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The election of Raúl Alfonsín in October of 1983 represented the return of democracy to Argentina after more than seven years of a military dictatorship that left the country in a terribly distressed state. Since the dictatorship had joined the boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics led by the USA, for Argentina, the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics meant both coming back to the Olympic fold and the first such festival under the new democratic government. This paper explores Argentina's trajectory towards, and construction of, its participation in the country's first post-dictatorship Olympics. In doing so, this paper reveals why participation in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics was not a priority for the incoming administration and why such participation was not conceived as a potential emissary capable of reaffirming on the global Olympic stage the hard fought, yet still emerging, democracy of Argentina. In addition, it reveals not only the determination of the Alfonsín administration to make his sport policy work but also its aspirations, complexity and ambiguities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Between 1975 and 1983 Argentina experienced the worst internal conflicts of its entire history. The rise of the military power started during the last period of Isabel Peron's government and continued through the military takeover from 1976-1984. The excuse for overthrowing the weak Argentinian democracy was to destroy the monstrous guerrilla fighters who wanted to destroy the foundations of Western and Christian society in Argentina. The media and society in general supported the military's point of view. As a result, the guerrilla fighters along with anyone who disagreed with those in power were persecuted and exterminated in monstrous ways by the military and other members of the Argentinian security forces. Soon, the ones who ate the monsters became worse monsters: thousands of Argentinians became desaparecidos [the disappeared]. These measures allowed the new monster to keep detainees in secret locations in terrible living conditions until they decided to kill them. Fortunately, some of these detainees survived and after the return of democracy in 1984, they began to share their traumatic experiences with the country. Their testimonies removed the blindfold that had fallen on Argentinian society during the time of the dictatorship. It is the aim of my paper to analyse the way in which testimonies (written and oral) have contributed not only to unveiling the truth but also, to give voice to the silenced - that is revealing the monstrosity of official history and replacing it with a (re)writing that better reflects the atrocities of one of the darkest periods in Argentinian history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the articles written by Enrique Pichon-Rivière and Ana Pampliega de Quiroga for the magazine Primera Plana, between 1966 and 1967. We have specially focused on the articles that try to situate the subjective effects of socio-economic and cultural modernization of the moment. In this regard, we have been interested in showing that these writings reflect the tension of a time in which the traditional ways of living and thinking coexisted with discourses and practices that questioned them. Furthermore, and considering the political situation of the moment in which these works were published, we went through some articles on this topic. We notice a stand in favour of the validity of the democratic system. This standpoint confronted with the media campaign led by the magazine itself, which sought to create the necessary consensus for the military coup of June 1966. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

President Carlos Menem received thousands of letters from citizens during his two consecutive administrations (1989–1999). Most often Peronist and working class, they wrote to him to seek financial or material aid, praise, criticize, advise, communicate political opinions and invite correspondence. They injected their letters with intimate details of everyday life, their understandings of democracy, and their sense of the successes and failures of the state at meeting those criteria and forging a democratic identity for the Republic. This article provides contextualized readings of a sample of those letters in an effort to elucidate why their writers looked beyond the public sphere to express themselves, and chose the letter to the president as method. It argues that discursive participation in the public sphere remained elite-dominated, and mass mobilization did not provide the individualized results or political bonds that the letter writers sought. Furthermore, as an activity that Juan Perón had actively encouraged, writing to the president appeared an object lesson in good Peronist citizenship. The “mythical basis of the legitimacy” of Perón and his version of Justicialism had been his “direct contact with the people” (Plotkin). The letters reveal how citizens in the 1990s sought to reconstitute this imagined proximity with a Peronist president in a newly democratic context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of IBEROAMERICANA. América Latina - España - Portugal is the property of Vervuert Verlag and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)