Failed Planning, Successful Propaganda: Peronist Five-Year Plans (1946-1955)

Fifteen vocabulary flashcards summarizing key terms, actors, and concepts related to Argentina’s Peronist Five-Year Plans and their economic-political context.

IAPI (Instituto Argentino de Promoción del Intercambio)

State agency created in 1946 to monopolize foreign trade in farm goods and channel the profits into industrialization; central economic tool of early Peronism.

First Five-Year Plan (1947-1951)

Perón’s initial economic blueprint that bundled diverse economic and political reforms into a single package, functioning more as propaganda than as an enforceable program.

Second Five-Year Plan (1952-1956)

Austerity-oriented program that froze wages, urged higher productivity and savings, and legitimized a major stabilization plan after the 1949 crisis.

Miguel Miranda

Businessman turned chief economic adviser who ran the Central Bank and IAPI, pursued expansive policies based on an expected Third World War, and was ousted in 1949.

Council of Post-War (Consejo Nacional de Posguerra)

Think-tank set up under the military regime (1944-46) to draft post-war strategies; provided data and personnel but had limited influence on actual Peronist policy.

Marshall Plan Exclusion

U.S. aid program for Europe that bypassed Argentina, slashing demand for its grain exports and worsening the balance-of-payments squeeze after 1948.

Propagandistic Planning

Peronist tactic of presenting contested measures as parts of a grand plan, masking policy shifts and rallying public support for government objectives.

Religious Education Law

Legislation that made Catholic instruction compulsory in public schools, inserted into the First Plan to minimize debate and faced opposition from secular teachers.

University Reform of 1918

Pre-Peronist system of student co-government that the 1947 University Law dismantled, limiting student participation to one non-voting representative.

Laborismo

Worker-based political current that initially backed Perón but clashed with him in 1946 over congressional seats, agrarian reform, and civil-rights bills.

Foundation Eva Perón

Para-state charity funded mainly by mandatory payroll deductions; built hospitals and schools, complicating centralized planning of social policy.

Quitas Zonales

Regional wage deductions imposed under the Second Plan that cut interior workers’ pay below Buenos Aires levels as part of the austerity drive.

Ley del Agio

Anti-profiteering statute aimed at curbing excessive price hikes; small shopkeepers were prosecuted while large firms were often spared.

Middle-class Economic Team

Core Peronist technocrats—Cereijo, Gómez Morales, Ares—sons of small merchants shaped by post-WWI hardship, favoring state intervention to aid local bourgeois and consumers.

Third World War Expectation

Widely held belief (1946-50) that another global conflict was imminent, leading Miranda to hoard supplies and delay grain sales—an error that strained finances.