NO. Peron was a workers’ rights leader and Evita Peron went even further pushing for social change that would hopefully forever liberate the poor from the clutches of the rich landowning aristocracy on a continent that still had Feudalism until the 1960’s and where the conditions in industrial cities were Dickinsonian and still would be if they hadn’t forever changed the country with massive workers’ uprisings. The US made Peron into a bogeyman because, colonialism.
Evita: “The only thing a rich person will ever give you is more hunger” (against charity models of social services)
Peron: "Markets are never free; either the State controls them in favor of the people, or big corporations control them in detriment to them.
Often the confusion comes because in English “popular” means appealing to base sentiments. But in Latin America, where poor and working classes outnumber the middle and upper classes, “popular” means referring to the majority of everyday working people.
“Populist” governments are in favor of the working classes, and are despised by the wealthy, white, Bilingual elites that most US and Europeans meet. They call us all manner of racial epithets, dirty, unkempt, ‘negros de mierda’, ‘cabezas negras’, and in recent years, Kockroaches and Kakas (spelled with a K because of the Kirchnerists we support).
Obviously, the US and Great Briton were greatly inconvenienced by Peron and having to pay Argentines more than a pittance to suck the land and people dry. And colonists always, always mock national pride sentiment in their conquered people. Colonists cannot respect the people or the land they exploit - they’d feel like big jerks. And so colonists enjoy the company of the local middle managers who assure them of the inferiority of their compatriots. This continues today and can be studied under terms like “internalized colonialism”.
But when you meet a friendly, secular, English speaking Argentine on vacation in the most expensive countries on the planet, and they tell you that the peronists are fascists and evil, remember that they think this because of things like having to declare their income and pay taxes. It’s the same deal as when the Republicans call Biden a Stalinist.
The catch with colonialism is that many colonized people identify so completely with their conquerors that they wholeheartedly support YOUR advancements while feeling embarrased and disgusted by their neighbors raising their heads up- so they loved Obama and hate Trump. But then, back home, they vote for the Trump-Bolsonaro Aligned right wing. Platforms matter less than skin color and ‘might makes right’.
In the 60s there was some tension between the labor union peronists and the young socialist revolutionary peronists (it was the 60s; the kids of factory workers had gone to college) which got bloody and ended up eroding their power until the right wing military leaders took over via a coup.
Then again in the 80s and 90s (right when the fiscally right wing but socially centrist Clintons were coming into power) there was a long and infamous presidency by a neoliberal Peronist who did privatizations of state run utilities and transportation, as was the fashion worldwide at the time, but he was socially center left and promoted progress, especially in terms of women’s rights.
While there are rural conservative regions with long standing Peronist rule but fairly Manchin-like conservatives in power, the Peronists have always been to the left of any other party who ever achieved a presidency or parliamentary majority in Argentina.
