In 1946, they elected Juan Domingo Peron president. His young wife, a former actress, quickly became the object of a personality cult. “Evita” ? celebrated in an eponymous 1979 Broadway musical and a 1996 motion picture starring Madonna ? grew up poor and cared about the poor.

Whether she helped the poor is a separate question. She famously said: “One cannot accomplish anything without fanaticism,” a thesis perhaps not based on a thorough reading of history.

Argentina’s congress gave her an official title: “Spiritual Leader of the Nation.” Not long after, in 1952, at 33 years of age, she died of cancer. Three million people attended her funeral.

The ideology that came to be known as Peronism was a not-so-distant cousin of fascism, Italian-style. Socialist and nationalist, it stressed social justice ? an infinitely flexible phrase ? and the empowerment of the working class at the expense of those labeled exploiters and oppressors.

In practice, that meant forced industrialization, income redistribution, government subsidies, protectionism and import substitution. Such policies proved unproductive. At the same time, unchecked government power facilitated corruption, further limiting economic development.

President Peron was overthrown by the military in 1955. Over the decades that followed, he would be re-elected (twice), as would other politicians who proudly called themselves Peronists.

There also would be additional periods of military rule. In the 1970s and early ‘80s, a particularly bloody junta “disappeared” an estimated 30,000 dissidents, unionists, students, writers, artists and others.

Argentina’s per capita GDP today is less than a third that of Canada.