Every two years Argentina lives in an "election year".
Every two years -and much more every four, when the President is elected-, everything goes into suspension because there are elections.
The simple, boring, continuous and daily institutional exercise of the right to vote in liberal democracies
has never become simple, boring, continuous or daily in our country
.
So we feel, all too often, that something crucial is at stake for us and our future at the rate of internships, candidacies, agreements, preparation of lists and electoral campaigns.
There are elections that have effectively marked a before and after;
one of those was 77 years ago.
On February 24, 1946, retired army colonel Juan Domingo Perón was elected President of the Nation in free elections,
the first after almost twenty years marked by the outlawing of radicalism, fraud, and two coups d'état
.
Perón's triumph was the culmination of a process: the electoral exit armed by his own government, a de facto government that had come to power through the coup of June 4, 1943. He was the pro-government candidate of a military regime mired in the inmates, accused of Nazi-fascism, with a government exhausted and without power, despite the state of siege, the censorship of the press, the imposition of codes of morality, the persecution of opponents, police brutality and intervention in universities .
How could the representative of such a government win the elections?
There are those who find the explanations in what happened on October 17, 1945: the people in the street would have proclaimed him a legitimate and natural leader and the elections were nothing more than an institutional procedure to endorse that day.
There are those who say that the election was served on a platter by a single man.
For someone to become a hero or a myth, they need a great villain in front of them and the one in this story was
armed
with a Blue Book, his symbol was an eagle and his name was Spruille Braden.
There is no doubt that the causes are multiple and complex;
investigations, books, opinion articles and history take care of that.
Here we are going to tell the story -without capital letters- of
one of the most famous electoral slogans in Argentine politics: Braden or Perón
.
There were no publicists behind the phrase;
Perón himself used it for the first time two weeks before the elections and it was quickly replicated as an efficient, catchy and, above all, successful formula.
Spruille Braden and Juan Perón
Winter 1945
.
The government, which had been born two years earlier with the troops marching from Campo de Mayo to settle in the Casa Rosada, was exhausted and found no way out.
After the Allied victory in Europe, his sympathy for the Nazi-fascist axis had left him exposed -internally and internationally- and in a situation of political weakness that became untenable.
Even the unsympathetic and unattractive US Ambassador Spruille Braden felt emboldened to attack and mock the military government at every opportunity.
He even began touring the country haranguing him as if he were a politician on the campaign trail.
The first thing the government did was try to dilute the failure by dragging into its crisis the same political parties that it had annulled as party organizations.
Thinking about future elections, he sought the support of the Radical Civic Union, which not only did not agree to wash the face of an unconstitutional government, but also
it was
grouping with other political spaces to face any candidacy that the ruling party was going to present
- an internal sector of radicalism broke away and provided three officials to the Farrell government.
The only military man who had something to show for his management was the multi-functional Juan Domingo Perón: Minister of War, Vice President of the Nation and Secretary of Labor and Welfare.
His management at the head of the secretariat won him the support of different working sectors and, above all, of the new unions.
Spring 1945
.
There was still no talk of candidacies but the political parties took advantage of the lifting of the state of siege to carry out a mass mobilization:
the March of the Constitution and Freedom
.
The opposition front was not armed but based on these two principles it already had its electoral program.
The police said there were 50,000, the organizers 500,000 - not even at Yrigoyen's funeral had so many people gathered - the truth is that the popular rally in September in the streets was so impressive that the government backed down with its announced democratic opening.
There was repression and hundreds of arrests.
In Córdoba, the uprising of a military sector put the government on a war footing, which reinstated a state of siege.
The prisons were filled with opponents of the regime who, even behind bars,
were convinced that the political careers of President Farrell and Vice President Perón were over.
.
In October, the students seized the universities and quickly occupied the places that the opponents vacated in the prisons.
Although the government assured that it would maintain the call for free elections, nothing on the street indicated that it would comply with it;
Its leaders were not willing to lose political strength, but the heads were many and they fought among themselves.
Colonel Perón had his own plans, he had gained ground on the internal front and they wanted to get rid of him.
As if it were a movie, in some parts of the Capital and the province of Buenos Aires, different shootings heralded a hectic October.
ambassador braden
What followed went down in history in the form of an epic tale and with a dated name.
On October 18, the government woke up, due to the forcefulness of the facts, with the candidate sung for the next elections
.
The only thing missing was a political party, but that was fixed quickly.
A group of trade unionists founded the Labor Party and Juan Perón was its first member.
The recently formed UCR Junta Renovadora - promoted by former radicals who had joined the government - and the Independent Party made up of conservative sectors joined the electoral front.
The ruling party already had its front.
And the opposition put together its own: the Radical Civic Union, the Socialist Party, the Progressive Democratic Party and the Communist Party under the name Democratic Union.
While all this was going on, Ambassador Braden continued his strategy to grind down the Farrell government.
and his attempts to retain power through elections.
In early October he had quietly requested the State Department to review the confiscated German documents that would prove Nazi infiltration into Argentina through the government.
He was convinced that the publication of these tests would destroy any attempt to continue.
What the North American failed to see was that for
a large portion of Argentine society, totalitarianism was not even close to his greatest concern.
Summer 1945-1946.
The call for elections was set for February 24.
The formulas: Perón-Quijano and Tamborini-Mosca.
One embodied the strength of a single man;
the other, party structures dating back to the turn of the century.
On the one hand, the charismatic and rising soldier, 50 years old, a young woman, an overwhelming oratory and far from "the vices of politics."
On the other, a traditional politician, a doctor with a flute voice, zero charisma and a party life that had earned him exile and jail twice in the previous decade.
The explicit supports: the government, the pro-government unions, the state media for some;
and the private media, the left-wing unions, the Industrial Union, the Rural Society, professional, intellectual and university associations, plus the United States Embassy, for the others.
The opposition was confident.
Their flags were freedom and democracy against totalitarianism.
Who could be against?
They projected a sure victory.
His motto?
"For freedom, against Nazism."
The ruling party would not have its own until two weeks before the elections.
"I denounce the people of my country that Mr. Braden is the inspirer, creator, organizer and true head of the Democratic Union," said Perón at the foot of the Obelisk.
With the heat came the campaign.
Despite the fact that the Democratic Union very soon began a tour of the country with its traditional political rallies, the first great coup of effect was achieved by the official formula.
The regime -through Domingo Mercante, the successor that Perón left in the Ministry of Labor and Welfare-,
granted an increase in wages, paid vacations and Christmas bonuses for all workers
.
The opposition was confused;
the Communist Party came to demonstrate against the increase granted by the government.
There was a lock out, a ruling by the Court against it, strikes, back and forth, another ruling in favor and finally everyone was paid.
At the beginning of December the Democratic Union called for a new March for the Constitution and Freedom in the Plaza del Congreso which, after the intervention of the police, ended with four deaths.
The political effervescence was felt in the streets and in the committees but
it was clear that it would not be a campaign like the previous ones
.
It was definitely not what the old radical, socialist or progressive democrat leaders knew.
In any case, the country had to be covered in the same way because the election of the presidential formula was in charge of an Electoral College made up of the winners in each province and the Federal Capital.
In 1946 in Patagonia and the Northeast there were national territories that did not have the entity of provinces and their inhabitants could not vote, even so the extension was great and the campaign trips exhausting.
The candidates of the Democratic Union traveled in the "Victory Train" and Perón called his "La Descamisada".
There were rubble, shots, snipers, dynamite charges on the tracks.
With the bustle of the days, Tamborini looked tired while
Perón seemed to flourish at each stop and after each speech
.
For the first time in history, a wife accompanied a candidate.
The electoral climate was even higher than room temperature;
that effervescence had not been seen in years.
The front pages of the newspapers were dedicated exclusively to the electoral campaign, the foreign media followed it closely, and the very famous Life magazine sent an exclusive photographer to follow Perón through the interior of the country.
Everyone, however, took the defeat of the official candidate for granted
until Braden made his last appearance.
February 11
.
The Department of State publishes an extensive memorandum called "Consultations between the American Republics on the situation in Argentina" which quickly became known as the "Blue Book."
It was the work that Braden had begun at the beginning of October on the links of the Argentine government with Nazi fascism.
Perón and Evita, after winning on February 24, 1946.
February 12
.
At the foot of the obelisk, a platform is improvised on the balcony of the second floor of a building.
There are only 12 days left for the elections and the loudspeakers announce the launch of the presidential formula headed by Perón.
The heat is unbearable and isolated showers do not help the concentration of people.
Shortly after it rains hard and everyone seeks shelter under the awnings.
Perón greets, begins to speak and quickly returns inside to sit in front of the microphone and
concentrate on the radio broadcast.
He left nothing to chance.
Out of his habit, he read his speech and wanted to record the moment.
"I come to you to tell you that you are not alone in your yearning for social redemption."
The man who had been in government for two and a half years had come to redeem society from the ills of politics.
“In the minds of those who conceived and gestated the Revolution of June 4, the idea of the social redemption of our Homeland was fixed.
This initial movement was not yet another military attack,
it was not yet another barracks coup, as some are happy to repeat
;
It was a spark that on October 17 ignited the bonfire in which the remains of feudalism that still looms on American soil will crackle until consumed.”
He then spoke of the oligarchy, he said he had used nothing more than what the Constitution dictates, he spoke of defamation, of "hate storms", of Judas, of "moth-eaten politicians" and "democratic boasts", he spoke of traitors and enemies politicians, defended his management, attacked the Supreme Court, presented his doctrine and saved the main course for last.
"I denounce the people of my country that Mr. Braden is the inspirer, creator, organizer and true head of the Democratic Union."
Long, very long minutes focused on the figure of the ambassador as the true opponent.
The exaltation of the country in the face of the foreign enemy was in crescendo until the closing of the speech
: “Consequently, those who vote on the 24th for the oligarchic-communist collusion formula know that with that act they simply hand over their vote to Mr. Braden.
The dilemma, in this transcendental hour, is this:
Either Braden, or Perón.
For this reason, glossing the immortal phrase of Roque Sáenz Peña, I say: Let the people know how to vote."
With Braden in the thick of the fray, Tamborini and Mosca were gone.
The walls of Buenos Aires and the rest of the country replicated the slogan to infinity.
Autumn 1946
.
The scrutiny times were long at that time.
At the end of March it was learned that the Democratic Union had triumphed in Córdoba, Corrientes, San Luis and San Juan.
Everything else went to Perón.
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