Book Review

Caribbean and Latin America

Loris Zanatta. Perón y el mito de la nación católica: Iglesia y ejército en los orígenes del peronismo (1943–1946). Translated by Luciana Daelli. (Colección Historia y Cultura.) Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana. 1999. Pp. 452.

Until recently, there have been few serious studies of the Catholic Church in Argentina, despite its vast influence during much of the twentieth century. This major lacuna has recently been partially filled by the works of Loris Zanatta, the subjects of this review, and by Lila M. Caimari's Perón y la Iglesia Católica: Religión, estado y sociedad en la Argentina, 1943–1955 (1995). Unfortunately, Zanatta does not appear to be aware of Caimari's fine work.	1
Zanatta's two volumes are extremely detailed and largely intellectual histories, examining the changing ideas of the church about its role in the larger society and influence on it. What Zanatta demonstrates clearly is the church's influence in helping to shift the hegemonic intellectual model of Argentina from liberalism (using the word in its original nineteenth-century meaning) to being a Catholic nation. While the two volumes fit together nicely in chronological terms, and the author's basic interests are similar, they should not be considered just a two-volume set. The second is much more detailed and focuses more intensely on the church's relationship with the state; it also is based on a much wider array of sources.	2
The subtitle of the first volume is somewhat misleading, since the army does not receive a significant percentage of attention. We do see the church's attempt to woo the military and its growing view that the military presented the route to national salvation. Zanatta does not demonstrate how well the military received the message. He undoubtedly is correct that an intellectual alliance was forged in this period between the cross and the sword, but he does not prove it. This is probably due to his dependence on church sources, especially the semi-official church newspaper, El Pueblo, and the influential Catholic magazine, Criterio.	3
The 1930s saw a widespread challenge to liberal intellectual hegemony in Argentina. This successful challenge is well known, but Zanatta argues that the role of Catholic thought has been neglected. He shows that the growing power, influence, and prestige of the church combined with its constant attacks on liberalism to help change the basic ideological climate and pave the way for the regime of Juan Perón. Perón's rise to power in 1943–1945 looms through the first volume. According to Zanatta, the church argued that liberalism led directly to socialism and communism, essentially that everything since the French Revolution was evil. While Zanatta sees different intellectual visions competing within the church, the dominant trend seems to have been to find appropriate models in Benito Mussolini's Italy, Antonio Salazar's Portugal, or, after 1936, with the general heightening of ideological tensions in Argentina brought on by the Spanish Civil War, in Francisco Franco's Spain. Marshall Petain also emerged as a model after the fall of France. However, even within the church's corporatist tendencies, rivalry existed between a hierarchical version that looked to traditional elites and a more populist version that focused on social questions. The latter became more important during the decade. Although the author examines in considerable detail attempts by the church to attract working-class support, he pays little attention to efforts of Bishop Miguel De Andrea, which were by far the most important. Undoubtedly, Zanatta adopts this strategy because of De Andrea's unusual political trajectory; he was always marginalized within the church, and he vociferously rejected Perón. Still, he created the most important Catholic union movement, even if it remained quite small.	. . .