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There was a time when there was a rich, civilized and, for the region, exemplary modern and well-developed country in the south of Latin America: Argentina.
It had the most elegant capital, the most extensive railway network, the best roads, the greatest volume of traffic, the most solid school system, the most exciting cultural offerings.
After the end of World War II, the Argentine peso was - alongside the dollar and pound sterling - the hardest currency in the world.
A French proverb summed it all up: “Riche comme un argentin” (rich as an Argentine).
Today there is only a nostalgic memory of that glamor, that rich wealth and that solid self-confidence that comes from permanent prosperity.
Argentina has been a country of crises, devaluations, inflation, debt rescheduling and continuous decline for decades.
A national and regional tragedy, since a stable Argentina would have provided Latin America with the support that the region lacks.
How could this happen?
Was it an unfortunate, even tragic sequence of coincidences, or is there a specific trigger for this disaster?
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Argentina's decline has a start date: On February 24, 1946, General Juan Domingo Perón (1895–1974) was elected president.
Its meteoric rise to power began in June 1943 when a lodge close to the Axis military (Grupo de Oficiales Unidos, GOU) launched a coup against the constitutional government.
In complete misunderstanding of the global political situation, they believed that Argentina could remain neutral this time - as in the First World War.
The overwhelming majority of Latin American states had long since bowed to the pressure of Washington and entered the war on the side of the Allies.
Buenos Aires, on the other hand, only declared war on the Third Reich on March 27, 1945, a few weeks before the surrender.
Evita and Juan Perón after they came to power in 1946
Source: picture alliance / dpa
This special role provoked not only deep distrust among the Americans, but also among a significant part of the urban middle and upper classes.
Perón, on the other hand, as Minister of Social Affairs and Employment in the mid-1940s, through a variety of populist measures, won the benevolence of the lower, who often came from the interior of the country, i.e. did not come from European immigrants.
These "descamisados", the shirtless, became the basis of his political movement.
Her idol was Perón's second wife Maria Eva Duarte (1919–1952), who had become known as a model and actress and who became an angel of the poor as "Evita".
Perón won the February 24 elections with the support of a heterogeneous alliance of trade unions, the military, the Catholic Church and conservative factions.
It was not until 1947 that he founded his own justice party (Partido Justicialista).
In the meantime, he continued to push ahead with the transformation of Argentina into an authoritarian, illiberal corporate state with new measures.
His goal: a third way between capitalism and communism.
Evita in a mass-effective pose
Source: Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images
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Everywhere the state intervened: it centralized the trade unions, intervened in the economy, set wages and prices, manipulated foreign trade, and pushed industrialization aimed at foreclosure.
The receipt came just four years later: In 1949 Argentina had a deficit trade balance and had to devalue the peso.
In the same year, Perón had his model legitimized by a new constitution.
The beautiful Evita had long since created her own power base through her charity foundation.
This in turn was financed from dubious sources such as blackmailing political opponents and successful entrepreneurs.
At the end of July 1952, Evita, just 33 years old, died of cancer.
She witnessed her husband's re-election at the end of 1951, but the inexorable economic decline had already begun.
But it was only the regime's open struggle against the Catholic Church that forged the heterogeneous opposition.
After Perón's fall in 1955, Evita's luxury outfit was discovered
Source: picture alliance / Everett Colle
In September 1955, Perón was overthrown by an alliance of military and civilians.
In a report at the end of 1955, the economist Raúl Prebisch denounced the full extent of the economic, social and political distortions that the Peronist regime left behind in a decade of mismanagement in Argentina: national debt, inflation, a deficit pension system, manipulated unions, one built with a lot of state money Industry that was not internationally competitive - in short: a country in rapid decline.
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Despite the most varied efforts to restore Argentina to a solid and sustainable political and economic order, neither the changing civil nor military governments succeeded.
Perón, on the other hand, manipulated political events in Buenos Aires from his political exile in Madrid with Machiavellian genius.
At the end of 1972 he was allowed to return surprisingly, in September 1973 he was re-elected President by an overwhelming majority.
But unlike in 1946, Argentina was no longer a country with huge currency reserves and a stable peso, but with high inflation and a bloated state apparatus, but without economic growth.
In addition, Peronism was deeply divided into a traditional group close to Perón and a left-wing radical youth movement (Montoneros), whose model was the Cuba of Fidel Castro.
Perón and his third wife "Isabelita" on their return in 1973
Source: picture alliance / Everett Colle
Perón was no longer able to unite his movement behind him: he died on June 1, 1974. He was succeeded by his third wife, María Estela Martínez de Perón.
"Isabelita", a hopelessly overwhelmed former night club dancer, delegated power to José López Rega, Perón's man for the rough.
His paramilitary "Triple A" (Alianza Anticomunista Argentina) laid the foundations for the later brutal struggle that the military junta, ruling from March 1976, waged against political opponents.
Their disaster in the Falklands conflict with England in 1982 provoked a return to democracy.
President Raúl Alfonsin, elected in 1983 in democratic, “clean” elections, fought against the - tacit - alliance between right-wing Peronism and the armed forces, especially in the navy.
The spectacular trials that he made possible against the junta chiefs gave eloquent testimony to this fellowship.
Alfonsin did not manage to consolidate the economy, however, and he had to give up his office prematurely to his - again - Peronist successor Carlos Saúl Menem.
This threw all kinds of Peronist traditions overboard and gave Argentina a brief phase of economic consolidation by pegging the peso to the dollar.
However, the massive overvaluation of its own currency caused by this led to national bankruptcy at the turn of the millennium.
Menem's former vice-president Eduardo Duhalde, a traditional Peronist, then paved the way to power for Néstor Kirchner, a left-wing Peronist, in 2003.
He was fortunate to rule during the years of the raw materials boom, which brought the country to bloom and masked the full extent of the structural economic distortions.
He radicalized Argentina politically - a process that his wife Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007–2015) accelerated.
Gigantic corruption did theirs.
The election victory of Mauricio Macri at the end of 2015 seemed almost like a miracle: A liberal entrepreneur defeated the Peronist candidate in a runoff election.
But without a majority in Congress and thus without the possibility of radical structural changes, he could not achieve long-term consolidation of the economy.
On the contrary: A 50 billion dollar loan from the IMF that was disbursed at the end of his government is now a heavy burden on the country.
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It has been firmly in Peronist hands again since the end of 2019.
Alberto Fernández, a traditional left-wing Peronist, is President, Cristina Kirchner, a radical left-wing Peronist, is Vice-President.
The coffers are empty - not only because of the IMF loan, but also because of decades of reform backlog in the entire state.
Juan Domingo Perón laid the foundations for this in 1946.
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