This Video was sent to me by a family member who doesn't exactly see eye to eye with me politically. I know it has many lies, but I really would like to know exactly how much of what is said is actually the truth. Would it be possible to break this down and end up with a rough estimate of (truth-i-ness?)? As in: "30% true" or something like that?
You guys' help is much appreciated.
Also: The video is really obnoxious and I am so sorry for that.
Someone with more expertise in the subject might want to comment on the rest of the video, but right from the start it has problems.
It's first 'factoid' is that Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world in the early 20th century - that only the United States rivaled it for the position of the second-most-powerful economy - is misleading.
While Argentina's per capita income was relatively high thanks to a booming export industry, it's overall economic strength wasn't as impressive as the video makes it seem. In 1913 the US GDP was about 5 times as large as all of Latin America. Germany, the UK, India and France all had much larger economies than all of Latin America. Argentina still had a respectable economy - probably in the top 10 - but by some measures couldn't even be called an industrialized nation by 1920. Literacy was dramatically lower in Argentina than in the US, the UK, Germany, etc. and technological innovation was sparse.
That all said, the video isn't entirely wrong about the negative direction that Argentina took - particularly how it relates to Peronism and its protectionist policies. But it's comparisons between that and US Democratic policies are way off (in the way that propaganda usually is). It claims that universal healthcare and other welfare programs are proven to fail through Argentina's example, but fails to explain why nearly every other industrialized nation is able to maintain those programs without following Argentina's disastrous downward spiral.
This period is beyond my area of study, but I thought I might fill in a few of the massive holes that the video relies upon to construct its story. As I’m sure you can tell, this video relies on cherry picked information to tell a politically loaded narrative. It is crammed with misleading or decontextualized information that I find dishonest.
Yes, Argentina had one of the wealthiest economies in 1916, which makes sense because it was taking advantage of its position a neutral power in WWI, selling agricultural products to the combatants. At the turn of the century, Argentina was one of the wealthiest countries in the world, but it really wasn’t one of the strongest nor the most industrialized. Its economic growth was based on a model of agroexports which was devastated later by the Great Depression.
Then the documentary discusses Hipólito Yrigoyen, who oversaw the implementation of new social policies following significant social unrest among the urban working class. The middle and working classes had basically no say in the old, corrupt government controlled by the landed elite. He was wildly popular by the public who saw him as an individual who made democracy inclusive of their interests for the first time. Didn’t this also happen in other countries: democratically elected parties began to provide more social services and protections to the working class in return for greater social stability? The documentary doesn’t mention that.
Then the video completely skips the fact that Yrigoyen was overthrown by conservative members of the military, ushering in the “infamous decade” famous for its fraudulently elected governments. The coup established a precedent for the rest of the 20th century that if the government was failing, the military’s duty was to overthrow the democratically elected government. Uriburu’s military government slashed government jobs and wages. They then held an election, which the Radical Party won in a landslide (they annulled the election). Next they mishandled the economic recovery during the Great Depression and negotiated a controversial treaty that damaged industrial development in urban centers. The government also moved against unions under the guise of protecting the country from communism and anarchism, engaged in significant censorship, and was generally corrupt. The video skips all of that (I’ve very much simplified the period as well) and leaps nearly forty years to Perón, focusing on his failure to create a stable economic environment.
Unfortunately, the video does not address the real problems that caused economic chaos in the middle of the twentieth century. Juan Perón took power, who in turn was expelled by the military, who eventually was replaced by democratic leaders culminating with Carlos Menem, the “Washington Consensus,” and neoliberalism, which in turn brings us up against the twenty year rule. These periods all bleed together, and their social and institutional moves depended on those inherited from their predecessors. With each successive change, new institutions were established that focused on distinct social groups, which created a “stop and go” environment for industrialization. Furthermore, the oscillation between civilian and military rule hindered stability, and the upper and middle classes often relied on the military to get the country out of economic and social impasses. Again, the documentary fails to mention the coups, culminating with the Dirty War in which the military “disappeared” around 30,000 Argentines. Much of the later chaos mentioned in the video was caused by following the IMF’s austerity measures. Historians are still working to understand the recent history of Argentina (post 1982-today), and I don’t really feel qualified to discuss it in much depth.
The documentary tells a certain ahistorical, politically motivated story. It isn’t accurate history, and it certainly doesn’t describe any of the historiographic debates going on right now in the academy. I suppose that I have also simplified that history to keep this post short, but hopefully you have a better idea of some of the problems with the video. Here a few past threads on Argentina in the 20th century that might interest you:
Sources: