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September 4, 1983, Page 007006Buy Reprints The New York Times Archives


A Biography. By Joseph A. Page. 594 pp. New York: Random House. $25.

IT would probably take a novel stamped with the

surrealistic genius of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez

to render all the madness, perverse magic and tragedy of Juan Domingo Peron and his Argentina. But Joseph A. Page has come up with the next best option. His ''Peron'' is a clearly written, definitive study, the first biography that traces the legendary caudillo from birth to power to exile and back to power and death. This is a considerable feat of historical writing because the passions aroused by Peron in his nation are so great. For 30 years, Argentines have tended to define themselves as Peronists or anti-Peronists and to view recent history from the same perspective. How can a historian trust news accounts from the Peronist eras, when newspapers were so muzzled? The large number of Argentine books on Peron are clearly colored by their adulation or hatred of the man, as are the memories of people who lived under his rule. During my three years as a foreign correspondent in Argentina - coinciding with Peron's return from exile, his death and the overthrow of his wife, Isabelita, who succeeded him as President - I did not meet a single Argentine who could talk about the caudillo with dispassion.

To make sense of Peron's machinations, accomplishments and failures, Mr. Page, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, undertook a monumental task of investigative reporting. He culled through masses of conflicting written accounts and conducted hundreds of interviews, trying to sift fact from speculation. He certainly had little help from his subject: Peron was a liar. Lying was an essential part of the political technique that allowed him to convince a coalition of fascists, conservatives, moderates and left-wing revolutionaries that he shared the views of each faction. The books he wrote in exile about his regime bear little relation to reality. He could even brazenly lie to his victims years after he victimized them. Mr. Page tells of the first Argentine journalist to interview Peron in exile in 1955: ''Peron complimented his visitor on the high quality of the publication. When reminded that his regime had closed the magazine down, the ex-president exclaimed, 'How barbaric! What a shameful thing!' and blamed the incident on the 'bureaucracy.' The reaction typified his refusal to accept responsibility for any excesses committed under Peronist rule.''

Peron was one of the most remarkable figures in Latin American history. As an obscure 47-year-old army colonel, he rose to power behind a phalanx of politically inept generals who staged a bloodless coup in 1943. In 1946 and again in 1951 he was elected President, riding the crest of his popular appeal and the economic and social benefits that he showered on Argentina's working class. For millions of discontented Argentines, Peron and his second wife, Eva Duarte - Evita, to the faithful - personified the dawn of a new era. Like Mussolini, whom he admired, Peron was a Jonathan Kandell was the New York Times bureau chief in Argentina from 1973 to 1975. His first book, ''Passage Through El Dorado,'' will be published in January. master at manipulating the masses; he summoned hundreds of thousands to rallies that gave them an illusion of political power.

Though outwardly preserving democratic forms, Peron's regime in the 1940's and 50's was thoroughly autocratic. Peronists controlled the legislature, the judiciary, the bureaucracy, the police, the labor unions and the media. Arbitrary detentions and the occasional use of torture dissuaded vocal opponents. But it was Peron's mismanagement of the economy that started his undoing. His extravagant social and economic programs set off a disastrous inflationary spiral. An avoidable feud with the Roman Catholic Church gave momentum to opposition in civilian sectors and the armed forces. In 1955 a military uprising drove Peron into exile. His monuments were obliterated; the media were only allowed to refer to him as ''the deposed tyrant,'' and he was supposed to fade from public memory.

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But during 18 years of exile, Peron remained the shadow force in Argentine politics, in full control of the Peronist movement. Returning to Argentina in 1973, he romped to the presidency with 60 percent of the vote. To his hard-core right-wing labor following, he added moderate middle-class and young left-wing guerrilla supporters. When he died less than a year later from heart failure at 78, his rank of general had been restored, and he was grandly eulogized in the Buenos Aires cathedral.

Shortly before his death, he handpicked as his successor his third wife, Maria Estela Martinez, known as Isabelita. Her 20-month presidency saw the collapse of the economy. Violence of the left and right raged out of control. A military coup in 1976 unleashed a reign of terror that resulted in the killing of 6,000 to 10,000 people. Since then, the military has proved as bungling as it is brutal, not only in its senseless war over the Falkland Islands last year but in its economic mismanagement. Ironically, when the generals are removed from power (an election is scheduled for this year), it is likely that Peronists will once again take control.

Mr. Page's account of Peron's career and the people who surrounded him fills huge gaps in our understanding of one of South America's master politicians and the movement he created. At times, the cascade of unfamiliar names, parties and political factions may overwhelm the general reader. And the book suffers from too much concentration on Peron. I wish Mr. Page had probed more into the attitudes and motivations of his supporters and opponents. One wonders what it was really like to be a trade unionist, factory worker, businessman, journalist, opposition politician, academic or left-wing guerrilla under Peron.

But those are not great deficiencies in this excellent book. Its portrayal of Peron's political style is especially convincing. He was not a tyrant in the mold of Hitler or Stalin. He was neither daring nor decisive. Rather, he preferred to strike a curiously passive pose in the face of crises, letting events get out of hand until supporters and opponents turned to him for a solution.

Three key episodes in his career serve to illustrate his style. First, on Oct. 17, 1945 - the most important day in Peronist mythology - hordes of factory workers demonstrated in Buenos Aires to demand the release of Peron, then secretary of labor and still a colonel, from military detention. The massive protest, which succeeded and propelled him to the presidency in elections the following year, was organized with almost no encouragement from Peron. Second, in 1955, Peron probably still had enough of a following in the armed forces to crush a military uprising against him, but the prospect of a bloody conflict probably convinced him to abdicate and flee the country. Third, after returning to Argentina in 1973 and forcing Hector Campora, whom Peron had picked as a candidate even while he himself was in exile, to resign from the presidency, Peron sat back for weeks until his supporters and opponents virtually begged him to grab the reins of power. Without campaigning, Peron won the presidential elections in a landslide.

In Mr. Page's biography, Peron emerges as a genius at building coalitions to gain power but as an indecisive, ineffective ruler. This contradiction, Mr. Page correctly points out, sprang from his instinct for dividing his followers to rule them. He played trade unionists against their rank and file, the labor movement against the professional politicans, right- wing factions against left-wing guerrillas. And he always surrounded himself with mediocrities and sycophants.

The one exception was Evita Peron. Her impassioned speeches and charity to the poor gave her a huge popular following. But when she died of cancer in 1952, Peron made certain never to allow another figure in his movement to reach such political heights.

MR. PAGE does a fine job of putting her in perspective. Her thorough subordination to Peron has been obscured by the recent feminist interest in her meteoric career, the success of the Broadway musical bearing her name and the adulation she enjoyed two decades after her death among youthful left-wing guerrillas in Latin America who claimed she was a true revolutionary. She saw herself as the symbolic intermediary between Peron and the masses. And as she declared in her autobiography, ''We (women) were born to make homes, not for the street,'' and ''No woman's movement will be glorious and lasting in the world if it does not give itself to the cause of a man.''

The notion that she was the real wielder of power who manipulated Peron simply does not wash. It was Peron who manipulated her in life and death, even using her embalmed corpse as an icon to rally the Peronist faithful in what one writer called a ''bacchanal of necrophilia.''

There was a deep cynicism in Peron's relationship with her, just as there was in his relationship with everyone. In the end, as he was tottering in old age, he recognized that this cynicism was reciprocated by his associates. He knew that the only secret of his power in his final months was that each of the disparate groups who supported him hoped to inherit his movement when he died.

Mr. Page dedicates his book ''to the youth of Agentina, who deserve more.'' I suppose he is right. Argentina is a country far better endowed than any other Latin American nation. It has endless flat, fertile pampas that supply grains and produce fodder for millions of cattle, vast mineral deposits and potential self-sufficiency in energy, a splendid industrial structure, thousands of chic stores and delectable restaurants, and people who are generally the best- fed, best-clothed and best-educated on the continent.

How, then, does one explain the political and economic morass of the past three decades and more? Perhaps Peron, in his inimitable way, came closest when he said, shortly before returning to Argentina from exile in 1973, ''It is not that we were so good, but those who came after us were so bad that they made us seem better than we were.''

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