Universidad Nacional de Quilmes

The 1970s was the most violent decade of the entire twentieth century for Argentina. Its first half was characterized by the rise of political radicalization, and its second by the reign of state repression. Studies devoted to investigating the issue of violence in the 1970s have concentrated fundamentally on the protagonists. By contrast, this article offers an analysis of the symbolic terrain, shifting focus from the conscious to the unconscious plane, from the real to the imaginary world. Dealing with visual representations of violence in popular culture, especially advertising in mass-circulation magazines, it explores how violence became naturalized during the first half of the 1970s. In so doing it adds an additional layer to our understanding of the social mood that preceded the military coup of March 1976.

This article analyzes the ideological
sympathies and voting behavior of the Argentine
middle class in the early seventies, focusing on
the presidential elections in March and September
of 1973. In attempting to understand the political
context of the first half of the seventies, the
purported role played by the militant sectors of the
middle class youth is often overemphasized,
obscuring rather than clarifing the characterization
of this social sector. But with the exception of its
militant minority, what one can verify is that, in that
context, the bulk of the middle class sympathized
with ideological choices of the center and centerright,
voting in the elections of 1973 for neither the
Peronist nor the leftist political parties. Perón’s
return to the country, therefore, did not occur in a
context of the Peronization of the middle class. On
the contrary, it can be argued that, in the effort to
discipline the radicalized sectors of his movement,
Perón attempted an unprecedented rapprochement
with the historically hostile middle class. The
1983 election did nothing but confirm that the
middle classes, ten years later, were still leaning
toward neither the leftist nor the Peronist options.

This study explores the issue of human rights in Argentina in the period before
and at the beginning of the 1976 coup d’état (1970-1977). It claims that the absence of a social
conscience about human rights in the first part of the decade and the early and huge consensus
about what later would be called «the two demons theory» are two essential elements to explain
the attitude of the middle classes not involved in political struggle toward the emergence of a human
rights discourse in Argentina.

En este artículo se exploran las vinculaciones entre las nociones de memoria y de aura con el propósito de fundamentar una concepción benjaminiana de la historia -la historia rescate- que extiende la exploración histórica de la memoria de los sujetos a los objetos. A partir del análisis de Sobre algunos temas en Baudelaire y siguiendo el debate que a propósito de dicho texto Adorno mantuvo con Benjamin, el artículo postula la posibilidad de acceder a los anhelos no realizados de las generaciones pasadas a través del análisis benjaminiano del aura de los objetos.

In The Argentine Silent Majority, Sebastián Carassai focuses on middle-class culture and politics in Argentina from the end of the 1960s. By considering the memories and ideologies of middle-class Argentines who did not get involved in political struggles, he expands thinking about the era to the larger society that activists and direct victims of state terror were part of and claimed to represent. Carassai conducted interviews with 200 people, mostly middle-class non-activists, but also journalists, politicians, scholars, and artists who were politically active during the 1970s. To account for local differences, he interviewed people from three sites: Buenos Aires; Tucumán, a provincial capital rocked by political turbulence; and Correa, a small town which did not experience great upheaval. He showed the middle-class non-activists a documentary featuring images and audio of popular culture and events from the 1970s. In the end Carassai concludes that, during the years of la violencia, members of the middle-class silent majority at times found themselves in agreement with radical sectors as they too opposed military authoritarianism but they never embraced a revolutionary program such as that put forward by the guerrilla groups or the most militant sectors of the labor movement.

Los años setenta en la Argentina estuvieron signados por la violencia política y la represión como nunca antes en nuestra historia. ¿Pero qué ocurría en el día a día de una sociedad convulsionada por esa escalada sangrienta? Este libro indaga, desde una perspectiva original, cómo vivió esa época la gente “común”, los sectores medios que no se involucraron en política ni formaban parte de grupos de poder.

Este documental ha sido elaborado como herramienta metodológica para la investigación "The Argentine Silent Majority. Middle Classes, Political Culture, Violence, and Memory (1969-1982)", realizada por Sebastián Carassai con el apoyo de la Universidad de Indiana-Bloomington. La primera parte abarca los años 1969-1974. La segunda, los años 1975-1982.

Este documental ha sido elaborado como herramienta metodológica para la investigación "The Argentine Silent Majority. Middle Classes, Political Culture, Violence, and Memory (1969-1982)", realizada por Sebastián Carassai con el apoyo de la Universidad de Indiana-Bloomington. La primera parte abarca los años 1969-1974. La segunda, los años 1975-1982.