines came from boats from Europe” — he subsequently apologized for this. The fate of the native population is an especially dark chapter, culminating in the brutal conquest of the desert by General Roca’s troops in Patagonia in 1879[ix].
I am going to oversimplify here a lot: After its liberation in 1810, Argentina began to enjoy slow and then rapid growth in the 19th century, thanks to its agriculture, vast unexplored lands and the British. That growth enabled the local oligarchy to mimic European decadence until the 1940s, after which the country transitioned into a long socialist and increasingly autocratic experiment (Peronism), interrupted by a confusing period of military-controlled civil governments from the mid 1950s to the early 1970s, and ended with a brutal military junta in 1976. While the socialist experiment provided much needed social improvements, it also sowed the seeds of an economic malaise, and the military junta proved entirely inept at running the economy (like all military dictatorships). The democratic period from 1983 until today has seen autocratic libertarians taking turns with socialists democrats and a libertarian populist at last. Those governments came with good intentions and ultimately failed. And almost all governments of the last 200 years have been infected with a system of patronage and corruption.
If you (the reader) find this summary too simplistic, the following provides a more granular history, admittedly still simplified. Ignore the details at your own peril and move to the last chapter if you like:
1810–1853
On the political front — the country won its independence from Spain, with some help from its former enemy, the British (and the Barings Bank). In Spain, the Bourbon family was pushed off the throne by Napoleon who installed his brother Joseph Bonaparte to reign as José I. until 1813, which caused reverberations across the whole Hispanic empire. Argentina was not a centrally governed state but a collection of provinces and fiefdoms, run by caudillos — with Juan Manuel de Rosas[x] as governor of the Buenos Aires province being the fiercest defender of Federalism against Unitarianism. He was eventually defeated, and a national constitution was enacted in 1853 (it’s still in place).
On the economic front — the country’s main business was cattle (feral and bred), sheep, and wheat farming, thanks to an abundance of fertile land. Argentina became one of the most open economies of the world. Total exports grew at a rate of 5.5% in the period from 1810 to 1870 (in local currency)[xi]. Labor shortages were a continuous issue, so foreign immigration became important and grew strongly from 1840 onwards.
1853–1913
On the political front — like in the United States, the new constitution established a division of powers, a high level of independence for the provinces, and a federal power controlled by a strong executive government, yet limited by a bicameral national congress to balance the population’s representation with equity among the provinces. The frontier wars (another similarity with the US) remained a priority for government and military until 1879 — seen as part of a fight between civilization (European culture, Republican values, city life) and barbarism[xii] (colonial and indigenous customs, the law of the caudillos, the lifestyle of the gauchos). European immigrants continued to arrive in droves and found real wages that exceeded their home countries by multiples. Their arrival and the fact that by 1910 half the country’s population was of immigrant origin renewed questions of national identity[xiii], cultural homogeneity versus heterogeneity, the gaucho lifestyle versus the cosmopolitan city dweller. A socialist agenda came ashore with immigrants who had a history of political activism in revolutionary movements in Europe. Overall, the country remained thoroughly undemocratic and unrepresentative until the reforms of 1912[xiv].
On the economic front — it was the golden age, the belle epoque of Argentina. Exports grew by over 7% per year as the country moved from livestock to farming and manufacturing. To finance economic growth, politicians maintained strong ties with Barings Bank, but a lack of coordination between fiscal and monetary policy drove up debt. Argentina defaulted on its debt in 1890 and Barings faced the same fate. It took Argentina’s economy about 10 years to recover, but in 1913, the country’s GDP per head was on par with or ahead of European nations like France, Germany or Italy and Spain.
1913–1943
On the political front — Argentina fared relatively well during the two world wars and the great depression, but not great. Economic success enabled social mobility and the development of a middle class, the largest in Latin America, with a strong cultural identity. This created pressure to share power and the newly elected Union Civica Radical (1916) with its wonderfully named leader Hipolito Yrigoyen created a mandatory voting system for all, universal public schooling, and a uniform curriculum. Still, the working class demanded more rights, went on frequent strikes, and clashed with the Argentine Patriotic League (a violent rich boys’ club with antisemitic, antiimmigrant and anticommunist leanings). 1930 saw the country’s first military coup, the first one of 6 in the 20th century. Inspired by fascism (Mussolini), the new government — civil in nature, but controlled by the military — reigned as expected, with torture, fake elections, corruption, and a high level of economic mismanagement. The infamous decade was ended by another coup in 1943, led by a group of Nazi-sympathizing military members who were opposed to the other group’s level of corruption and conservatism — Juan Domingo Peron[xv] being part of the new team as well as the old team of 1930.
On the economic front — by 1913 Argentinians were able to see their country as an advanced nation — the United States of Latin America. It wouldn’t be spared from economic cycles and volatility in the following years. The devastating impact of the two world wars (a 10% GDP contraction in 1914) and the great depression led to a collapse in exports (in all of Latin America), a ruin for landowners and to inward looking economic policies with import substituting industrialization (ISI). Retardation ensued, at first and also because of an insufficient level of savings[xvi]. External factors prevailed before WWII, but the military coup of 1930 added economic mismanagement. Still, GDP per capita rose from $3,797 in 1913 to $4,987 in 1950 (in international, PPP adjusted dollars), which equates to a growth rate of about 1% per year.
1943–1976
On the political front — the era of Peronism begins, and it will be a discontinuous and extremely confusing one. Juan Perón starts as head of the department of labor, wins the presidency in 1946 and declares social justice and economic independence as his main goals — a “third way” to stay out of the cold war. His considerable success (supported by his charisma, his hugely influential wife Evita, and a certain dictatorial recklessness) allows him to win a second term in 1952, the year Evita dies from cancer. The country becomes increasingly polarized and conservative forces (the military, supported by the church), oust him in 1955. Perón goes into exile for 18 years while the country endures several periods of quasi civil governments, controlled by the military, and interrupted by more coups (1962 and 1966). Surprisingly, under threat from a popular insurrection, the government decides to exit from power via election in 1973 and a Peronist party candidate wins. His first decision is to resign and allow truly free elections which are won by Perón (!) who dies within less than a year, and his wife Isabel takes over until everyone gets overthrown by a military coup in 1976 (she is still alive today, at age 92!).
On the economic front — Perón oversaw a state subsidized boom until 1948 (GDP grew by 25%), including nationalizations, infrastructure modernization, and almost total import restrictions. Subsequently, stagnation and ultimately stagflation prevailed until his ouster. Exports fell sharply, inflation rose, the Peso had to be devalued by 70% and the capital account turned negative. Peron’s admirable vision of creating social justice met with the harsh reality of internal and external economic factors. The US government’s (incorrect) suspicion of Argentina becoming another domino to fall for communism prevented badly needed economic cooperation. The years of Peron’s exile from 1955 to 1974 saw many ups and downs and even occasional economic progress (GDP grew by over 5% in the 60s) and at some point (1969) inflation came down from about 30% to 7%. After his reelection in 1973, Peron initiated strong monetary expansion — with predictably inflationary results.
1976–1982
On the political front — it was a terrible era which is remembered for its atrocities, the murder of 10 to 30 thousand people and the disappearance of an estimated 30,000. Significant violent unrest in the final years of the Perons, some of it anarchistic as well as communist, led members of the military to plan the coup and install a permanent dictatorship — with the active support of the United States and tolerated by most other countries, incl. European ones. There is a wonderful movie (Argentina 1985) about this period and I highly recommend watching it:
Increasingly unsustainable, the junta tried to save itself by conquering the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) in 1982, with Margaret Thatcher’s robust response burying the evil regime.
On the economic front — the economy shrank during the dictatorship, as expressed by GDP per capita in USD: from 12,696 in 1976 to 11,550 in 1982 (Maddison). The inflation rate averaged 185% per year. Real wages went down by 40%. Government to GDP grew from 14% to 24.5% — still modest by current standards.
1982 — today
On the political front — 40 years of social democracy with economic and personal flaws. The politics from 1982 onwards can be understood best by tracing the fate of key presidents and their governments. Raul Alfonsin (1983–1989) -a ‘radical’ social democrat — won the 1983 general election and returned the country to democracy. His lasting achievement was to enable the prosecution of the military junta in 1985 without amnesty, an absolute novelty for Latin America at the time. His economic policies failed and led to his party’s defeat in 1989, when Carlos Menem — a Ferrari driving lawyer with impressive sideburns — won the presidency (1989–1999). Despite being a Peronist, he liberalized the economy through privatizations and the elimination of subsidies and managed to bring down inflation. He reestablished diplomatic relations with Britain and created a special relationship with the US. His second term was marred by increasing worker protests, riots, and allegations of corruption. His quest for a third term was denied by the Supreme Court. The following presidents were relatively short-lived, and the 2001 default to the IMF[xvii] led to five presidents to cycle through power in two weeks. Political stability returned with the short-lived presidency of Duhalde. Nestor Kirchner became president in 2003, in tandem with his wife Kristina Fernandez de Kirchner ‘CFK’ (the presidential husband and wife tandem is a very Argentinian feature) who went on to run the country from 2007 until 2015, after her husband stepped aside (he died unexpectedly in 2010). Their personal variant of Peronism was aptly called Kirchnerism, which was a progressive mishmash of initially successful economic reforms and increased protectionism coupled with subsidies for the poor, whose rate remained stubbornly high. Again — allegations of corruption and other malfeasance marred their presidency forever (the Kirchner’s official net worth increased form 2003 until 2011 by a factor of 10). The following president, Mauricio Macri (2015–2019), a neoliberal and social liberal, came with good intentions but failed to contain inflation and generate growth. He was succeeded by Alberto Fernandez (2019–2023), who was called a president without a plan with a weak administration (The Economist). His fate was not helped by the fact that CFK was his vice-president and generally seen as running the government. In 2023 Javier Milei won the presidency and he also has some impressive sideburns, in addition to a controversial personality. He could be (hopefully) a savior for the country or a short-lived disaster — the bets are on.
On the economic front — multiple well-intentioned attempts at improving the economy and the people’s lives left the country (comparatively) impoverished. Every president faced the same dilemma when it came to conducting economic reforms: “Wicked problems such as these — where you need to reform A before you can reform B, but you can’t seem to reform B until you’ve reformed A — stalk every reform effort” (Moises Naim, WSJ). Reforms require fiscal order in a country with low foreign currency reserves and high debts as Argentina, and demand sacrifices from the poor and the rich but will only deliver tangible benefits long term. To sustain this, presidents require a broad power base which only some had (Menem, the Kirchners) but then went on to squander through patronage and corruption. External conditions need to be favorable, and sometimes they were (under Menem and Nestor Kirchner), but then changed in times of crises (Mexico’s ‘Tequila crisis’ of 1994, the Asian crisis of 1997–1998) or were undone by changing priorities (i.e., Kirchner’s return to economic nationalism). The lenders of last resort — the IMF and the ‘Club of Paris’ — are arduous to work with, but often the only ones left to help. And the capital markets take no prisoners, as Argentine experienced with hedge fund holdouts who blocked a 2001 debt restructuring until they received 100% on their bonds.
Lessons To Be Learned From The Argentine Paradox
The economies of currently developed nations (i.e., Western Europe, USA, Canada, Australia, Japan etc.) are far away from slipping into an Argentinian type of vortex. At times, it seemed like we were all on thin ice — during the Global Financial Crisis or during Covid — but the apocalyptic prophets were proven wrong within a year. That is not to say that it can never happen. People, companies, and nations go bankrupt very gradually and then suddenly (borrowing this from Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises”). Argentina’s decline cannot be attributed to just one cause, although attempts have been made: Low productivity because of high immigration (Alejandro), deleterious conditions for capital accumulation (Taylor), unequal land distribution (Solberg), poor governance (Duncan and Fogarty). The accumulation of small and big mistakes over a long period has led to the current malaise. We must look for comparable signals in our respective nations to spot impending and irreversible decline.
Argentina has long been a country with ‘an unrealistic public and an overpromising political class’ (Janan Ganesh, FT) and so are the US, the UK, Germany and others. The US is enjoying one of the strongest economies in 60 years, powered by historically low unemployment and strong wages gains. Consumption spending is at an all-time high. Nevertheless, an increasing share of the electorate seems willing to vote for a demagogic candidate with dictatorial aspirations because they are upset about the level of grocery prices.
The world’s electorate is sympathizing with authoritarian leaders and strongmen again. There is an allure of easy recipes, simplicity that seems unencumbered by regulation and bureaucracy — the man or woman who jumps on a crate, grabs the megaphone, and makes the trains arrive on time again. The problem with this is that often works short term, it never works long-term. The separation of powers (described by Locke (1690) and Montesquieu (1748)) is luckily the foundation of most of our constitutions, but autocratic leaders prefer to ignore it.
The former Austrian Minister of the Interior Herbert Kickl once argued strongly for a primacy of politics over the law: „The law has to follow politics and not the other way round”, and 4 months later it was revealed that his party’s boss and Austria’s vice chancellor had promised to hand over large chunks of the Austrian economy to a fake Russian female oligarch during a boozy night in a villa on Ibiza — a scene that could have come right out of an Argentinian movie.
Patronage and corruption are not only a consequence of but also a prerequisite for a strongmen regime. It’s been estimated that any country can be controlled by one autocratic leader and a group of about 200 people, which has its price.
The Spanish languages and the Latin American mentality lend themselves to compelling but misleading narratives. The same is true for other Romanic languages and English (which has strong Romanic elements). German, Dutch, Danish or Swedish — maybe not so much. Winning in politics is often as much about substance as about storylines, especially when told by charismatic people. Utopianism — a vision that doesn’t bother with the nitty gritty of getting from A to B and jumps straight to Z — is a time-tested political strategy to counter deep despair. Many Latin American nations seem to be easily seduced by new líderes who promise to tear down the old world and erect a much better new one. “If I was in power, I would solve that problem in one day” (i.e, inflation, the Ukraine war, China threatening Taiwan) has been heard from candidates in the US too — or even “If I was still in power, those problems would have never occurred” (again — Ukraine war, Hamas fighting Israel). Gradual change is usually a better strategy to pursue, but it’s a boring story.
When nothing else helps, victimization is a very compelling narrative: “Latin America is the region of open veins. Everything, from the discovery to our times, has always been transmuted into European — or later United States — capital, and as such has accumulated in remote centers of power.” (Eduardo Galleano)
Modern nations are complex and require functioning institutions with an efficient (ideally fully digitized) bureaucracy, but people dream about the simplicity of ancient village governance. Argentina built a functioning institutional system in the 19th century, but then started to undermine the integrity of its institutions (i.e., the justice system, the treasury, the banking system, its central bank) to satisfy the political priorities of ever-changing governments. It’s a cheap argument to blame any form of bureaucracy (which has undeservedly been given a bad name) for the ills of institutions that require a little reform. Destroying and defunding (here in the US variously the IRS, the FBI, the Central Bank, the Supreme Court, the EPA, the FDA or the police) excites the public that likes a good witch hunt, but it harms everyone.
“Here Milei’s fondness for libertarian orthodoxy could be a real problem. A president whose knee-jerk response to every institutional problem is to eliminate the institution in question seems destined to fail in Argentina. Without new and better institutions for social protection, vulnerable people will find themselves adrift, cut off from the old, bloated clientelist system with nothing to replace it. Milei will soon learn that this is a recipe for chronic chaos, endangering the success of the entire reform push. Unless more experienced hands in his cabinet can reel in the president’s libertarian impulses, such an outcome is all too likely (Moises Naim, WSJ).
We (in the US and European countries) tend to be confused about inequality and we engage in endless identity battles. As opposed to us, Argentina has real reasons to worry about both. American income inequality has hardly risen since the 1960s, but people worry that we are moving back to a feudal system. Several European countries, including Germany, have a basic income system or something that’s very close to it. Argentina has real poverty and some unprocessed identity issues from the colonial past that undermine its stability. There are many words in every Latin American country for various degrees of blackness, whiteness or indigenous descent and many rungs on the social ladder. In the US and Europe we may be on the way to overprocess our identity issues, resulting in bizarre epiphanies like “It’s their whiteness that keeps white people from connecting with humanity” (Ibrahim Kendi) or purported discrimination against cisgender people (I had to google that one).
Argentina has a diversified economy, but it’s a failed case of isolationism. After having been one of the most open economies in the 19th century, Argentina tried to decouple itself from external dependencies. It invested much capital into building a manufacturing sector, but it had to introduce capital controls when inflation hit and it is massively taxing agricultural exports today. As a reaction to China’s rise and its state-subsidized production of everything (i.e., electric vehicles and batteries), the US is returning to some kind of isolationism, supported by increasing tariffs and government subsidies for industrial rebuilding. As a consequence, consumers have to pay about 40% more for an American SUV than for a Chinese one.
Finally, government deficits matter and modern monetary theory is a fallacy, as anyone can see who has been following Argentina’s development. All developed nations are facing structural deficit issues because of an aging population. Introducing fiscal order is much easier in a wealthy country with comparatively low poverty than in Argentina where half the population has a strong incentive to revolt against government austerity.
[i] A Bloomberg conversation with Mervyn King, Sommer Saadi and Merryn Somerset Webb, July 20, 2023
[ii] “The two countries, of course, have long mystified economists. In 1950 Argentina’s gdp per person was three times that of Japan, according to the Maddison Project database. The Eva Perón charitable foundation, run by the president’s wife, shipped 100 tonnes of relief supplies to the war-battered Japanese. Thousands of Japanese migrated in the opposite direction, creating a population of 23,000 Nipo-Argentinos by the end of the 1960s.” (How Argentina and Japan continue to confound macroeconomists, The Economist, March 28, 2019)
[iii] UNESCO, Compendium of statistics on illiteracy, various editions.
[iv] “A New Economic History of Argentina”, edited by Gerardo della Paolera & Alan M.Tayler, 2003 edition
[v] From the “Guide to the perfect Latin American Idiot”, by Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, Carlos Alberto Montaner and Alvaro Vargas Llosa
[vi] The poverty line is between $15,000 and $65,000, depending on age and the number of dependent household members (US Census Bureau).
[vii] “Hiding in Plain Sight: Black Women, the Law and the Making of a White Argentine Republic”, Erika Denise Edwards, 2020
[viii] The Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío (1867–1916), considered as one of the leading intellectual figures in Latin America, phrased it succinctly in a way that would be unthinkable today: “By elimination and cross-breeding, it is beginning the formation of a brilliant race”. (“Argentina as Latin American Avant-Garde” in “The Argentine Reader”, edited by Gabriela Nouzeilles and Graciela Montaldo (2002))
[ix] “The Foundation of the National State”, David Viñas, and also “Wars of Extermination” by Charles Darwin (both in “The Argentine Reader”)
[x] “The Caudillo’s Order”, by Juan Manual de la Rosa, in “The Argentine Reader”
[xi] “Between independence and the golden age: The early Argentine economy”, by Ricardo D. Salvatore and Carlos Newland”, in “A New Economic History of Argentina”
[xii] “Civilization of Barbarism?”, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, in “The Argentine Reader”
[xiii] “National Identity in a Cosmopolitan Society”, by Leopoldo Lugones, in “The Argentine Reader”
[xiv] “Business, Government, and Law”, by Sergio Berensztein and Horacio Spector in “A New Economic History of Argentina”
[xv] The sympathy for Nazism and Fascism in Peron’s own words: “El fascismo italiano llevó a las organizaciones populares a una participación efectiva en la vida nacional, de la cual había estado siempre apartado el pueblo. Hasta la ascensión de Mussolini al poder, la nación iba por un lado y el trabajador por otro, y éste último no tenía ninguna participación en aquella. … En Alemania ocurría exactamente el mismo fenómeno, o sea, un estado organizado para una comunidad perfectamente ordenada, para un pueblo perfectamente ordenado también; una comunidad donde el estado era el instrumento de ese pueblo, cuya representación era, a mi juicio, efectiva.”, Los mitos de la historia argentina, by Felipe Pigna (2008)
[xvi] “Three phases of Argentine economic growth”, by Alan M. Taylor (1994), from the NBER working paper series on historical factors in long run growth
[xvii] IMF country report 01/26 from January 2001, “Argentina: Second Review Under the Stand-By Arrangement and Request for Augmentation — Staff Report”
