Rise of the Argentine Empire

General Thompson left two adjutants to accompany them, and took Saint-Hesse, Powell, Cicero and a few others to stroll around the military academy campus.

To be honest, he hadn't been in contact with these old classmates for a long time. They were in their third year, and he was in his fourth year. Moreover, Saint-Hesse really spent very little time at the school.

The layout of the school was somewhat similar to the city garrison barracks back then.

"Cohen, you are indeed quite busy now. I haven't seen you for a semester last year. This year, as soon as school started, you skipped a grade, which made Teacher Scarlett a little sad."

Cicero asked. He really thought well of Cohen. In fact, they only had more contact during the time they first entered university. Later, he worked on the Rein Mechanical Research Institute, then Rein Industries, and then Rein Military, he has always been there.

Moreover, Cicero does have a lot of talent in the machinery industry, and he is already able to serve as a team leader. He will be able to be responsible for engine development projects upon graduation.

"Yes, there are too many things to do. I am applying for early graduation in the second half of this year, which is also something that can't be helped. To be honest, I am a year older than you guys."

Teacher Scarlett, he had already forgotten a bit, only remembering that she was quite beautiful.

Saint-Hesse is 21 years old this year, and his birthday is at the end of the year. Old classmates like Cicero and Powell are all 20 years old. They basically passed the Buda University entrance exam at the age of 17, but they often have to study for 4-5 years. It is rare to graduate in the normal 4 years.

Buda University is considered a relatively strict university.

"I really envy you, being able to do so many things at a young age."

Powell's family is also considered to be in good condition, and he also vaguely understands the power behind Saint-Hesse.

"This may be the case for children from poor families, who need to come out to work earlier, but the world is very cruel, it's just that we live in a peaceful country."

Saint-Hesse said half-truthfully. Even though Argentina is a bit chaotic, generally speaking, there has been no war. Rein Military, as a small and well-known light weapons arms dealer internationally, has sold a large number of submachine guns and pistols, and now it is selling assault rifles and even rocket launchers, mortars, and grenades, providing a sufficient source of weapons for many rebel armies.

This year, the situation in Nanyang is chaotic. Saint-Hesse sold almost enough equipment to arm 8 divisions in the first three months alone, worth more than 19 million US dollars. In particular, some independent forces in Indonesia and Malaya attach great importance to this only source of arms, and even sent a purchasing team to Argentina. Rein Military is also doing its best to produce various arms they need.

Africa also sold arms worth approximately 7 million US dollars to other non-British colonial rebel independence armies through South African mining. The cooperation with the French in Vietnam was less, with less than 2 million US dollars sold. Algeria is close to mainland France, and the number of purchases has gradually decreased. Moreover, the profits earned here are not as much as in Nanyang, and it is also necessary to manage relationships.

These Rein-made light weapons are inexpensive, of good quality, powerful, and very adaptable with a low failure rate, making them very popular. There are also South Asian smugglers who help with smuggling, with approximately 6 million US dollars worth of light weapons being smuggled to countries such as India, Pakistan, and Myanmar.

"To be honest, we still need to continue to work hard. Although Argentina is relatively chaotic now, it is also a good opportunity. Whether you join the army or enter politics after graduation, you can come to me for anything I can help with."

He also did not forget to give these old classmates a little advice. Bringing them here this time can be considered as showing their faces in front of General Thompson, and also helping them if he can. These people's families are actually not too bad, belonging to the second or third generation type.

Even if showing their faces is almost useless, it can be considered a small investment. They only lack a little opportunity, and they are all trustworthy.

In autumn in Argentina, there is already some cool breeze. The group simply visited the training ground and the playground. It must be said that these guys are quite good, and their training level is also acceptable.

It reminded him of some things that happened in the Cordoba Army Staff Department, and he felt a little nostalgic.

He didn't go forward to say hello, just watched from a distance. They were full of energy and spirit, and they were all pretty good.

These student soldiers were wearing army training uniforms and training earnestly.

It's just that it would be a waste of talent to use these quasi-officer talents to fight.

Saint-Hesse and others saw the soldiers on the horse farm dragging out their long military songs, the neighing of horses, and the sound of empty stirrups colliding.

They seemed to be preparing for a military parade, their movements were neat and uniform, and well-trained. Even when dust was raised, they still didn't stop, only the neighing and snorting of horses remained.

"As expected of students from the National Military Academy, their quality is much better than the army. No wonder they can participate in the military parade."

After a simple visit, about an hour later, General Thompson sent someone to pick them up for a small private meal.

At noon, when they were eating, a heavy rainstorm suddenly struck, and brown thick clouds shrouded the military academy, with lightning and thunder.

"What a weird weather, a heavy rain in the middle of autumn."

Powell couldn't help but complain.

"Yes, it's really rare."

In the end, Saint-Hesse alone met several new gang members introduced to him by General Thompson, who were younger and more ambitious.

Saint-Hesse was particularly impressed by a man named Gregory, with a hooked nose, blue eyes, and some brownish-red skin on his neck.

… …

Back then, when the United States imposed economic sanctions on Argentina, it once froze Argentina's 700 million US dollars in gold foreign exchange at the Federal Reserve, but that was seven or eight years ago, and it was later unfrozen after the situation eased.

The Americans and other Western countries are not monolithic, which gave Argentina the opportunity to continue developing.

Argentina's exports to Canada, Chile, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and South Africa have been increasing, with most of them still being mainly beef and wheat.

The British "Manchester Guardian" publicly stated two years ago, with a very interesting sentence:

"Although we don't like Argentina's populism, we still like Argentina's beef and dislike American pork."

The British really don't like American pork very much, but they like Argentine beef instead.

Churchill was unwilling to completely rely on the Americans, so he did not completely join the policy of blockading Argentina, and Brazil is an important little brother of the United States, which gave Saint-Hesse a loophole to exploit. It's just a pity that Churchill is old.

Moreover, Saint-Hesse has begun to produce some substitutes for many things that the Americans prohibit from exporting, such as locomotives and automobiles that the Americans prohibited from exporting to Argentina at the time. Saint-Hesse cooperated with Europe and Japan. When merchant ships were prohibited from sailing to Argentina, Saint-Hesse transshipped them through Brazil. Anyway, there are always more solutions than difficulties.

If weapons are prohibited from export, then sell tractors to Brazil. Light weapons such as assault rifles and submachine guns already have domestic substitutes in Argentina. To be honest, the American Thompson is not that easy to use.

Moreover, due to the American economic blockade, Argentina does not lack sellers. There are also the British, so Argentina's imports from the United Kingdom, Spain, Austria, West Germany, Belgium, and Mexico have increased a lot in the past two years. Anyway, it's all about making money, which is not embarrassing. Even the Brazilians, although they are challenging Argentina's position and are considered hostile countries, have also increased trade with Argentina.

You should know that during World War II, the United States provided Brazil with more than 300 million US dollars in military aid. They used to have very tense relations with Argentina. Now they are honestly doing business and serving as transit stations with Argentina. The country with the largest amount of international exports from Prari is Brazil at the door. Of course, Prari rarely imports, mainly raw materials and minerals.

Some American ships changed their flags and became fleets of other countries.

Now Argentina's import and export markets have also joined the Australian and Nanyang markets. Overall, foreign trade has not been affected that much. It's just that Saint-Hesse's pockets have become fatter.

Although the United States has strong economic strength, it cannot stop an agricultural and animal husbandry country like Argentina. This is considered Argentina's political capital.

Last year, when relations between the two countries eased, Saint-Hesse used some small tricks to raise a large amount of funds, accelerating the prelude to the American financial crisis. Fortunately, Saint-Hesse mostly acted as an ordinary student.

But although American goods were good, Argentinians didn't like them. The credibility of Americans had been ruined by their withdrawal in previous years, coupled with Perón's propaganda.

For Perón to re-invite the Americans was practically like slapping himself in the face.

Moreover, most companies had various complex operations, with diverse routes for transferring assets. Sequoia Capital didn't grow very large. Once it reached a certain scale, it was internally split up, while simultaneously entering securities markets in London, England, and Paris, France, to divert the attention of the New York consortium.

However, the Perón government didn't recognize Argentina's advantages. Negotiations with American capital continued, this time including power and steel capital consortiums, namely Morgan's United States Steel Corporation and General Electric.

They attempted to destroy Argentina's local steel industry, but due to the strong opposition from the new Argentine constitution and several Argentine steel consortiums, American capital didn't succeed in infiltrating the steel industry.

This somewhat angered Saint-Jose.

"Damn it, these son-of-a-bitching Americans want to buy my steel mill for 35 million US dollars? They can dream on."

Saint-Jose almost blurted out Chinese, ultimately muttering the sentence in his heart.

United States Steel Corporation attempted to acquire a project nominally with a construction scale of only 3 million tons, but actually 5 million tons. To keep a low profile, Saint-Jose initially declared only 32 million US dollars, more than half the total project cost, leading Americans and Argentinians alike to believe it was just a small undertaking.

Anyone who bothered to investigate would realize that this project had enormous ambitions and could help Argentina directly become one of the top ten steel producing nations.

Argentina currently has about ten newly invested steel mills of varying sizes, with a total scale approaching 5 million tons. Adding them together results in a steel production capacity of nearly ten million tons, which is quite formidable. Moreover, Australia is not currently siding with the United States, making coal imports very easy.

During the negotiations, United States Steel Corporation wanted to acquire the large La Plata Steel Plant project, offering a condescending 35 million, 5 million more than California Standard Oil.

Unfortunately, Saint-Jose wasn't Argentina's oil company. How would they dare agree? It wasn't impossible that they'd be secretly dumped into the La Plata River.

If Saint-Jose were truly provoked, even the Morgan consortium behind United States Steel wouldn't be able to help. He wasn't someone to be trifled with now; preemptively launching a military coup wasn't out of the question.

Of course, he still needed to disband the Labor Federation as soon as possible. He was truly fed up with this major headache.

"It seems Perón is incompetent. He's really messing things up everywhere. He needs to be forced to run away early. How dare he even come and talk to the steel mill."

He didn't have many objections to negotiating about oil with the Americans, as he had no way to exploit oil himself. At most, he could support the national oil company.

He also had nothing to say about engaging in the electrical industry with the Americans. He was already somewhat overwhelmed by his own Maria Hydroelectric Power Station. Infrastructure was a burden for private companies.

But engaging in a steel consortium and trying to acquire his steel mill was targeting the wrong person.

It must be said that Saint-Jose was extremely dissatisfied with this incident. If you want to kneel, don't drag me, Saint-Jose, down with you.

The Americans aren't God. Why be so afraid of them? What cowards.

In the 1920s and 30s, Argentina was the leading power in South America, America's biggest rival, confronting heaven, earth, and America.

Due to its scale of meat and grain exports, Argentina had always been America's biggest rival in South America, especially in the British and European markets, even more competitive than the American trusts.

Now, Perón intends to pursue a policy of surrender. Isn't that slapping the faces of the older generation of Argentinians?

Saint-Jose specifically had the newspaper write several articles criticizing Perón's surrender policy, his spineless policy, increasing Argentinian dissatisfaction.

《Perón's Surrender Policy, Abandoning the Third Position》

《The Third Way Utterly Fails, Perón Surrenders to America》

《Regarding the Little Matter of the Argentine Foreign Minister Kneeling Before the US Secretary of State…》

《Perón Doesn't Understand Economics, Destroys National Industry, Acts as a Comprador Government…》

America is powerful now, it's rich, but that's because they did it themselves. Perón is now breaking the backbone of the Argentinian people.

Saint-Jose admitted that he couldn't and wouldn't bother to kneel to the Americans. Once you kneel, you can't stand up. If your knees are weak, how can you develop the economy and become strong?

Under Perón's instructions, the Argentine Trade Promotion Association and other organizations were also negotiating with the Americans, wanting to buy American agricultural machinery and win the favor of the Americans.

The United States doesn't want Argentina to embark on the path of national industrialization, so it has been suppressing Argentina's development. Now, it has changed from a unilateral relationship to a triangular relationship: Britain – America – Argentina.

Argentina is the weakest link in this relationship, and America is the strongest.

After '45, the United States sacrificed Argentina's interests to support Britain's post-war recovery, strictly suppressing anti-American nationalism in the Western Hemisphere. That's how Argentina was messed with.

Frankly, the reason why Argentina's First Five-Year Plan fizzled out was also related to the American economic blockade. At that time, although Britain didn't relax imports, it did tighten exports under American economic pressure, causing Argentina to lack important equipment for industrialization.

It was only through Saint-Jose's international team seizing every opportunity that they managed to obtain production equipment for several important factories, such as steel mills, tractor factories, fertilizer plants, and motorcycle factories, from other countries like Germany. These were almost impossible to obtain from the United States.

What they secretly obtained from the United States were some canned food production lines, second-hand weapons, third-hand machine tools, and fourth-hand ships, these broken things. Fortunately, now that they were engaged in Enke Electric and Sequoia Capital, they could finally acquire some technologically advanced, newer, and better things.

Now that Perón was acting like a hypocrite and playing innocent with the Americans, Saint-Jose was also speechless.

It must be said that the Americans' shamelessness was even greater than the British. Fortunately, relations had eased, allowing them to obtain some new goods. Blue Cloud Textile and Maya Chemical had already gone to England to buy up textile mills and fertilizer plants.

The least trustworthy thing between countries is the relationship of interests, the law of the jungle.

To say that the Americans' approach wasn't wrong, being backward invites aggression, it's just that thirty years east of the river, thirty years west of the river, the Americans will always be awesome.

……

Saint-Jose also looked for high-level members of the Radical Civic Union. Nowadays, the Radical Civic Union has started to split again.

However, under Arturo's persuasion, they are still united to confront Perón.

In Argentina, besides Perón, there are also various forces such as moderates, radicals, centrists, and the Church.

Recently, besides the Americans, the Church has been jumping around the most, causing Saint-Jose's disgust.

Especially after Eva Perón passed away, Saint-Jose also witnessed the shamelessness of the Church.

The reason why the foundation doesn't have as much aid and construction of schools as before is that the Church is trying to use this fund as compensation for the unrest, and the Church wants to strengthen its power and enter the Argentine government.

Due to the frequent labor movements, the Church is greatly dissatisfied with the Perón government. They believe that Perón, who was brought to power by the Church, cannot guarantee the Church's rights and demands that more clergy enter the national political organs. Perón is single-mindedly trying to maintain his dictatorship and certainly cannot agree to excessive intervention by the Church.

Recently, the Church's series of actions has also made Saint-Jose feel that Perón isn't that spineless.

The labor movement is intensifying. There are worker demonstrations in Buenos Aires every day. The Church feels that if this continues, the turmoil will cause significant losses to the Church. Therefore, they decided to establish their own political party to participate in politics. In order to ensure his dictatorship, Perón has always resented any other political parties. The Church's actions have angered him.

Perón directly refused, and the Church began negotiations with the Presidential Palace. The Church said that the matter of the foundation could be put aside. The current situation is turbulent, and we want to establish the Catholic Democratic Party to protect our own rights. Perón said that if you want to establish a party to participate in politics, there is absolutely no way.

"Unless you trample over my dead body, Argentina will never have a Church party."

At least at this time, Perón was very tough.

In the end, the Church temporarily compromised on this matter.