Juan Perón biography
Date of birth : 1895-10-08
Date of death : 1974-07-01
Birthplace : Lobos, Buenos Aires provincia, Argentina
Nationality : argentinian
Category : Politics
Last modified : 2010-06-30
Credited as : army colonel, president of Argentina, Peronist movement
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Perón in his career was in many ways typical of the upwardly mobile, lower-middle-class youth of Argentina. He entered military school at 16 and made somewhat better than average progress through the officer ranks. A strongly built six-foot-tall youth, Perón became the champion fencer of the army and a fine skier and boxer. He served in Chile as a military attaché and travelled to Italy to observe the rise of the Fascists and Nazis during 1938–40. He had a bent for history and political philosophy and published in those fields.
Perón returned to Argentina in 1941, used his acquired knowledge to achieve the rank of colonel, and joined the United Officers Group (Grupo de Oficiales Unidos; GOU), a secret military lodge that engineered the 1943 coup that overthrew the ineffective civilian government of Argentina. The military regimes of the following three years came increasingly under the influence of Perón, who had shrewdly requested for himself only the minor post of secretary of labour and social welfare. In 1944, however, as a protégé of Pres. Gen. Edelmiro J. Farrell (1944–46), Perón became minister of war and then vice president. Clearly he was bidding for undisputed power, based on the support of the underprivileged labourers (the descamisados, or “shirtless ones”) and on his popularity and authority in the army.
Marriage to Eva Duarte
In early October 1945, Perón was ousted from his positions by a coup of rival army and navy officers. But associates in the labour unions rallied the workers of greater Buenos Aires, and Perón was released from custody on Oct. 17, 1945. That night, from the balcony of the presidential palace, he addressed 300,000 people, and his address was broadcast to the country on radio. He promised to lead the people to victory in the pending presidential election and to build with them a strong and just nation. A few days later he married actress Eva Duarte, or Evita, as she became popularly called, who would help him rule Argentina in the years ahead.
