PERONISMO AND “SOCIALISMO NACIONAL”: EXPROPIATION POLICIES DURING MIGUEL RAGONE'S GOVERNMENT: THE CASE OF -MINAS DE UNCHIME/ALTOS HORNOS GÜEMES Y FRIGORÍFICO ARENALES. SALTA, 1973-1974

Abstract

The memory and historical studies about the Peronist government of Miguel Ragone (1973/1974) refer us to a “nationalist” and “popular” political project. Expropriation initiatives as Unchimé Mines/Altos Hornos Güemes and Arenales Refrigeration could be included within this framework. These policies could be interpreted as a product of the “climate of the time” and the discussions on the “socialist road” and “national socialism”. Although several studies have been conducted from this perspective, it is necessary to investigate more precisely the historical process. In this research we propose to explain Salta’s Peronist government policy of expropriation in the context of a larger historical curve that began in the sixties and that gives meaning to these policies. Furthermore, we intend to reconstruct the trajectory of the expropriated companies in order to observe how these expropriations were articulated and how different interests came into conflict.
The long-term study and analysis of official documents and press sources will shed light on the fact that the policy of expropriation under Ragone’s term was rather the result of a series of decisions and interests that precede the Peronist government. And during this government were reinterpreted according to a new political program in which the state faces the task of regulating the production activity, without restricting the participation of private capital, trying to return to the old alliance between state-bourgeois and labor movement, without revolutionary pretensions.