The September 1955 coup against Perón seen from Uruguay

Abstract

This article approaches to the reception in Uruguay of the self-proclaimed Revolución Libertadora that took place in Argentina. It is understood within the framework of long-standing bilateral tensions between the two countries, intensified after 1943. It seeks to understand that reception within the context of a growing anti-Peronist consensus in Uruguay since 1952, when those bilateral tensions reached their peak of intensity and the perception of the threat represented by Peronism increased. It also analyzes the conjuncture from June to September 1955 as one of renewed political uses of anti-Peronism, which had played a fundamental role in Uruguayan domestic politics since 1945 and had been exploited by different political sectors to define self-identifications and discourses about the Uruguayan nation based on Peronist otherness. The moralizing discourses about a revolution against tyranny, the diverse forms of solidarity with the coup and the subsequent process of de-Peronization carried out in Argentina, as well as the treatment as a spectacle that the Argentine events acquired are addressed, with emphasis on the analysis of press coverage in Montevideo and along the coastal border.