I've been saying before that it was the Latin political culture as much as the new urban, immigrant-descended middle class and the Depression/WWII that ultimately propelled Peron's rise to power in 1945. I stand by all I've had to say, because Argentina faced the unique situation of being a large Latin American country getting a proportionally overwhelming wave of immigration from abroad (even Brazil didn't have such a high percentage of immigrants relative to the total population).
As I told before, the latin political culture plays a role, but it's not as important as the depression and the precedent set by Yrigoyen's rise.
And as you say this overwhelming wave of immigration that Argentina got made her different to other countries in Latin America, and that's precisely what rests so much importance to political culture.
And anyway, your reasoning has a fail. We can say that being part of "A" culture makes the countries part of said culture do "B". But we can't say that if "B" happened it certainly was because of "A".
Its like saying the URSS was authoritarian because the Tzars were also authoritarians.
In the Latin political culture, in Argentina as elsewhere, there's been a conservative, landed elite for the longest time. When the immigrants came over, the landed elite intended for them to stay for only a short time in the country, as opposed to actually settling the land. The elite was therefore exclusionary to the immigrants, and denied them citizenship and voting rights for the longest time. By contrast, in the likes of the US, Canada, or Australia, the elites were much more favourable to the immigrants. The antagonism between the elites and the immigrants was what caused all this political conflict in Argentina, because the immigrants and their descendants wanted a political voice of their own. Even though it's true that it was a liberal democracy prior to 1930, it was limited relative to North America and other anglo democracies. Furthermore, there was no real capitalist elite in Argentina like in the developed world that could guide and finance economic development and was left at the mercy of other countries, like Britain and the US, to do so. For all these reasons, it was the underlying political structure as much as contemporary world events that did Argentina in.
That idea about immigration to Argentina and the role the elite played is not true at all.
First of all, it was in the interests of the elite to populate the country because it was really big and because Chile was eager to expand to expand. You can't fight as much as you want, but if the population of a territory is against you and even worse, is from a neighboring country which can threat you, you are going to loose the territory sooner or later.
That happened with Texas and California, happened with Florida, happened to us with Eastern Misiones, and happened to Chile in Patagonia.
Then you have the education laws and the law if military service. The education laws were enacted more or less in 1880, way before immigrants were predominant. The military service law was enacted in 1900 more or less in order to make the different immigrant group feel as one big group, have them all feel Argentineans. A country which don't want the immigrants to stay won't do this.
And finally, it wasn't a situtation where only immigrants where prevented from having rights. All the people who were not part of the elites suffered the same fate, and all of them fought together to have their rights recognized. The immigrants brought the tradition and the ideas of fighting for their rights instead of staying quite, while the Native population made these immigrants and especially their descendants become more moderate and not perform any Revolution as they pretended.
What I see is that you chain the idea of the settling people in a country with settling them in small farms, typical to anglo-saxon countries. Well, here with did the same in our own way. As most of the countryside was owned by the elites, many small towns were founded, usually of less than 2.500 inhabitants. It was in these towns were immigrants settled, from there they worked in the fields, they worked in the mills, etc.
Look at a map of Cordoba, Entre Rios, Misiones, Corrientes, Buenos Aires, Santa Fe or Tucuman and you will see there are many of this small towns. I can tell this was the way the country was settled because my grandparents settled in a small town in Buenos Aires, and my parents grew up there, where most if not all of the people had something to do with the countryside and their parents or granparents came to the country either because they were hired to work or because they wanted to work in the countryside but were unable to buy some lands.
This kind of settlement is not seen elsewhere in Latin America except in Southern Brasil, which was settled in circumstances very similar to the Argentinean ones.
And in terms of the UCR not splitting up in 1924, I'm not sure that it would have happened realistically (of course, you could fantasize anything), simply because Alvear wanted to get rid of "phantom" employees (not showing up regularly if at all) who were loyal to Yrigoyen in order to clean up the house of corruption - and these pro-Yrigoyen employees didn't like that one bit.
No, no and no. You are confusing things again. Nobody said the UCR never splits. It's split was pretty much inevitable as long as there where two diferent factions with strong leaders, and that's why it happened OTL when Alvear became a leader a short time after he became president, but which wasn't made formal until 1924.
And if Yrigoyen dies in 1926 which is what was proposed earlier, then it would have been two years following your date for split and four following mine. A short period in any case. It's extremely implausible that the Personalistas movement will survive after Yrigoyen's death. It can resurge later, but right after his dead it's nothing. The Personalistas don't have any possible leader or candidates, thanks to Yrigoyen. Who are they going to vote? The Concordancia?
