Argentine Women Against Fascism: The Junta de la Victoria, 1941–1947

Abstract

The Junta de la Victoria (Victory Board; 1941–1947) was an Argentine anti-fascist women's group that sent aid to the Allies. With its 45,000 members, the Junta became the largest women's political group before Juan Perón's presidency (1946–1955), when women obtained suffrage (1947). Unlike other women's anti-fascist groups in Europe and Latin America, the Junta concentrated on modeling and amplifying democratic practices in the face of an increasingly dictatorial government and Axis advances in World War II. Thus it was unique. To a certain degree, the Junta tried to implement a broader view of democracy that went beyond protecting individual rights, free elections, and the rule of law to include men and women of different classes, faiths, ethnicities, and regions in the polity. Aside from helping the Allies, it mobilised a spectrum of women and inserted them into the political arena, bridged differences among them, and fostered their engagement. It broadly disseminated its message in order to bring the masses into an anti-fascist orbit. While the Junta sought to renovate a democracy under siege, its conception of this type of governance had some shortcomings. Nevertheless, the Argentine case demonstrates that different contexts produced different anti-fascisms.

Acknowledgements

I thank Andrés Bisso, Clara de Franco, Julie Gottlieb, Jennifer Guglielmo, Jorge Nállim, Laura Pasquali, Margaret Power, Kathleen Staudt, Adriana Valobra, Eduardo Zimmerman, and the two anonymous readers for their comments and assistance.

Notes

¹ La Hora, 13 September 1941, p. 4. In this essay I discuss anti-fascism (movements and sentiments in non-fascist countries), which I distinguish from resistance (clandestine armed opposition in fascist countries). Scheiner initially belonged to the Socialist party, joined the Socialist Worker party in the 1930s, and in the 1940s moved in Communist circles.

²For a transnational analysis of the Junta, see Sandra McGee Deutsch, Crossing Borders, Claiming a Nation: A History of Argentine Jewish Women, 1880–1955 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), pp. 183–189.

³Adriana María Valobra, Del hogar a las urnas: Recorridos de la ciudadanía política femenina argentina, 1946–1955 (Rosario: Prohistoria, 2010); Carolina Barry, Evita Capitana: El partido peronista femenino, 1949–1955 (Buenos Aires: Eduntref, 2009); Estela Dos Santos, Las mujeres peronistas (Buenos Aires: CEAL, 1983).

⁴A foundational work is Jacques Droz, Histoire du l'antifascisme en Europe, 1923–1939 (Paris: Découverte, 1985). Just as Europeanist scholars are unaware of anti-fascism in Latin America, many are also unaware of fascism in Latin America.

⁵See, among other works, Andrés Bisso, Acción Argentina: Un antifascismo nacional en tiempos de guerra mundial (Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2005); Andrés Bisso (ed.), El antifascismo argentino (Buenos Aires: CeDinCi, Buenos Libros, 2007); Jorge Nállim, A Challenged Hegemony: Transformations and Crisis of Liberalism in Argentina, 1930–1946 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, forthcoming); James Cane, ‘“Unity for the Defence of Culture”: The AIAPE and the Cultural Politics of Argentine Antifascism, 1935–1943’, Hispanic American Historical Review, 77:3 (1997), pp. 443–482; Pietro Rinaldo Fanesi, ‘El antifascismo italiano en Argentina (1922–1945)’, Estudios Migratorios Latinoamericanos, 4:12 (1989), pp. 319–352, and El exilio antifascista en la Argentina, 2 vols. (Buenos Aires: CEAL, 1994); Ricardo Pasolini, ‘El nacimiento de una sensibilidad política. Cultura antifascista, comunismo y nación en la Argentina: de la A.I.A.P.E. al Congreso Argentino de la Cultura, 1935–1955’, Desarrollo Económico, 45:179 (2005), pp. 403–433; Marcela García Sebastiani (ed.), Fascismo/antifascismo, peronismo/antiperonismo: Conflictos políticos e ideológicos en Argentina, 1930–1955 (Madrid: Iberoamerican Vervuert, 2006); Judith Casali de Babot and María Victoria Grillo (eds) Fascismo y antifascismo en Europa y Argentina en el siglo XX (Tucumán: Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, 2002).

⁶The Junta is briefly discussed in Deutsch, op. cit., pp. 183–189; Dora Barrancos, Mujeres en la sociedad argentina: Una historia de cinco siglos (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 2007), pp. 176–177; Adriana María Valobra, ‘Partidos, tradiciones y estrategias de movilización social: de la Junta de la Victoria a la Unión de Mujeres de la Argentina’, Revista Prohistoria, 9:9 (2005), pp. 67–82, and ‘La UMA en marcha. El Partido Comunista Argentino y las tradiciones y estrategias de movilización social en el primer gobierno peronista: el caso de la Unión de Mujeres Argentinas (UMA)’, Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 30:60 (2005), pp. 155–183; Raanan Rein, The Franco-Perón Alliance: Relations Between Spain and Argentina 1946–1955, transl. Martha Grenzeback (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993), pp. 150–152, 286, note 39. Bisso, El antifascismo, op. cit., pp. 148–152, 162 168, 218–224, 228–229, 232, 366, contains some Junta documents.

⁷Similarly, Kevin Passmore found that political religions theorists studying fascism have assigned agency to male leaders and either have ignored women or rendered them passive. See ‘The Gendered Genealogy of Political Religions Theory’, Gender & History, 20:3 (2008), pp. 644–668.

⁸For Europe and the United States see Denise M. Lynn, ‘Women on the March: Gender and Antifascism in American Communism, 1935–1939’ (PhD dissertation, SUNY-Binghamton, 2006); Donna R. Gabaccia and Franca Iacovetta (eds) Women, Gender, and Transnational Lives: Italian Workers of the World (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002); Julie V. Gottlieb, ‘Feminism and Antifascism in Britain: Militancy Revived?’ in Nigel Copsey and David Renton (eds) British Fascism, the Labour Movement, and the State (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 68–94, and ‘Varieties of Feminist Responses to Fascism in Inter-War Britain’ in Nigel Copsey and Andrzej Olechnowicz (eds) Varieties of Antifascism: Britain in the Inter-War Period (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 101–118; Mary Nash, Defying Male Civilization: Women in the Spanish Civil War (Denver: Arden Press, 1995); J. Alberti, ‘British Feminists and Antifascism in the 1930s’ in Sybil Oldfield (ed) This Working-Day World: Women's Lives and Culture(s) in Britain 1914–1945 (London: Taylor & Francis, 1994), pp. 111–122; Angela Jackson, British Women and the Spanish Civil War (London: Routledge, 2002); Siân Reynolds, France Between the Wars: Gender and Politics (London: Routledge, 1996) and ‘The Lost Generation of French Feminists? Antifascist Women in the 1930s’, Women's Studies International Forum, 23:6 (2000), pp. 679–688; Emmanuelle Carle, ‘Women, Antifascism and Peace in Interwar France: Gabrielle Duchêne's Itinerary’, French History, 18:3 (2004), pp. 291–314. I am investigating pacifism and its links to anti-fascism.

⁹On the FUPDM see Esperanza Tuñón Pablos, Mujeres que se organizan: El frente único pro derechos de la mujer, 1935–1938 (México DF: Miguel Ángel Porrúa, UNAM, 1992); Jocelyn Olcott, Revolutionary Women in Postrevolutionary Mexico (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005) and ‘The Center Cannot Hold: Women on Mexico's Popular Front’, in Jocelyn Olcott, Mary Kay Vaughan and Gabriela Cano (eds) Sex in Revolution: Gender, Politics, and Power in Modern Mexico (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), pp. 223–238. On MEMCh see Corinne Antezana-Pernet, ‘Mobilizing Women in the Popular Front Era: Feminism, Class, and Politics in the Movimiento Pro Emancipación de la Mujer Chilena (MEMCh), 1935–1950’ (PhD dissertation, University of California-Irvine, 1996), and ‘Chilean Feminists, the International Women's Movement, and Suffrage (1915 to 1950)’, Pacific Historical Review, 69:4 (2000), pp. 680–687; Edda Gaviola A. (et al.), Queremos votar en las próximas elecciones: Historia del movimiento femenino chileno, 1913–1952 (Santiago: La Morada, Fempress/ILET, ISIS, Librería Lila, Pemci, 1986); Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt, Gendered Compromises: Political Cultures and the State in Chile, 1920–1950 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000); Asunción Lavrin, Women, Feminism, and Social Change in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, 1890–1940 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995).

¹⁰‘Democracy’, International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, edited by William A. Darity, Jr., 2 (2nd ed.; Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2008), pp. 272–276: Kathleen Staudt, ‘Political Representation: Engendering Politics’, Background Papers, UN Human Development Report 1995 (New York: United Nations Development Programme, 1996), pp. 21–70, esp. 21 and 65; Pamela Paxton, ‘Gendering Democracy’ in Gary Goertz and Amy G. Mazur (eds) Politics, Gender and Concepts: Theory and Methodology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 48–51, 68–70; Georgina Waylen, ‘Women and Democratization: Conceptualizing Gender Relations in Transition Politics’, World Politics 46:3 (1994), pp. 3331–3332; Michelle Bachelet, ‘The Chilean Path to Progressive Change’, Berkeley Review of Latin American Studies, Spring/Summer (2010), pp. 6, 8, 9; quote in Michael Walzer, ‘Pluralism and Democracy’, The Atlantic Magazine, November (2007), np, www.theatlantic.com/magazine.

¹¹Immigrants constituted about 30 per cent of the population in 1914, and technically the men among them could not vote (although sometimes they did).

On Argentine gender norms and the place of gender in Argentine politics see, among many other sources, Barrancos, op. cit.; Lavrin, op. cit.; Fernando Devoto and Marta Madero (eds) Historia de la vida privada en Argentina, 3 vols. (Buenos Aires: Taurus, 1999); Donna Guy, Women Build the Welfare State: Performing Charity in Argentina, 1880–1955 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009).

¹²On these events see, among other works, Sandra McGee Deutsch, Las derechas: The Extreme Right in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, 1890–1939 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), pp. 193–247; Ronald H. Dolkart, ‘The Right in the Década Infame, 1930–1943’ in Sandra McGee Deutsch and Ronald H. Dolkart (eds) The Argentine Right: Its History and Intellectual Origins, 1910 to the Present (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1993), pp. 65–98; Federico Finchelstein, Transatlantic Fascism: Ideology, Violence, and the Sacred in Argentina and Italy, 1919–1945 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010); Loris Zanatta, Del estado liberal a la nación católica. Iglesia y ejército en los orígenes del peronismo. 1930–1943 (Bernal: Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, 1996); Daniel Lvovich, Nacionalismo y antisemitismo en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Javier Vergara, 2003).

¹³Fanny Edelman, Banderas, pasiones, camaradas (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Dirple, 1996), pp. 39–78; Deutsch, Crossing Borders, op. cit., pp. 177–183; Cane, op. cit.; María Rosa Oliver, Mi fe es el hombre (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Carlos Lohlé, 1981), p. 42; Barrancos, op. cit., pp. 172–173.

¹⁴Barrancos, op. cit., pp. 174–175; Lavrin, op. cit., pp. 94, 282–283, 316; Marifran Carlson, ¡Feminismo¡ The Women's Movement in Argentina From Its Beginnings to Eva Perón (Chicago: Academy Chicago, 1988), pp. 177–179; Oliver, op. cit., p. 42; Hebe Clementi, María Rosa Oliver (Buenos Aires: Planeta, 1992), p. 110; María Rosa Oliver, interview, Proyecto de Historia Oral del Instituto Torcuato di Tella, 1971, Universidad Torcuato di Tella, Buenos Aires, pp. 50–51; Verónica Giordano, ‘Los derechos civiles de las mujeres y el proyecto de reforma del Código Civil de 1936: El acontecimiento, la estructura, la coyuntura’, 2007, www.iigg.fsoc.uba.ar.

¹⁵On other pro-Allied groups, see Bisso, Acción Argentina, op. cit.; Deutsch, Crossing Borders, op. cit., pp. 183 –184. On Communist strategy see Jorge Cernadas, Roberto Pittaluga, and Horacio Tarcus, ‘La historiografía sobre el Partido Comunista de la Argentina. Un estado de la cuestión’, El Rodaballo, 4:8 (1998), p. 38; Cane, op. cit.; Berta Perelstein de Braslavsky, interview with author, 2000, Buenos Aires.

¹⁶‘Cora Ratto de Sadosky’, www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/sadosky.htm; Goldsmith to Pilpel, American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Archive, New York, #1069, File 1; La Hora, 22 August 1941, p. 4, 28 August 1941, p. 4, 13 September 1941, p. 4, 8 May 1942, p. 5; Oliver, Mi fe, op. cit., pp. 41–43.

¹⁷ Crítica, 14 September 1941, p. 4; La Hora, 14 September 1941, p. 5. Schlieper advocated a union of American nations against fascism; see La Hora, 22 August 1941, p. 4. Francesca Miller, Latin American Women and the Search for Social Justice (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1991), p. 108, noted that the Inter-American Commission of Women shifted its mission from feminism to promoting democracy in the hemisphere at the time when Schlieper assumed its presidency.

¹⁸On government recognition, see Ana Rosa Schlieper de Martínez Guerrero, Letter to President Pedro P. Ramírez, 30 June 1943, Centro de Documentación e Investigación de la Cultura de Izquierdas en la Argentina (CeDinCI), Buenos Aires.

¹⁹Junta de la Victoria, Estatutos (Buenos Aires: np, 1941), p. 3.

²⁰In 1942, the Junta's Executive Central Board consisted of 23 women, of whom at least five were Communists or Communist sympathisers and one, the president, was a Radical. See Mujeres en la Ayuda (1941–1942), p. 12. Socialists tended to affiliate with Acción Argentina rather than the Junta, partly because of the latter's Communist ties. Fanny Edelman, interview with author, 15 July 2009, Buenos Aires, mentioned that the Junta included some conservative women.

²¹Oliver, Mi fe, op. cit., pp. 43–44; La Hora, 25 October 1941, p. 7, 11 April 1942, p. 5, 15 December 1942, p. 5, 8 May 1943, p. 6; Braslavsky, op. cit.; Ana Monín, interview with author, 1997, San Isidro; Ida Halperin, phone interview with author, 2000.

²²Edelman, Banderas, op. cit., pp. 85–86, 99–100. Bisso, Acción, op. cit., pp. 215, 277, found that Acción Argentina cultivated a prestigious image to attract members.

²³ La Hora and Mujeres en la Ayuda (1941–1942), among other sources, provided names of Junta members, but there is no complete list. Biographical sketches of Argúas and some other Junta members are found in Lily Sosa de Newton, Diccionario biográfico de mujeres argentinas (2nd ed.; Buenos Aires: Plus Ultra, 1980). Also see Braslavsky, op. cit.; La Hora, 14 April 1942, p. 5, 8 May 1942, p. 5, 25 November 1942, p. 5; Edelman, Banderas, op. cit., pp. 102–103; www.margotportelaparker.com.ar; www.thefreelibrary.com.

²⁴Quebracho is a hard wood used for medicinal, tanning, and dying purposes.

²⁵ La Hora, 13 April 1942, p. 8, 7 April 1943, p. 5, 7 May 1943, p. 6, 8 May 1943, p. 6, 14 May 1943, p. 5; Edelman, Banderas, op. cit., p. 86; Cora Ratto de Sadovsky, ‘La convención nacional de la Junta de la Victoria’, Orientación, 23 Apr. 1942, pp. 1–2; Emilia Yolanda Urquiza, ‘Las suecas de “Verdandi”: Una comunidad femenina’, unpublished manuscript, nd.

²⁶Rosa de Cusien, interview with author, 2000, Buenos Aires; Ratto de Sadovsky, op. cit.; Braslavsky, op. cit.; La Hora, 11 May 1942, p. 5.

²⁷ La Hora, 24 November 1941, p. 4, 22 May 1942, p. 8, 3 June 1942, p. 5, 10 May 1943, p. 3; Mujeres en la Ayuda (1941–1942), pp. 9, 14, 23, 58; Rosa Rapaport, interview with author, 1998, Buenos Aires; Delia Boschi, interview with Adriana Valobra, n.d.; Braslavsky, op. cit.

²⁸ La Hora, 20 August 1941, p. 5, 27 May 1942, p. 5, 17 February 1943, p. 5; Mujeres en la Ayuda (1941–1942), p. 22; Comité de Taller Para Vestir a los Ejércitos de la Democracia, flyer, Comité Industrial y Obrero Textil de Villa Lynch, Boletin no. 2, and Comité Israelita de Solidaridad con la Unión Soviética, Inglaterra y demás pueblos libres, flyer, all in IWO archive, Buenos Aires, Box 1070.

²⁹See Comités adheridos a la Fiesta por la Libertad, December 1941, flyer, IWO, Box 1070; La Hora, 28 September 1941, p. 10, 8 February 1943, p. 5; Mujeres en la Ayuda (1941–1942), pp. 21–22, 63; Clara de Franco, ‘Historia de la Unión de Mujeres de la Argentina’, unpublished manuscript, nd; Marie Langer, with Enrique Guinsberg and Jaime del Palacio, From Vienna to Managua: Journey of a Psychoanalyst, transl. Margaret Hooks (London: Free Association Books, 1989), pp. 95–96; Rein, op. cit., p. 286, note 39; Eleonora Ardanaz, communication.

³⁰Similarly, Bisso, Acción, op. cit., pp. 84–90, noted that Acción Argentina used ties to French culture and admiration for English resistance to attract members of these communities and the upper class.

³¹ La Hora, 13 September 1941, p. 4, 22 May 1942, p. 8; Mujeres en la Ayuda (1941–1942), p. 20.

³²On Andrea and his shift, see, in particular, Lila M. Caimari, Perón y la iglesia católica: religión, estado y sociedad en la Argentina (1943–1955) (Buenos Aires: Ariel, 1994), pp. 44–45, 86–90. Also see La Hora, 14 October 1941, p. 6, 27 October 1942, p. 5; Sandra McGee Deutsch, Counterrevolution in Argentina, 1900–1932: The Argentine Patriotic League (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), pp. 58–59, 155; Zanatta, op. cit., pp. 239, 341–342, and Perón y el mito de la nación católica. Iglesia y ejército en los orígenes del peronismo (1943–1946) (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1999), pp. 119–120, 303–305. On De Andrea's and some Catholic women's support for women's suffrage, see Senado de la Nación, Presidencia, Pensamiento cristiano y democrático de Monseñor de Andrea (2nd ed.; Buenos Aires: Imprenta del Congreso de la Nación, 1965), p. 184; Sandra McGee Deutsch, ‘The Catholic Church, Work, and Womanhood in Argentina, 1890–1930’, Gender & History, 3:3 (1991), pp. 304–325. De Andrea's speeches in Senado, Pensamiento cristiano, reveal the limits of his ‘democratic’ stance. This position foreshadowed his opposition to Perón.

³³Caimari, op. cit., pp. 77–86; Zanatta, Perón, op. cit., pp. 304–305; Daniel Lvovich and Federico Finchelstein, ‘L'Holocauste et l'Eglise argentine. Perceptions et Réactions’, Bulletin trimestriel de la Fondation Auschwitz, 76–77 (2002), pp. 9–30; Finchelstein, Transatlantic Fascism, op. cit., pp. 131, 142, 176, 243, note 9; Attachment, p. 18, 9 April 1942, United States, Department of State, Records of the Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of Argentina, 1940–1944, M1322, 835.00/1177.

³⁴ La Hora, 15 April 1942, p. 1. After 1945 Silveyra became president of the Unión Democrática Femenina [Feminine Democratic Union], the women's branch of the anti-Peronist coalition, and eventually joined the Radical party. See Sosa de Newton, op. cit., p. 440. According to Bisso, Acción, op. cit., pp. 198–201, Acción Argentina used similar rhetoric to attract Catholics and had clerical members until the Church forbade it.

³⁵ La Hora, 29 November 1942, p. 7.

³⁶Figure in Schlieper, Letter to Ramírez. Ardanaz, communication, mentioned Spiritist members in Buenos Aires province. Valobra, ‘Partidos’, op. cit., found that Communists in the immediate postwar era sought to conciliate religious differences under a working-class umbrella. See, for example, Hilda Schiller's speech in La Hora, 22 November 1948, p. 1.

³⁷ La Hora, 28 September 1941, p. 10; Monín, op. cit.; Halperin, op. cit.; Mariano Ben Plotkin, Mañana es San Perón: A Cultural History of Perón's Argentina, transl. Keith Zahniser (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 2003), p. 187.

³⁸Peso figure in Schlieper, Letter to Ramírez. Also see Junta de la Victoria, filial Moisés Ville, Letter to President of Banco Socorro Fraternal, 20 October 1942, Museo Histórico Comunal y de la Colonización Judía Rabino ‘Aaron Goldman’, Moisés Ville, Carpeta 2, Documentos Originales; Braslavsky, op. cit.; Edelman, Banderas, op. cit., p. 86; Oliver, interview, op. cit., p. 54; La Hora, 28 May 1941, p. 9, 11 April 1942, p. 5, 29 May 1942, p. 5, 3 June 1942, p. 5, 25 November 1942, p. 5, 10 December 1942, p. 5, 11 December 1942, p. 5, 9 May 1943, p. 6, 10 May 1943, p. 3.

³⁹Adriana Valobra, communication; La Hora, 18 October 1941, p. 4, 15 April 1942, p. 7, 29 May 1942, p. 5.

⁴⁰Junta de la Victoria, Ayuda de las mujeres argentinas a los países que luchan contra el nazismo. 13 septiembre. 1941–13 enero 1942; La Hora, 12 October 1941, p. 4, 24 November 1941, p. 4, 5 December 1942, p. 5, 27 December 1942, p. 5.

⁴¹ Mujeres en la Ayuda (1941–1942), p. 14; Ratto de Sadovsky, op. cit.; El Día (La Plata), 24 October 1942, pp. 2, 5, 25 October 1942, p. 5, La Hora, 13 April 1942, p. 8, 14 April 1942, p. 5, 15 April 1942, p. 5, 18 April 1942, p. 5, 3 May 1942, p. 7, 21 March 1943, p. 6, 9 April 1943, p. 5, 4 May 1943, p. 5, 5 May 1943, p. 5; Orientación, 13 May 1943, p. 5.

⁴² La Capital (Rosario), 26 September 1941, p. 11.

⁴³Number in Schlieper, Letter to Ramírez.

⁴⁴ Orientación, 13 May 1943, p. 5.

⁴⁵ Mujeres en la Ayuda (1941–1942), p. 11.

⁴⁶Schlieper, Letter to Ramírez; La Hora, 10 May 1943, p. 3, 21 May 1943, p. 5.

⁴⁷ La Hora, 15 April 1942, p. 5, 5 May 1943, p. 5; Mujeres en la Ayuda (1941–1942), p. 20.

⁴⁸Nash, op. cit., pp. 72–74, 81–82; Martha A. Ackelsberg, ‘Women and the Politics of the Spanish Popular Front: Political Mobilization or Social Revolution?’, International Labor and Working-Class History, 30 (1986), p. 8; Carmen Alcalde, La mujer en la guerra civil española (Madrid: Cambio 16, 1976), p. 145.

⁴⁹ La Hora, 15 April 1942, p. 5, 10 May 1943, p. 3; Mujeres en la Ayuda (1941–1942), pp. 8, 50; Orientación, 19 September 1945, p. 1. Bisso, Acción, op. cit., p. 306, noted that Acción Argentina sometimes discussed socioeconomic issues but emphasised freedom and political democracy.

⁵⁰ I thank Laura Pasquali and Jorge Nallim for their insights. Also see Nallim, op. cit., Chapters 2 and 5, and ‘An Unbroken Loyalty in Turbulent Times: La Prensa and Liberalism in Argentina, 1930–1946’, Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe, 20:2 (2009), pp. 35–62, on divisions among conservatives and their complex ideas on democracy

⁵¹ La Vanguardia, 13 February 1933, p. 10, 23 February 1934, p. 12. At this time Scheiner belonged to the Socialist party.

⁵²Bisso, Acción, op. cit., pp. 222–224. Whether this was as true for the women's branch as it was for the entire organisation is unclear. The women's branch engaged in democratic practices that resembled the Junta's, but it did not enjoy the same autonomy, nor did it appear to have national meetings.

⁵³ La Hora, 14 April 1942, p. 5, 1 September 1942, p. 5, 3 Jan. 1943, p. 5, 10 May 1943, p. 3; Schlieper, Letter to Ramírez; Deutsch, Las derechas, op. cit., p. 238.

⁵⁴Peter Wind, interview with author, 2000, Buenos Aires; U.S. Dept. of State, Laurence Duggan, 26 June 1943, 835.00/1575; Schlieper, Letter to Secretary General of the Federación Obrera Nacional de la Construcción, 12 July 1943, CeDInCI; Schlieper, Letter to Ramírez; Oliver, interview, op. cit.; Braslavsky, op. cit., p. 51; Bisso, Acción Argentina, op. cit., p. 235; La Hora, 24 April 1942, p. 8, 10 December 1942, p. 6, 19 December 1942, p. 5, 27 December 1942, p. 5, 28 December 1942, p. 6, 31 December 1942, p. 5, 10 January 1943, p. 7, 11 February 1943, p. 5, 21 March 1943, p. 6, 10 May 1943, p. 3. Other pro-Allied groups such as Acción Argentina also experienced repression before June 1943.

⁵⁵Edelman, interview, op. cit., and Banderas, op. cit., p. 89; Berta Singerman, Mis dos vidas (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Tres Tiempos, 1981), pp. 112–115; Clarín, 7 July 1985, p. 16; Halperin, op. cit.

⁵⁶ La Hora, 15 November 1945, p. 6, 18 November 1945, p. 6, 15 December 1945, p. 3, 17 December 1945, p. 3, 19 December 1945, p. 3, 20 December 1945, p. 1, 20 December 1945, p. 3,10 February 1946, p. 5, 7 March 1946, p. 3, 23 March 1946, p. 6; Mujeres Argentinas, 9 August 1946, pp. 2, 7; Boschi, op. cit.; Rein, op. cit., pp. 150-152; Edelman, Banderas, op. cit., pp. 94-95.

⁵⁷ La Hora, 15 December 1945, p. 3, 16 December 1945, p. 3, 17 December 1945, p. 3; Edelman, Banderas, op. cit., pp. 94–95.

⁵⁸ La Hora, 22 November 1945, p. 1, 22 December 1945, p. 5, 14 February 1946, p. 7, 7 March 1946, p. 3, 12 March 1946, p. 3; Boschi, op. cit.

⁵⁹Fifty-four per cent voted for Perón; see Peter H. Smith, ‘The Social Base of Peronism’, Hispanic American Historical Review, 52:1 (1972), p. 55.

⁶⁰Patricia Barrio de Villanueva, El costo de la obediencia: El Partido Comunista Argentino en la encrucijada (1939–1945) (Mendoza: EDIUNC, 2001), pp. 96–101; Valobra, ‘Partidos’, op. cit.

⁶¹ 11 Congreso, 2 August 1946, pp. 3-4, 14-15, 12 August 1946, p. 14, Legajo 5; Victorio Codovilla, ‘A las camaradas de la Comisión Nacional Femenina y por su intermedio a las demás compañeras del Partido’, March 1952, Legajo 13; Partido Comunista Argentino archive, Buenos Aires, Documentos 1909–1940. Also see Valobra, ‘Partidos’, op. cit.; Mujeres Argentinas, 1 April 1947, n.p.

⁶²Braslavsky, op. cit.; Edelman, Banderas, op. cit., pp. 99–100, 103; Mujeres Argentinas, 15 July 1947, np, 1 August 1947, np; Valobra, ‘Partidos’, op. cit., and ‘La UMA’, op. cit.