Missionaries of modernization: The United States, Argentina, and the liberal international order, 1958--1963

In 1958, Arturo Frondizi was elected president of Argentina following three years of military rule under the Liberating Revolution. Frondizi pledged to reintegrate the working-class Peronists into the body politic, after the previous military leadership had pledged to exorcise the group from the national consciousness. Above all, however, Frondizi pledged to embark on an ambitious modernization campaign through which Argentina would emerge as an industrialized, high mass consumption society. Over the subsequent five years, Argentine modernization was supported extensively by public and private elites from the United States. Using U.S. and Argentine sources, this dissertation examines the international and transnational dimensions of Argentine developmentalism.;Between 1958 and 1963, the U.S. government, private American banks, and supranational organizations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), loaned hundreds of millions of dollars to Argentina in support of the country's economic development. They conditioned such support on domestic Argentine political and economic reforms, including privatization of state-owned industry, reduced expenditures toward the welfare state, and the liberalization of trade and capital flows. The Frondizi government, and after March 1962 the Jose Maria Guido government, readily agreed to U.S. conditions. Those policies, however, were unpopular with the Argentine working class which suffered under austere spending policies. They also protested a perceived loss of national sovereignty as transnational corporations in general, and petroleum companies in particular, became increasingly dominant within the Argentine economy.;The modernization efforts ended in failure. U.S. officials were unwilling to liberalize their own domestic economy to facilitate increased Argentine imports, which contributed significantly to the constant Argentine balance-of-payments deficits. Despite Frondizi's promises to the contrary, his government was unable to reintegrate the Peronists back into the body politic peacefully. Instead, Frondizi was removed from power by a military coup in March 1962. The Arturo Illia government's cancellation of oil contracts held by transnational corporations on 15 November 1963 marked the end of concerted transnational modernization efforts in Argentina. Those efforts concluded without generating the promised economic improvement, or political and social stability.