The years of government of Juan Domingo Perón are one of the most broadly studied periods in Argentina’s modern history. The vast corpus of academic research on the First Peronism (1946-1955), describes it as an emblematic example of the Latin American Populism. In the area of international economic relations, Populism is described as a regime characterized by a profound nationalism and by a radical anti-imperialism. Thus, the classification of Perón as a populist leader, led the researchers to attribute to his government a monolithic and inflexible economic doctrine, embedded in huge doses of economic nationalism, autarchy, and anti-imperialism. In this lecture, I analyze the scope and limitations of these perceived pillars of the economic Populism. The analysis is conducted within the frame of the relations between the Peronist Administration on the one hand, and the United States, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, on the other.
