Perhaps best known worldwide at the side of his legendary wife, Evita, former Argentine president Juan Peron fought hard for social gains while leading Argentina. Now he is following Che Guevara down the road from politics to popular T-shirts.
Peron (1895-1974), a military officer who was president three times, is seen by detractors as a populist demagogue. However, for more numerous supporters, he is the father of Argentine social gains in education, healthcare, as well as dignity for workers.
For those who feel connected to his history — not a small number in Argentina — Peron has inspired a restaurant chain’s name; his image has been slapped on an upscale wine; and his smiling face even adorns popular T-shirts.
Photo: AFP
“The price for ‘the General’ was too high, so we decided to go with ‘Juan Domingo’ and we registered the trademark,” Jose Pablo Lamenza, 58, said showing a reporter around his new restaurant in La Plata, a university city 60km south of the capital.
Dining out with Peron was not exactly a new idea. There is another restaurant called El General in Buenos Aires; Peron-Peron and A Coffee with Peron in the capital, and now Juan Domingo in La Plata.
The walls of the new restaurant here are covered in vintage photos of a Peron often looking rather sporty.
“I think that [Juan] Peron mass marketing is a commentary on the kind of Peronism that you saw put forth by [the late former Argentine president Nestor] Kirchner,” who held the office from 2003 to 2007, said Juan Carlos Torre of the Universidad Di Tella.
A few streets away, in the heart of the politically active city — where the university saw 700 of its students killed during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship —— artist Diego Manuel, 41, peddles T-shirts emblazoned with a portrait he painted of Juan Peron, a warm smile against a green background.
“They are selling at 20 euros [US$29] on the Internet, especially in Europe and the United States,” he said.
“Peron, just like Che, has ceased to be ‘dangerous’ and that is what makes it possible to turn him into an object of mass marketing,” political analyst Jorge Giacobbe said.
Though Peron was not a Marxist revolutionary like his younger compatriot Che, a key figure in the Cuban revolution who has come to symbolize counter-culture, he nonetheless reshaped Argentina with his “third way.”
This was neither communist nor capitalist, but involved government intervention in economic and social policies to benefit the humble classes — progressive notions that did not always find favor in conservative Argentina with its influential military and Catholic church.
Fernando Braga Menendez, an influential advertising executive, also argues that “Peron is back.”
“People who once used to be appalled by him now see him as a sort of picturesque character, very Argentine, which can be used commercially: sort of like a Fangio or a Gardel,” Braga Menendez said of the race car and tango legends.
The social-and-commercial revamping of Juan Peron comes with the October presidential election looming.
In Buenos Aires, there is a huge exhibit on Peron and his legacy in national thought. Visitors can listen to tour explanations of the long political path from Juan Peron to Nestor Kirchner.
“Peron, Nestor and Evita changed the history of this country,” said Valentina Cuneo, 27, one of the exhibit’s officials who puts the late president up there with the historical greats.
Kirchner’s widow is Agrentine President Cristina Kirchner.
Giacobbe says that “after Nestor Kirchner died, a marketing person must have realized that making him an icon in his own right makes it possible for ‘Kirchnerism’ to live on, even without Peron.”
“A political operation is under way,” Torre said.
At the Peron-Peron restaurant, Helmut Ditsch, a local painter whose work is heavy on nature, says the current president should be able to hold onto power in October.
He just launched a wine called El Justicialista (a synonym of Peronist) with a picture of Peron on the label.
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