President Alfonsin of Argentina has a special ambition: namely, to remain in office until December 10, 1989. This would seem to be a very modest hope, but accomplishing it would secure his place in history, for no civilian president of Argentina has completed a term since 1928. Since that date, there have been a dozen forcible changes of the top office, and the country has swung repeatedly between ineffectual civilian and unsatisfactory military rule. Moreover, many of the changes have not been mere palace coups, replacing a few persons at the top, but have looked something like revolutions, or intended revolutions, hoping to remake the national economy and society. Few countries have shown such instability in our times, certainly no relatively cultured and civilized nation, as is Argentina. Obviously the Argentines, people and elite, have been looking desperately for a way out.
Why they have been dissatisfied for many decades is clear: their history has been a sad disappointment. From the middle of the nineteenth century, when a nasty dictatorship was overthrown and a constitution was adopted, Argentina lived an almost uninterrupted success story until the end of the 1920s. It was one of the economic miracles of the age. Production and exports, based on the agricultural riches of the pampas, grew steadily; Argentina was the world's largest or second largest exporter of such products as wheat, corn, and meat. The population swelled by immigration; and Argentina became the richest, strongest, and most admired Latin American nation. By the 1920s, its per capita income was in the same bracket as those of the United States, Canada, and Australia, above that of most European countries. Its carefully nurtured educational system was among the world's best, as were its press and elegant theater. Its big spenders were the admiration of the Riviera. And it seemed to be capping economic and cultural development with political progress, as a fully democratic electoral system was put into effect in 1916.
If the road was upward for nearly a century, it has been downward since 1929. The economy cracked during the Great Depression, and it has limped ever since, with brief upswings undone by stagnation or decline. Now Argentina is a middle-ranking Third World nation, with a per capita income much below Venezuela's and less than a quarter of that of the United States or Canada. Argentina used to regard itself as natural leader, if not hegemon, of South America; now it has been left far behind by Brazil, both industrially and politically. Argentines have good reason to feel cheated.
Why the success story became a tragic nonsuccess is mysterious. The reversal took place during a time of modernization that could have brought greater prosperity. The downfall was contrary to the normal course of progress. For Argentina has all the essential advantages: magnificent resources, a fairly homogeneous educated population, and favorable geography; it has been devastated by no important conflict; and it long ago achieved the situation for a classical takeoff to industrialization. There are many half-theories, but none tells what might be done to set Argentina back on the path to what seemed to be its natural greatness.
Failed policies
Argentines have been as puzzled as foreign scholars. For the victims, the failure is not merely mysterious; it is emotionally unacceptable and not really to be believed. There must be a way out, a formula
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