Hi @Gukpard my friend. I am going to copy and paste my post from the Paradox forums in which I criticized Paradox's work
Seeing the historical mistakes made in the Brazilian dev diary and in previous dlcs I knew this was coming, but I have to make a comment regardless.
In short, the common theme in the errors found in this focus tree is a lack of research (which is in part understandable thanks to the fact that the team behind HOI4 is a small one, but it isn't an excuse to avoid wanting to do research work specially if the premise of your product is that you are selling flavour). The broken Spanish found in the focus tree also doesn't present a good picture for Paradox, because if they can't bother to even check if the few Spaniish words they used are gramatically correct, what can we expect from the task of historical research which is a lot harder? I will proccede to comment the dev diary.
Ultimatelly while there were another reasons for the coup of 1943 (all the potential acceptable candidates (Justo) dying), the causus belli was that Castillo was going to move to a pro-Allies direction which was unaceptable for the GOU (Grupo de Oficiales Unidos) who were pro-German in the war and were made up of moderate nationalists who supported Germany (Farrell, Perón) or straight up fascists/nazis (Perlinger).
In short: the coup should happen as a reaction to the Argentine player seeking to join the allies.
A more sensible solution is to use the OTL plans. The UCR was in talk with Carlos Márquez (who was Justo's protege and the war minister at the time) to make a coup to restore democracy. These plans were nowhere because the nationalists in the army managed to purge Márquez using his corruption as an excuse, but Márquez coup succeding would allow for a democratic branch that made sence.
The fascist section starts wrong. Like fascism was somewhat relevant in Argentina and the 30s and it would go on to define the country post war:
To illustrate this division: Uriburu (who did the 1930 coup) was from the nationalist wing of the army and he attempted to implement a corporatist/fascist project. Justo (from the army liberals) thought this was cringe and ultimately it was the reason for why he coupted him and created the Concordancia. The Concordancia is thus a regime backed by the army liberals, unlike the following regime of the June dictatorship (GOU) which was created by the nationalists. Thus it doesn't make any sense for Ortiz to want to work with the nationalists given that it doesn't only go against his political beliefs, but it also attacks the base of support of his regime.
The Liga Patriótica Argentina (in singular) was a nationalist paramilitary group created in 1919 which was used by Yrgoyen to kill inmigrants and striking workers during the Tragic Week (mfw the UCR isn't blessed). Carles unlike what KR might tell (undoubtedly the reason for why the LP is here) wasn't an Argentine Hitler, he was a nativist radical (in the sence of belonging to the UCR and later the UCRA) and who was an anglophile. After the Tragic Week the LP faded out of relevancy and its militants would go to other nationalists organizations.
The Legión Cívica Argentina was meant to be Uriburu's regime paramilitaries. Like Uriburu called them "the Argentine black shirts". With the failure of his project they faded out of relevancy and in 1932 they would suffer an split in the form of the Acción Nacionalista Argentina (ANA) who seeked to try to build a political party of this failure.
Finally the Unión Nacionalista Fascista was originally created as a fascist party by Italian-inmigrants and became active in Córdoba. It had a few militants but they never accomplish anything. There wasn't a lack of fascists in Argentina in this era, it is just that they were never united.
This doesn't meant that a fascist route is implausible because there was literally a few moments in which Argentina could have gone fascist. The first of this was in 1936, in which Diego Luis Molinari (from the fascist Partido Radical - Gorro Frigio) tried to coup the goverment with the help of Basilio Pertiné. If you wanted a fascist route this could by the way.
(the screenshots are from our lord and saviour Potash)
Alternatively another way Argentina could have a plausible fascist route is throught the power struggle inside the GOU dictatorship. Perón in popular culture is basically described as a Nazi, but in reality he was in the faction made up of the moderate pro-fascism people. His arch-nemesis Luis César Perlinger in the other hand (who opposed him in many things including the alliance with the trade unions) was basically a fascist and could be even described as even a Nazi.
So basically an alternate route for fascist Argentina is simply Perlinger winning the power struggle against Perón inside the GOU.
Speaking clearly, the PCA was (and it is a meme). Like the most you could say of them is that they supported the 70s dictatorship because they were antiperonists. But the idea that the Argentine communists could lead a revolution is laughable. Unironically the most plausible way I can find of justyfing this is due to a syndicalist revolution rather than just the PCA acting as the vanguard party of a revolution.
Now Argentina had a really important syndicalist movement, however the trade unions split in 1934 between the Marxist faction (the CGT) and the syndicalist ones (the USA). The communist focus tree should begin then with the handwaving of them uniting together. For good measure you could even add a focus about them allying with the FORJA people (the revolutionary socialist radicals).
In my view as I described above the Buenos Aires congress would result either in the Marxists unions winning (in which case Ghioldi takes over, creates a leninist state and joins the USSR faction) or the syndicalists come in top. In any case the syndicalist leader wouldn't be Soto, but Sebastían Marotta, who was the leading syndicalist guy in the 30s.
You could also add FORJA as a path if you wanted le classic Latin American left-wing nationalism. Like they were starting the bullshit that Juan Manuel de Rosas was a leftist hero and what not.
The part about Liberation theology should be purged. Like it doesn't make sense without things like the II Vatican Council and the Movement for Priests of the Third World. It is a Cold War phenomen that doesn't fit here.
if Rosas in the XIX century had managed to conquer Uruguay and Paraguay he wouldn't have renamed the nation, it would still be Argentina.
To finish, I would recommend the team to read Potash' work "The Army and Argentine politics". Like he is a foreign but he interviewed a lot of relevant Argentine military people (you can check those online) and he is perhaps the only one who understood fully the Azul-Colorado wars from the 60s.
Like as a TNO dev I can't overstate how essential his work is to understand Argentina. And with this I say goodbye.
Seeing the historical mistakes made in the Brazilian dev diary and in previous dlcs I knew this was coming, but I have to make a comment regardless.
In short, the common theme in the errors found in this focus tree is a lack of research (which is in part understandable thanks to the fact that the team behind HOI4 is a small one, but it isn't an excuse to avoid wanting to do research work specially if the premise of your product is that you are selling flavour). The broken Spanish found in the focus tree also doesn't present a good picture for Paradox, because if they can't bother to even check if the few Spaniish words they used are gramatically correct, what can we expect from the task of historical research which is a lot harder? I will proccede to comment the dev diary.
The Concordancia wasn't a party, it is the name of the electoral alliance made by the UCRA (the radicals who opposed Yrigoyen's authoritarism), the PSI and the Conservatives. These groups remained as independent parties and this is important for Castillo later.After Yrigoyen was removed from office, there was another election, this time putting Agustín Pedro Justo in power, supported by the newly created conservative party known as the Concordancia. This party was a union of various dissident sectors of other political parties that opposed the late Yrigoyen. It was Justo that orchestrated the practice of electoral fraud that became prevalent during the 1930s in Argentina; a case that would be attached to the legacy of the Concordancia.
Yeah Castillo wasn't elected. He was from the PDN (the conservatives) and he was choosen as the VP of Ortiz. When Ortiz died he took office. Unlike Ortiz, who wanted to reform away from electoral fraud at some point (a goal also shared by Justo and his protege Carlos Márquez, which at this point were in talks with the UCR about doing so). Castillo on the other hand came from the wing of the conservatives who wanted to return to the """glory""" days of the PAN, which is to say an aristocratic conservative """democracy""".In the next part of the tree, things start to heat up for the Concordanica. Whilst you have the option to improve on Argentina’s damaged economy in the left hand branch, the historical player must then choose to elect Ramón Castillo. However, this creates tensions within the military factions in government, setting off a timed mission that spells an impending military coup. If the player does not take the appropriate actions, either by embracing the military factions or resisting them, then they will face a bloody civil war across Argentina.
Ultimatelly while there were another reasons for the coup of 1943 (all the potential acceptable candidates (Justo) dying), the causus belli was that Castillo was going to move to a pro-Allies direction which was unaceptable for the GOU (Grupo de Oficiales Unidos) who were pro-German in the war and were made up of moderate nationalists who supported Germany (Farrell, Perón) or straight up fascists/nazis (Perlinger).
In short: the coup should happen as a reaction to the Argentine player seeking to join the allies.
Okay, for this section we have to face the problem that HOI4 is a sandbox and that one of the design philosofies is to allow countries to go for all the ideologies in their focus tree which is unrealistic. Here what it is described for the democratic branch is that the player just decides to run the 1937 elections in a clear manner which doesn't work, like at all. La Concordancia and the Patriotic Fraud were made to render a Yrigoyenist (UCR) victory impossible, like they wouldn't allow the chance for the UCR to win and if the radichetas managed to do it so a coup would be made.Speaking of which, let’s talk about what happens if you have a clean election instead of one that is corrupt beyond belief. It’s time to see how Argentina fares as a true democracy.
At the beginning of the path, the ‘Infamous Decade’ national spirit becomes less of a hindrance as you are taking the actions necessary to avoid the rampant corruption that was rife within the Concordancia. With this in mind, you will then elect Marcelo T. De Alvear as the new leader of Argentina, placing the Radical Civic Union as the primary party in government. From here on out, you will be able to enact further social change to the country, building it up as a safe and comfortable home for all who live in Argentina.
A more sensible solution is to use the OTL plans. The UCR was in talk with Carlos Márquez (who was Justo's protege and the war minister at the time) to make a coup to restore democracy. These plans were nowhere because the nationalists in the army managed to purge Márquez using his corruption as an excuse, but Márquez coup succeding would allow for a democratic branch that made sence.
Fascist Branch
As we move back to the political branches, we will be taking a look at Argentina’s fascist tree. This explores the ‘what-if’ scenario in which Roberto Ortiz worked with the Argentine nationalists instead of focusing on trying to improve the Concordancia.
The fascist section starts wrong. Like fascism was somewhat relevant in Argentina and the 30s and it would go on to define the country post war:
but the way it comes about doesn't make any sense at all. To explain this we have to take into account the division that has always existed in the Argentine army: military liberals vs nationalists. The military liberals unlike what their name would seem to imply don't particulary like democracy (in fact the dictatorship of the 70s was formed by army liberals), but their objective is to basically maintain the status quo of the military being a separate body from the state, while the nationalists as their name indicates are nationalists and it is where all the "funny" (fascist) people fall in.Mussolini was the greatest man of our century, but he committed certain disastrous errors. I, who have the advantage of his precedent before me, shall follow in his footsteps but also avoid his errors.
-Juan Domingo Perón
To illustrate this division: Uriburu (who did the 1930 coup) was from the nationalist wing of the army and he attempted to implement a corporatist/fascist project. Justo (from the army liberals) thought this was cringe and ultimately it was the reason for why he coupted him and created the Concordancia. The Concordancia is thus a regime backed by the army liberals, unlike the following regime of the June dictatorship (GOU) which was created by the nationalists. Thus it doesn't make any sense for Ortiz to want to work with the nationalists given that it doesn't only go against his political beliefs, but it also attacks the base of support of his regime.
This section is complety wrong, like not only fails to correctly reference the LP but it also mixes it with other nationalists groups which were independent.In the 1910s - 1930s, a group known as the Ligas Patrióticas were operating in Argentina as a nationalistic paramilitary group. Eventually, they would be reformed into the Argentine Civic Legion and then the Unión Nacional Fascista. This tied with certain members of the Argentina government supporting the Axis in Europe, meant that there was plenty to draw on for an alternative history in which Argentina pursued fascism.
The idea of this path is for the player to bolster nationalist spirit throughout the country. including sending aid to Franco during the Spanish Civil War. Doing so will allow you to demand Equatorial Guinea from Spain, giving Argentina a foothold in the African front. The player can also re-establish the Ligas Patrióticas which will provide a number of divisions to use in the upcoming wars that you will no doubt be waging. Speaking of which, why not poke at Uruguay a little bit? If you can do so without escalating a conflict with Brazil, it would provide a nice foothold for your new regime to take on the rest of the continent.
The Liga Patriótica Argentina (in singular) was a nationalist paramilitary group created in 1919 which was used by Yrgoyen to kill inmigrants and striking workers during the Tragic Week (mfw the UCR isn't blessed). Carles unlike what KR might tell (undoubtedly the reason for why the LP is here) wasn't an Argentine Hitler, he was a nativist radical (in the sence of belonging to the UCR and later the UCRA) and who was an anglophile. After the Tragic Week the LP faded out of relevancy and its militants would go to other nationalists organizations.
The Legión Cívica Argentina was meant to be Uriburu's regime paramilitaries. Like Uriburu called them "the Argentine black shirts". With the failure of his project they faded out of relevancy and in 1932 they would suffer an split in the form of the Acción Nacionalista Argentina (ANA) who seeked to try to build a political party of this failure.
Finally the Unión Nacionalista Fascista was originally created as a fascist party by Italian-inmigrants and became active in Córdoba. It had a few militants but they never accomplish anything. There wasn't a lack of fascists in Argentina in this era, it is just that they were never united.
This doesn't meant that a fascist route is implausible because there was literally a few moments in which Argentina could have gone fascist. The first of this was in 1936, in which Diego Luis Molinari (from the fascist Partido Radical - Gorro Frigio) tried to coup the goverment with the help of Basilio Pertiné. If you wanted a fascist route this could by the way.
(the screenshots are from our lord and saviour Potash)
Alternatively another way Argentina could have a plausible fascist route is throught the power struggle inside the GOU dictatorship. Perón in popular culture is basically described as a Nazi, but in reality he was in the faction made up of the moderate pro-fascism people. His arch-nemesis Luis César Perlinger in the other hand (who opposed him in many things including the alliance with the trade unions) was basically a fascist and could be even described as even a Nazi.
from: https://antigua.unlam.edu.ar/index.php/antigua_matanza/article/view/70/188A background report on the conflict, dated March 2, prepared by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, which was the predecessor of the CIA) would describe Perlinger as having 'longstanding and deep pro-Nazi ideas,'" in close contact with the German embassy and who, at one time, had had a debt with a German bank in Buenos Aires. Perón was perceived, on the contrary, as the most skilled member of the new cabinet, without great culture but with an affable personality, with the ability to make decisions and with the capacity for violence” (Page. 1999, p. 82). Thus, according to this same author, both figures appeared to have equal, or even in some senses greater, power than the president. “The pathetic figure of Farrell quickly fell prey to the ridicule of the people of Buenos Aires.” A report from the North American military attaché in Buenos Aires included a rumor that was circulating in April:
Farrell is afraid that the nationalists or Perlinger will try to kill him. He fears Perón but cannot manage without him. He has discovered that being president takes away time from the activities he most enjoys: going to nightclubs and fighting. He would like to be a minister again or simply a general.
The decisive confrontations between Perón and Perlinger occurred at the beginning of July 1944, when an assembly of army officers had to decide who would fill the vacant position of vice president. Perón won by a narrow margin of six votes. With the help of Admiral Alberto Teisaire, the new Secretary of the Navy and a loyal ally, Perón immediately demanded – and received – Perlinger's resignation. Teisaire replaced him and with this Perón's control over the men-at-arms reached its peak. (Page, 1999, p. 83).
Click to expand...
So basically an alternate route for fascist Argentina is simply Perlinger winning the power struggle against Perón inside the GOU.
The idea that an hypernationalist Argentina could core the rest of SA is laughable, like just in Brazil it would be impossible given the classic racism towards Brazilians by Platineans. Even in Uruguay they would have problems given that the whole point of Uruguay is that its people hate being ruled by Buenos Aires.At long last, it is time to dominate the south. This foreign policy branch will take you through a number of steps where you will have the option to either bully your neighbors into submitting to you, or straight up marching on their borders in an all out war. Eventually, it will be time to turn to Argentina’s oldest rival to the north: Brazil. By taking out the largest nation on the continent, the Argentinian player will be in a good position to secure the rest of South America, eventually creating the South American Confederation and opening up the opportunity to integrate conquered territories into your nation.
Okay, before writting further I have to clarify that a communist revolution is completely ASB. But we have to have one, so we need to take a look at Argentine leftism in order to see what would be the most "plausible" way this could work.But what if you want a more radical change to Argentina’s government? Well, I have prepared a Communist branch just for that reason. Instead of a fraudulent or a clean election, it’s time for a call to reform as we dive into the Communist tree.
Speaking clearly, the PCA was (and it is a meme). Like the most you could say of them is that they supported the 70s dictatorship because they were antiperonists. But the idea that the Argentine communists could lead a revolution is laughable. Unironically the most plausible way I can find of justyfing this is due to a syndicalist revolution rather than just the PCA acting as the vanguard party of a revolution.
Now Argentina had a really important syndicalist movement, however the trade unions split in 1934 between the Marxist faction (the CGT) and the syndicalist ones (the USA). The communist focus tree should begin then with the handwaving of them uniting together. For good measure you could even add a focus about them allying with the FORJA people (the revolutionary socialist radicals).
Edelman doesn't make sense as a leader, like clearly she is just there because le epic girlboss (which I would support but it doesn't make sense). Like she wasn't never that relevant and it doesn't make sense to differentiate her from Ghioldi as she was in the PCA. To not speak of how the woman in the photo isn't even her, that is a common misconception.Firstly, on the left, you can align yourself with the Soviets. This will keep Rodolfo Ghioldi in power and will make Argentina join the Comintern. From here on out, Argentina will gain access to Soviet companies (or MIOs if you have Arms Against Tyranny!) and focus on establishing a strong intelligence program in the name of state security. This branch culminates in Ghioldi centralizing power and becoming a true communist dictator!
On the right, however, you can put Fanny Edelman in power, creating a more independent socialist power in South America. Edelman’s path looks to supporting the common worker and providing rights for women, as well as sending socialist volunteers across seas to aid in revolutions across the world. Eventually, it will be time to open up the Buenos Aires Conference, where you will decide whether to keep Fanny in power, or instead allow Anarcho-Syndicalist Antonio Soto a chance to rule (More on this guy later!)
In my view as I described above the Buenos Aires congress would result either in the Marxists unions winning (in which case Ghioldi takes over, creates a leninist state and joins the USSR faction) or the syndicalists come in top. In any case the syndicalist leader wouldn't be Soto, but Sebastían Marotta, who was the leading syndicalist guy in the 30s.
You could also add FORJA as a path if you wanted le classic Latin American left-wing nationalism. Like they were starting the bullshit that Juan Manuel de Rosas was a leftist hero and what not.
The part about Liberation theology should be purged. Like it doesn't make sense without things like the II Vatican Council and the Movement for Priests of the Third World. It is a Cold War phenomen that doesn't fit here.
This is a common tendency in foreigns, to add formable tags to Argentina like "La Plata" (I hate that name). And it doesn't work like that. Like if you read the Argentine constitution, it says on it that "The United Provinces of the Río de la Plata" and the "Argentine Confederation" are valid names of the nation, which is to say that in theory they have the same status as the official name which is "Argentine Republic". From the Argentine POV the Argentine Confederation and the previous United Provinces are the same thing as Argentina, and thus unless you are a Rosist larper it doesn't make sense to ressurect any of the two. (To not say how Argentina controlls more territory that the Argentine Confederation ever did)There are some formables, such as reforming the Argentine Confederation or uniting under the South American Socialist Republics, but I will not spill all here!
if Rosas in the XIX century had managed to conquer Uruguay and Paraguay he wouldn't have renamed the nation, it would still be Argentina.
To finish, I would recommend the team to read Potash' work "The Army and Argentine politics". Like he is a foreign but he interviewed a lot of relevant Argentine military people (you can check those online) and he is perhaps the only one who understood fully the Azul-Colorado wars from the 60s.
Like as a TNO dev I can't overstate how essential his work is to understand Argentina. And with this I say goodbye.