Discussion Questions

• Argentine leaders in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century often stressed similarities between their country and the United States. What was the basis of this comparison, and where did it go wrong?
• What factors contributed to the formation and character of the working class in Argentina? How did it compare with working classes in, say, Peru and Mexico?
• What were the central features of the Peronist coalition?
• Why has the memory of Evita Perón retained symbolic significance in Argentina? Was she a pioneer for Latin American women?
• What were the defining characteristics of the “bureaucratic-authoritarian” regimes that dominated Argentina from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s?
• What accounts for Argentina’s transition to democracy in the 1980s?
• In what ways has Peronism changed in recent years? In what ways has it stayed the same?