The social and cultural project
set in motion by the military
regime has been consolidated
under Menem. The cultural
dislocation and embittered
resignation that plagues much
of Argentine society is the result
of the dismantling of the social
contract and the absence of real
political debates.
Through a brutal repertoire of disappearances tor
ture, intimidation and exile, the military dictator-
ship which ruled Argentina between 1976 and
1983 attempted to transform the mentalities and identi-
ties of its citizens. These practices were complemented
by widespread censorship, black lists and other mea-
sures designed to ensure the regime’s tight control over
memory and the production of national historical narra-
tives. The regime’s social project fractured a rich and
long-standing political culture, inflicting deep wounds
that will likely never heal completely. When the gener-
als stepped down in 1983, Argentines had to come to
terms with the legacies of the dictatorship and the
Malvinas War debacle. They also had to reconstitute
Anibal Ford is a writer and researcher at the Gino Germani Institute. He also teaches communications at the University of Buenos Aires. His most recent work is La marca de la bestia:
Privacidad, vigilancia e infoentretenimiento (forthcoming).
Jorge Elbaum is a researcher at Gino Germani Institute and
teaches sociology at the University of Buenos Aires. He is author of Salir a bailar: Discriminaci6n y racismo en la noche urbana (University of Buenos Aires, 1997). Translated from the Spanish by NACLA.
their shattered political culture, recuperate their history
prior to 1976, and reconfigure their relationship to a
world that had undergone deep transformations during
the years of the military regime.
It is difficult to describe contemporary Argentine cul-
ture without mentioning at least some of the central ele-
ments of the country’s cultural history. Argentina
embarked on the project of modernity early on. In the
nineteenth century, the state implemented one of the first
literacy laws in the world, guaranteeing free and compul-
sory education for all residents of the country regardless
of their citizenship status. At the turn of the century, there
was already a large literate public which made the devel-
opment of a national culture industry viable. By 1930, 60% of all the newsprint used in Latin America was con-
sumed in Argentina. An entertainment industry, including
film, radio and music, flourished during this period. The
link between state-sponsored education and the rise of the
mass media was crucial in the development of Argentine
modernity. It is no surprise that the country’s first labor
union, the Typographers’ Union of Buenos Aires, formed
in 1869, was related to the print media.
VoL XXXI, No 6MAY/JUNE 1998 35 VOL XXXI, No 6 MAY/JUNE 1998 35REPORT ON ARGENTINA
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen-
turies, Argentina was transformed by a massive influx
of European immigrants. Between 1870 and 1930, over
six million Europeans entered the country, dramatically
transforming the capital city of Buenos Aires as well as
Argentina’s national identity. At the turn of the century,
there were more foreign-born people living Buenos
Aires than native-born Argentines.
The immigration policies which stimulated this wave
of European emigration to
Argentina were implemented by
an agroexport oligarchy as part of In the
a social darwinist project to the racism of
improve what they perceived as
the “degenerative” mestizo stock against peol
of the nation. The racist disdain interior took o
for the people and cultures of the
interior provinces has been a con- political dirr stant tension in the country’s cul-
tural history since the time of thousands
Domingo Sarmiento, a prolific arrived in Bu author and prominent statesman
of nineteenth century Argentina. search of ind Sarmiento perceived the Argen-
tine national project as a struggle
between civilization and barbarism, making Buenos
Aires the symbolic embodiment of a modern civilized
nation on the frontier.
The immigration policies inspired by these ideas, however, soon created problems for the very elites who
had implemented them. The rapid growth of the labor
movement, spurred by recently arrived immigrants with
strong anarcho-syndicalist influences, led to an average
of over 100 strikes per year by the turn of the century.
Ruling elites responded to this social unrest with violent
repression and restrictive legislation. Out of this
emerged one of the most strategic forms of disciplinary
knowledge of the modem state-criminology-which
targeted not only criminals but social agitators as well.
Criminology has deeply marked Argentine history, from
the turn-of-the-century projects for social hygiene to the
massacres during the dictatorship of Gen. Jorge Videla
(1976-1980), who perceived social unrest as the work of
people who were “genetically predisposed” to subver-
sion and thus a threat to national security.
The racism of ruling elites against people from the
interior intensified and took on increasingly political
dimensions, as hundreds of thousands of migrants
arrived in the capital in search of industrial jobs begin-
ning in the 1930s and continuing through the period of
classic Peronism (1946-1955). These migrants, who
would become Per6n’s key constituency, were vilified
by Per6n’s enemies as “the little black heads” and the
“zoological avalanche.” Like Per6n, Carlos Menem,
who is from La Rioja, one of Argentina’s poorest
provinces, came to power in 1989 with the support of
urban and rural workers, crafting a look for himself
reminiscent of Facundo Quiroga, the caudillo from the
provinces vilified in the writings of Sarmiento.
Numerous political projects have attempted to envi-
sion a nation without cultural prejudices against either
mestizos or foreign immigrants, including the anti-oli-
garchic radicalism of Hip6lito Yrigoyen and the pop-
ulism of the Peronist movement.
These political projects, and their 1930s, underlying visions of the nation,
ruling elites were systematically attacked by ultranationalist elites and the
)le from the land-owning oligarchy. The coup
n increasingly that ousted Yrigoyen in 1930-
the first of the numerous army-
nensions, as led coups of the twentieth cen-
tury-brought together an )f migrants ultranationalist Catholic military
enos Aires in leadership and a conservative elite that favored the liberal eco-
lustrial jobs. nomic policies of Britain and the
United States. This unholy
alliance would reemerge again in
the military coups led by Gen. Juan Carlos Onganfa in
1966 and Videla in 1976. Through a horrific dirty war, Videla set out to consolidate the hegemony of this mili-
tary-economic alliance once and for all.
Despite the military debacle in the Malvinas,
which prompted the generals to relinquish
power and hold democratic elections, efforts to
consolidate a transition that was less controlled by the
military and more closely linked to the proposals of the
Multipartidaria of 1982-a coalition made up of the
country’s major political parties-were unsuccessful.
While the members of the military juntas that ruled the
country between 1976 and 1983 were brought to trial
by the Alfonsin government, the impact of these judi-
cial proceedings was undermined by the Final Stop and
Due Obedience Laws. This attempt at “reconciliation”
eventually led to Menem’s infamous pardon of the jun-
tas, through which he inaugurated a regime of institu-
tionalized impunity where corruption reigns and civil
society is weak and defensive.
As was the case in other countries in the Southern
Cone, the military conditioned its retreat on maintaining
its role as the nation’s institutional “protector.” The
shroud of forgetting cast over the atrocities of state ter-
rorism was favored not only by the military, but also by
the business elites who had supported the dictatorship
and who were the main beneficiaries of the economic
liberalization that the regime had implemented-an
NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 36REPORT ON ARGENTINA
unholy alliance indeed. The permanent threat of another
coup assured that impunity would become official state
policy.
While hundreds of bodies were being exhumed from
the clandestine graves of the dictatorship, President
Ratil Alfonsin promoted a conciliatory discourse based
on the “theory of the two demons,” which explained
Argentina’s recent past as the result the conflict between
two camps of warring
state on one side and’
on the other. The docui
Lost Republic is one
expressions of this his
tive, presenting both
ments for social chang nized state terroris
products of institutions
tence and political i
The historical dichoto
barbarism and civi-
lization reappeared,
now refracted through
the distortions of the
transition. In effect,
the theory of the two
demons expressed
the final triumph of
Argentina’s political
and social establish-
ment, for it com-
pletely denied all
social legitimacy to
the progressive move-
ments that were
exterminated by the
military regime.
In this context,
both the official story and the discourses of
the Alfonsin govern-
M enemismo emerged using populist and nation- alist rhetoric that had a strong messianic under-
current. The Menem government, however,
had no trouble shedding its nationalistic rhetoric when it
was required to comply with the prescriptions of the
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and
become an unconditional ally of the United States. As
Menem shed his populist-nationalist discourse in favor
policies-which have ices that were so crucial
ctory in 1989-he also
cial hairstyle and unruly
cess of Menemismo is
y the defeat of inflation,
it has failed to deliver
se of a “productive revo-
the alleged benefits of its
the United States have
been less than forth-
coming. Yet beneath
the optimism of
Menemismo, there are
other realities lurking.
Reckless privatiza-
tions, the flexibiliza-
tion of labor markets,
growing unemploy-
ment, the exclusionary
modernization of vari-
ous sectors of the
economy, the system-
atic destruction of the
public university and
the reckless condem-
nation of the entire
national education
system, are the struc-
tural pillars of a social
project that was first
ment, wmicn claimed Above: A sketch of Juan “Facundo” set m moon i y Jose to be acting within the “limits of the Quiroga, a prominent nineteenth cen- Martinez de Hoz, Finance Minister
possible,” implicitly accepted that tury caudillo from the interior. during the Videla regime. Under
certain aspects of the dictatorship’s Below: Carlos Menem during a visit to Menem, the project begun by the provinces in his 1989 presidential social project were inevitable, irre- campaign. Martinez de Hoz has been fully con-
versible, and thus somehow linked to solidated. The dismantling of the
an evolutionary notion of progress. This point is crucial social contract-and its promise of social mobility-is
to understanding the transition. It is also what best most evident in the crisis of the school system and in the
explains the fundamental contradiction within contem- recurrent protests against cuts in public education. The
porary political culture in Argentina, which is the fact teachers’ union, for example, has organized a series of
that the orderly and disciplinary authoritarianism actions to protest cuts in the government’s education
implanted by the dictatorship is a key component of budget. Teachers have also taken part in demonstrations
Menemismo’s globalized and “efficiency-oriented” cul- around other issues, playing a role that in earlier times
tural project. was played by industrial unions.
37 VOL XXXI, NO 6 MAY/JUNE 1998REPORT ON ARGENTINA
Menem’s frivolous mass-media strategies, moreover,
have trivialized political culture by transforming poli-
tics into a televisual spectacle. This process mirrored
the emergence of the global “info-tainment” industry,
the logical result of the concentration of the mass media
in the hands of a few powerful conglomerates. The
assassination of photographer Jos6 Luis Cabezas, who
was investigating government corruption, illustrates the
way in which the media transforms events into important
but depoliticized public issues. The list of suspects in
Cabezas’ murder range from Buenos Aires police offi-
cers to businessmen and politicians with close ties to
Menem. This case generated a feeling of widespread
public insecurity and at least momentarily revealed the
corruption within the state apparatus. What is problem-
atic here is that the kind of media coverage received by
the Cabezas case and others like it forecloses the possi-
bility of more profound discussions because stories are
framed as one-dimensional news events without any
structural implications. Thus, despite the fact that they
receive widespread coverage and generate outrage
among the national citizen-audience, they have no sig-
nificant political impact.
Global communication technologies, moreover, have
also wrought important changes in Argentine culture. At
the same time that a majority of Argentines have been
economically impoverished, Argentina has become one
of the countries with the highest percentage of cable-TV
subscribers. The predictable clash between material
poverty and symbolic “wealth” reveals the current
hypersaturation of imported mass culture as well as the
neglect of local cultural production.
Globalization has also affected local patterns of con-
sumption. The stabilization of the economy opened the
way for a credit-driven consumer frenzy underwritten
by the logic of comfortable monthly installments. The
political implications of this have been noted in the pub-
lic references to the importance of the “appliance vote”
in the successive electoral victories of Menemismo.
Elections have also been influenced by the other face of
the appliance vote-the inflation syndrome-the fear on
the part of economic elites that the fixed exchange rate
could unravel, and with it, the entire credit system.
Meanwhile, the deregulation and flexibilization of
labor continue to exacerbate individualism and the fear
of unionization or association. At the same time, cor-
ruption is growing like an oil spill–each day implicat-
ing more and more people tied to the business sector and
to the state. Disillusionment and skepticism, or simply
an embittered resignation, populate the minds of
Argentines, as accusations against public officials are
diluted in an inefficient and corrupt judicial system.
Public outrage over corruption is also defused through
everyday humor and satire and popular TV talk shows,
whose growing success feeds off the vacuum produced
by the absence of real political debates.
For those sectors that have always dreamt of
Argentina’s full inclusion in the geopolitical world
order, Menemismo has been a godsend. Its grand cele-
bration-“pizza with champagne”-expresses the tri-
umph of that strategic subalternity which figures that the
closer one gets to the centers of geopolitical power, the
easier it is to access their privileges. For the rest of the
country, it has foregrounded the urgent need to elaborate
possible futures in which new projects for social justice
may be born.
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