Authoritarian Argentina: The Nationalist Movement, Its History and Its Impact Book

Having spent a year in Argentina and become obsessed with how the Dirty War came to be, I've read widely on the subject. This is one of the best books I've run across on the subject. It's comprehensive and objective and lays out the various developments that led to the intractable polarization that happened between far left and far right in Argentina after Peron was exiled. Much of that political conflict has existed since the inception of the country (no land reform, Spanish Colonialism, Catholicism, resource driven economics, a high level of education, coupled with the southern European and Mediterranean immigrants with a high level of political sophistication vis-a-vis socialism, anarchism, marxism who arrived at the beginning of the 20th c.) Argentines are different on top of all that--vocal, assertive, Italian (65% are at least part Italian, and not to stereotype too much, but Italians will generally tell you what they think and are not docile politically as a group...just watch them play soccer and you'll get the idea). It's hard to take sides in Argentina as the left and right are excessive and comfortable, or at least see it as sadly necessary, with violence, but the right really took the cake when they shut the country's democracy down and basically set out to exterminate not only all leftists, but all leftist thought (this included high school students and lots of guilt by association..total state terror and zero accountability with their use of Orwellian speak such as 'disappeared'....they were fascists, plain and simple). It's hard not to feel shock when one reads about how bad and terrifying things got...anyone could get caught in the crossfire. The real tragedy was the irrelevance of the center (read Jacobo Timerman) and that old adage 'all it takes is for good people to do nothing for terror to reign'. One wonders if Argentina can resolve its political and economic problems. Peron did a number on the country that has set it on a course of polarization that is hard to find a way out of. This book will encourage you to delve deeper into the subject, and it's a great place to start as it's a complicated time in Argentina history.