Eduardo Elena. Dignifying Argentina. Peronism, Citizenship, and Mass Consumption. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011. 332 pp. ISBN 978-0822961703, $27.95 (original) (raw)

Enterprise and Society, 2013

Abstract

The movement that emerged around Argentinean president Juan Perón (or Peronism) is, beyond doubt, one of the most discussed topics in twentieth-century history. The historiographical renewal in this regard has been impressive in recent years, even in dimensions that recover various aspects of the social reality, unthinkable until very recently. Yet, Eduardo Elena’s book will surely find a place among the best studies about Peronism. Elena focuses specifically on popular consumption this and a number of other points, the author should have engaged Middlebrook’s work. The second part of Guajardo Soto’s argument—that workers were largely at fault for the chronic efficiencies of the industry—is more problematic. This section relies entirely on the records of railroad administrators. Moreover, the author provides no analysis of what political and economic concerns might have motivated these administrators. Rather, he takes them at their word. The analysis is particularly problematic when it comes to the author’s description of workers’ culture and the railway community, presented in Chapter 7. The author could have consulted a wide array of primary sources that give us access to workers’ points of view and provide a window to their on-the-job experiences. The thousands of workers dossiers, housed in CEDIF, would have provided the author with a very different picture of the problems that burdened the industry. When managers complained about workers’ productivity, workers reminded them that they could not get the job done with machinery in disrepair. These documents conflict with Guajardo Soto’s conclusion that workers held on to artisanal values. On the contrary, they wanted modern equipment so they could do their jobs. Surely, workers were not without fault, but an analysis of their points of view is indispensable for understanding the technological history of the industry. Ultimately, this book will be of interest primarily to Mexicanists working on the narrow issue of the mechanics of the railroad industry.

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