The Peronist mass mobilization of October 17, 1945, brought workers, unionists, and underprivileged supporters into the streets of Buenos Aires to demand Juan Perón’s release and return to power. Organized under the leadership of the General Confederation of Labour, the march answered his arrest by military opponents and became the decisive public demonstration in the immediate struggle over his political future.

Political Crisis and Perón’s Arrest

Perón had risen within the military government to become secretary of war and vice president. He increased military spending, created an air force, and made a radio broadcast warning of a Brazilian military attack that never occurred. At the end of the Second World War, the United States pressed the military junta to hold democratic elections, while renewed conservative opposition sharpened divisions among Argentina’s officers.

In September 1945, a mass demonstration marked the escalation of that opposition. More liberal officers displaced nationalists, and Perón’s military opponents forced him to resign and arrested him. The arrest transformed an internal military conflict into a public contest: his supporters now had to make their demand for his return visible beyond the junta and its rival factions.

The March to May Square

Supporters mobilized in response, with the General Confederation of Labour leading workers, unionists, and people described as underprivileged toward May Square in Buenos Aires. They gathered in front of the presidential palace and called for Perón’s release and return to power. The march thus connected organized labor to a broader popular constituency, turning the question of one arrested official into a mass political demand.

The mobilization’s force lay in the contrast between Perón’s removal by opponents inside the military and the public pressure exerted by those who supported him. The account presents the demonstration as a collective intervention in the crisis, rather than as a decision made within government alone. The march did not itself settle every institutional question, but it made the demand for Perón’s restoration impossible to treat as merely an internal military matter.

Aftermath and Political Significance

Perón married Eva Perón in the aftermath of the mobilization and won the presidential election a few months later. The sequence links the march to his return to national political prominence: first came his supporters’ demand for release and restoration, then his marriage, and then electoral victory. The evidence does not detail the intervening negotiations, but it establishes the broad outcome of the crisis.

The event’s significance in the book rests on the political weight of organized popular action. A coalition led by labor unions carried its demand directly to the presidential palace, helping shift the balance after Perón’s arrest and resignation. His subsequent election gave that confrontation a national consequence, making the October mobilization a turning point in the emergence of Perón’s presidency.