Juan Domingo Perón was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on October 8th 1895. After school he attended Military College. Upon graduation he rose through the army ranks and in the late 1930s was sent to Italy as a military observer where he became familiar with the government of Benito Mussolini.
Perón returned to Argentina in 1941 and formed the GOU (United Officers’ Group) against the government. In 1943 the group led a successful military coup against the government of Ramón Castillo and Perón became secretary of Labour and Social welfare. His reforms in this area made him popular with the working classes.
In 1944 Perón met the singer and actress Eva Duarte at a relief concert for the 1944 earthquake. Perón‘s first wife Aurelia Tizón had died of cancer in 1937 and in October 1945 Perón married Eva Duarte. Eva, known as Evita, a woman of the masses sympathetic to the plight of the poor and downtrodden, was instrumental in increasing support of Perón. When Perón was arrested by opposition forces in October 1945, mass protests led by Evita secured his release just four days later.
Perón stood for election and became president of Argentina on 24th February 1946. His goals for the country were to improve social justice and to make Argentina economically independent. Perón remained in office for six years at the head of a right wing government that was fiercely anti-American and anti-British, strongly in favour of nationalisation and with a belief that government should be for the people not by the people. The political ideology was and is referred to as Perónism.
By 1951 Perón had had to modify some of his political ideology in order to remain in office. In 1952 the death of Evita, Perón‘s excommunication by the Catholic Church and workers’ complaints led to a decline in his popularity. Perón was defeated in 1955 and exiled to Paraguay.
In 1961 he moved to Spain and settled in Madrid where he married his third wife, Maria Estela Martinez.
In 1973 the military government in power restored democracy and Perón was invited to return to Argentina to front the Perónist party. Although he was returned as President in 1973 he was unable to secure any lasting effect on the political or economic situation in Argentina. After Perón‘s death in 1974, his wife Maria who had been his Vice President became President in her own right but was brought down by a military coup in 1976.
