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of civilian rule could complete the de-Peronization of Argentina. But
General Onganía confronted several difficult national problems. The
inflation that had begun under Perón's rule was becoming endemic, and
the worsening political and economic situation was stirring up serious
resistance in the working class.
An Economy of Dynamic Stagnation
Two contradictory phenomena had been occurring since the 1930s, the
combination of which ultimately undermined the continued industri-
alism of the 1960s. On the one hand, the state sector of the economy
was burgeoning, as successive governments had taken strong measures
to stimulate national industry, even to the point of taking over much
of the economic infrastructure, such as petroleum, railways, electricity,
telephones, and eventually meatpacking. But as the size and importance
of the state-run economy increased, the political environment grew
steadily more unstable. Between 1930 and 1983, only three heads of
state actually completed their terms of office. Each president averaged
just two years in power. The typical tenure of the economics minister
was even briefer: Each president replaced his minister for economic
affairs on average every year.
All the political upheaval naturally resulted in the opposite of
General Roca's old dictum of rule: Roca's prescription in 1880 had been
“peace and administration,” but the chaos only produced much politics
and little administration. With so slender a hold on power, each regime
tended to dispense as much patronage as possible to its partisans so
that the expansion of the federal bureaucracy often exceeded that of
the gross domestic product. Politicians overstaffed the state-owned
companies with white-collar workers and pencil pushers, few of whom
had any expertise in or training for the industry they were to manage.
Favored labor leaders also added redundant workers to secure, high-
paying jobs. These public entities began to bubble with inefficiency,
cost overruns, and equipment failures. Instead of producing profits to
invest in new equipment and technology, the state industries fell into
deficit spending just to maintain services. Customers waited up to two
years for the state telephone company to install a new line, and calls
were occasionally misrouted. The lack of oversight permitted corrup-
tion to flourish in these industries as well.
The result was inflation. Argentina's peso had begun to lose value
even before Perón's first administration. The 1948 and 1952 economic
slumps further eroded the value of the peso, and workers and the sala-
