Following the mass arrival of European immigrants to Argentina in the early years of the twentieth century new forms of entertainment emerged. While these forms of culture promoted ethnic integration they also produced a new kind of polarization that helped Juan Peron to build the mass movement that propelled him to power.

Matthew B. Karush is Associate Professor of History at George Mason University. He is the author of "Workers or Citizens: Democracy and Identity in Rosario, Argentina (1912-1930)" and a co-editor of "The New Cultural History of Peronism: Power and Identity in Mid-Twentieth-Century Argentina," also published by Duke University Press.