Argentina: 20th Century Developments

Argentina entered the twentieth century as one of the world's wealthiest nations, its economy driven by agricultural exports and mass European immigration. This prosperity proved fragile: the Great Depression of the 1930s battered the export economy and ushered in a period of political instability, beginning with a military coup in 1930 that ended decades of civilian constitutional government. The following decades were marked by alternating civilian and military rule, as competing factions within the armed forces, the landowning elite, and organized labor vied for influence over the country's direction.

The election of Juan Peron in 1946 transformed Argentine politics, introducing an era of state-led industrialization, expanded labor rights, and mass political mobilization built around Peron and his wife, Eva Duarte. Ousted by the military in 1955, Peron's movement was banned for nearly two decades even as it retained deep working-class support. Argentina cycled through further coups in 1962, 1966, and 1976, the last installing a military junta whose campaign against suspected leftists, known as the Dirty War, killed thousands of people between 1976 and 1983.

Argentina's defeat in the 1982 Falklands War hastened the junta's collapse and the restoration of democracy in 1983 under President Raul Alfonsin, whose government prosecuted former military leaders for human rights abuses. The remainder of the century brought recurring economic turmoil, including hyperinflation in the late 1980s and sweeping market reforms in the 1990s, as Argentina worked to consolidate civilian democratic rule after decades of upheaval.