The Modern Army
The 1930s marked a new phase in the armed forces' development that signaled the apparent failure of attempts to divorce the military from politics that began some 50 years before. The September 1930 coup that outsted the aged and, by most accounts, senile President Hipólito Yrigoyen was facilitated by the expansion of the force during the 1920s, when it had benefited in terms of both increased personnel—mainly because of conscription—and expenditures. The regular and often intense participation of military officers, especially army officers, in national political life became a feature of the Argentine system when some six coups d'etat were launched by the armed forces between 1930 and 1980.
The involvement of army personnel in the political process led to a deep rift between it and the navy, which refrained from becoming a political actor during the 1930s, and also caused a division within the army itself as two major factions struggled for ideological ascendancy. The legalist faction, which had backed the Yrigoyen government, tended to support a market-oriented economic system and a constitutional democracy. Its members generally favored keeping the armed forces out of politics and subordinate to civilian authority.
The corporatist-nationalist faction was associated with authoritarian tendencies and, modeling itself on the ideals set forth by Benito Mussolini in Italy, was contemptuous of civilian authority and wholly supported the involvement of the military in politics. Both factions continued to exist within the Argentine military institution into the 1980s, when the same fundamental issue regarding the nature of civil-military relations, though often cloaked in new semantics, continued to divide the service.
Despite the world economic downturn, the armed forces continued to grow throughout the 1930s and 1940s. The total number of military personnel doubled from 50,000 at the time of the 1930 coup to 100,000 in 1943, when the coup led by army officers of the secret military lodge, the Unification Task Force (Grupo Obra de Unificacion — GOU), enabled Juan Domingo Peron, then an army colonel, to reach the national political arena. In 1945 military expenditures accounted for over 50 percent of the national budget, a proportion unmatched in Argentine history. By the end of the decade, military manpower again had nearly doubled. Army personnel, including conscripts, composed about half the active-duty troops.
The organizational structure of the military also changed to keep pace with the exponential growth in manpower. The number of army divisions had increased from five in 1920 to nine in 1945. In addition to the military regions established for ground forces in 1905, the First Army Command and the Second Army Command were created in 1938 to better coordinate divisional operations. The Military Aviation Service, organized under the army's command in 1912, became the Argentine Air Force in 1945 and was given its own independent command.
During World War II the Argentine government maintained a position of official neutrality until it became apparent that the Axis powers would be defeated. In March 1945 Argentina joined the Allies, declared war on Germany and Japan, and the following month signed the Act of Chapultepec. Because of its reluctance to support the Allied cause, Argentina became the only Latin American country that did not receive United States Lend-Lease Aid. The war in Europe also had cut off the country from its traditional military suppliers.
The realization of Argentine dependence on foreign suppliers sped up the development of a domestic military industry under the direction of the armed forces' General Directorate of Military Manufactures (Dirección General de Fabricaciones Militares—DGFM), which had been established in 1941. By the end of the decade, the DGFM's military industries had developed a submachine gun, a 75mm infantry gun, and a medium tank similar to the Sherman and was constructing minesweepers as well as smaller vessels at local shipyards.
As World War II ended and the Cold War began, relations between the United States and Argentina became more cordial. Normal diplomatic relations were restored in June 1947 after the United States government was satisfied that Argentina had complied with the provisions of the Act of Chapultepec by arresting or deporting the Axis agents reported to be in the country. In September Argentina joined other Latin American nations and the United States in signing the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (Rio Treaty). Despite some continuing resistance by the United States Department of State, President Harry S Truman again allowed Argentina to purchase United States-manufactured military equipment. Items purchased included submachine and Browning machine guns, howitzers, and 90mm antiaircraft guns. Also acquired, though from various sources, were some 200 United States built Sherman tanks, many of which remained in service in the mid-1980s.
After President Peron was deposed by the military in 1955, the size of the armed forces, which had numbered about 200,000 personnel, began to decrease. By the early 1960s the armed forces had shrunk to some 140,000 troops, of which 85,000 belonged to the army. Between 1955 and 1965 the army was reorganized twice. Shortly after PerOn's ouster, five army corps — each assigned to one of the five military regions — were created, replacing the two army commands. By 1963 an army corps was abolished, and its jurisdiction collapsed into that of a contiguous military region. Brigades were also created in 1964, replacing divisions as the army's formations.
During the 1960s factionalism within the armed forces, attributed to their intense participation in politics, increased greatly. Between 1962 and 1966 two civilian presidents, Arturo Frondizi and Arturo Illia, were ousted by military coups. After each of the coups, the legalist and the conservative factions — then called the blues (azules) and the reds (colorados), respectively named for the colors used by war game participants — struggled for control of the national government. Both groups supported an eventual return to civilian rule, but a third, more hard-line group, known as the golpistas, favored military rule for an indefinite period. Despite their divisions, the major military factions were united in opposing Peronism and all that this movement associated with the former president represented.
Ties between the Argentine armed forces and their United States counterparts remained close throughout the 1960s. The initial attempt by the civilian Frondizi government to maintain a neutral position in the wake of the Cuban Revolution was said to have enraged the Argentine officer corps, which had already developed an antipathy toward communism.
In 1964 a military assistance agreement was signed by the two governments that provided for Argentina's acquisition of modern weaponry and for trips by various United States advisory missions to the country. Military equipment purchased from the United States during the second half of the decade included armored personnel carriers, light tanks, various models of fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, and a dock landing ship.
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