Puiggrós, Rodolfo (1906–1980)

Rodolfo Puiggrós, born in Buenos Aires on November 19, 1906, was an Argentine journalist, historian, and intellectual with Marxist leanings. A militant in the Argentine Communist Party, he was thrown out in 1946 for backing Peronism. He became a prominent intellectual referent in the relationship between the Argentine left and Peronism and a bridge between leftist political and intellectual sectors and university students and other young people who moved toward or joined Peronism from the late 1960s onward. His principal works—not actually original contributions but rather a synthesis of Latin American Marxism and the historiographical school of Argentine historical revisionism—include De la colonia a la revolución (1940), Historia económica del Río de la Plata (1945), Historia crítica de los partidos politicos argentinos (1956), and Las Izquierdas y el problema nacional (1966).

When the Perónist government took over the University of Buenos Aires in 1973, it appointed Puiggrós rector and renamed the school Universidad Nacional y Popular de Buenos Aires. But with violence increasing between the left and the Perónist right and the ousting of Héctor José Cámpora from the presidency, Puiggrós was forced to move to Mexico in 1974. He founded the Committee for Solidarity with the Argentine People and, in exile, was an active opponent of the military dictatorship established in 1976. He died on November 12, 1980, in Havana, Cuba.

See alsoArgentina: The Twentieth Century; Cámpora, Héctor José; Perón, Juan Domingo.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Altamirano, Carlos. Peronismo y cultura de izquierda. Buenos Aires: Temas, 2001.

Romero, José Luis. Las ideas políticas en Argentina. Buenos Aires: FCE, 2001.

                                             Vicente Palermo