Peron
n. Juan Domingo Perón was an Argentine military officer and politician. After serving in several government positions, including those of Minister of Labour and Vice President of the Republic, he was three times elected as President of Argentina, serving from June 1946 to September 1955, when he was overthrown by a coup d'état, and from October 1973 to July 1974. During his first presidential term (1946-1952), Perón was supported by his second wife, Eva Duarte ("Evita"), and the two were immensely popular among many Argentines. Eva died in 1952, and Perón was elected to a second term, serving from 1952 until 1955. Juan and Evita Perón are still considered icons by the Peronists. The Peróns' followers praised their efforts to eliminate poverty and to dignify labor, while their detractors considered them demagogues and dictators.
Juan and Eva Peron gave their name to the political movement known as Peronism, which in present-day Argentina is represented mainly by the Justicialist Party. The current (as of 2013) President of Argentina, Cristina Elisabet Fernández de Kirchner, is a Justicialist. Critics of Kirchner's administration charged it with corruption, crony capitalism, falsification of public statistics, harassment of Argentina's independent media, and use of the tax agency as a censorship tool, all of which should sound very familiar to observers of the Obama Administration.
Peron by Dan Weyandt August 26, 2013
