What to read about Argentina
Editor’s note: This article was updated on November 20th 2023 to take in the results of Argentina’s presidential election. On November 19th Argentina elected Javier Milei, a self-described “anarcho-capitalist", to be its next president. He defeated Sergio Massa, the economy minister in the current Peronist government. Mr Milei owes his victory to the troubled background against which the election took place.
Inflation is heading for 200% this year and 40% of Argentines live in poverty. And yet, thanks largely to the fertility of the vast pampas, Argentina was in 1914 one of the ten richest countries in the world measured by income per person (although this was very unequally distributed). The past 70 years or so have been decades of decline and political conflict, interrupted by shorter periods of growth and stability.
For most of that time the country has been ruled by Peronism, the amorphous populist movement founded by Juan and Eva Perón that is woven deeply into the social fabric. Yet Argentina, whose population is mainly descended from immigrants from Europe, especially Italy and Spain, is also a country of immense creative prowess. Jorge Luis Borges, who wrote poems and short stories involving metaphysical riddles, was one of the 20th century’s greatest writers, though he wrote little about his native country.
From the music of the tango to film and football Argentina has made its mark in the world. Its intellectual classes, still scarred by a brutal military dictatorship and urban guerrilla war in the 1970s, are prone to brooding self-analysis—not for nothing does Buenos Aires have more psychoanalysts per person than any other big city in the world. The following books, one of which is for readers of Spanish,
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