Introduction

The Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset thought he had perceived in them an imperial vocation, though he warned that Argentine grandeur rested more on promise than on accomplishment. Argentina became a pampered informal colony. The cumbersome system collapsed when exceptional international circumstances charged and funds to underwrite the payoffs ran out. A country of immense material promise, human diversity, and a spectacular past found that after all it was not that different from the rest of the continent. Dependency, stagnation, political decay, and violence have been bitter staples for these erstwhile exceptionalists. The working class is highly organized and comprises two-thirds of the work force. This singular configuration has created forms of behavior and institutions not commonly found in the underdeveloped regions of the planet, but Argentina remains a peripheral capitalist society, a nonmetropolitan country, a Latin American nation, a fitful republic.