Word: perã
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...dominated Argentina's politics for three decades and was South America's most famous contemporary figure. His erratic career took him from obscurity to the peak of power, to exile and then to one of this century's most remarkable political comebacks. Through it all, Juan Domingo Per??n remained his country's symbol of national unity. He was el Líder, the caudillo who held out the perennial promise that the feuding privileged and underprivileged of Argentina would one day coalesce and turn their richly endowed country into the leading nation of South America. When he died last week...
...nearly two-thirds of Argentine voters elected him to a third term as President last September, after 18 years in exile, he was unable to reconcile the smoldering class differences that have brought the nation of 24 million to new civil chaos. While retaining some of his old flair, Per??n seemed to lack his old ruthlessness. He hesitated to take strong action against the terror ist leftist guerrillas, whose kidnapings of businessmen had frightened away foreign investors. He wisely imposed a tough "social pact," an agreement between employers and workers that amounted to a wage-price freeze, momentarily reducing...
...Per??n will be best remembered for the successes?and excesses?of the nine years of his first two presidential terms, before a coup sent him into exile in 1955. A professional soldier and son of a moderately wealthy landowner, he rose to power as a champion of the exploited urban workers, the "shirtless ones" as he affectionately called them...
Flanked by his wife Evita, a former actress whose compassion for the poor earned her an immense following, Per??n enthralled the masses with his speeches from the balcony at the Casa Rosada, Argentina's Government House. He followed up his pledges of social change with real reforms: the establishment of a social security system, construction of low-cost housing, wage hikes and the lengthening of workers' vacations, public health programs against tuberculosis, malaria and leprosy, and the encouragement of collective bargaining...
Evita, worshiped by the masses as the "little Madonna," bolstered Per??n's popularity. She was head of the Eva Per??n Foundation, a lightly audited charity that she used to pass $100 million annually to the poor. After she died of cancer in 1952 at age 33, Argentines petitioned the Vatican to canonize her. Although Rome refused, a secular cult has formed to revere her memory; it is still going strong...