Peron : A BIOGRAPHY

Rating:
Summary: A monumental work
Review: This is a monumental work by an author who made six trips to Argentina, and also traveled to Spain and Panama, while researching this book. The author refers to Juan Peron as the most remarkable and enduring leader in Latin American history. The author proceeds to describe this remarkable career, following Peron from his humble birth in rural Argentina, to his military training, to the Presidency (1946), exile, and return to Argentina in the early 1970s where he would die in office. Brief mention is made of Isabel's tragic and short reign as President after the death of her husband. Extensive information is also available regarding Peron's relationship with Eva Peron ("Evita"), with a few chapters devoted to her. A section of photographs is available as well.

The author's description of Juan Peron is comprehensive and complex, and may therefore be best suited for someone already very familiar with Peron and contemporary Argentine history. If you are looking for a more brief and succinct historical rendering of Peron's career, you may want to look elsewhere, perhaps to JUAN AND EVA PERON by Clive Foss. My favorite biography of Juan Peron is PERON AND ENIGMAS OF ARGENTINA by Robert D. Crassweller. Crassweller explains in PERON AND THE ENIGMAS OF ARGENTINA that Peron was a product of the "Hispanic Creole" tradition, and that all his successes and failures can be seen within the context of that culture, and in many ways were *shaped* by that culture. In fact, Crassweller argues that Peron's real talent was his keen insight into the culture, his keen intuition in understanding how to reach out to and unify as many different segments of Argentina as possible. While Joseph Page does attempt to provide cultural insight, he does not succeed to the extent that Crassweller does.

Joseph Page comes to a conclusion that may surprise many: that Juan Peron was a pacifist at heart; "He steadfastly rejected violence as an open instrument of policy." Page also points out the irony that Peron, once considered by some as a "South American Hitler," would have never plunged or plundered his country into war, and that it was the men who ousted Peron who went on to kill thousands of people.