Friday, January 7, 2011: 3:10 PM
Room 208 (Hynes Convention Center)
In June 1966, the Argentine military seized control of the country, heralding their fifth coup d’état of the century as “La Revolución Argentina.” Under the leadership of General Juan Carlos Onganía, the government asserted that communism threatened Argentina’s future. In addition, they emphasized an immediate need to resuscitate the country’s failing economy. However, the new government expended a tremendous amount of energy trying to save Argentina from moral degradation, and it linked these efforts to its anti-communist position. In particular, Gen. Onganía and his cabinet attempted to cleanse the supposed decadence of Argentina’s middle-class youth through a morality campaign, clamp down on communism in the national universities, and implement anti-communist and censorship legislation.
With a consensus among Gen. Onganía and his cabinet members that the failing economy warranted immediate action, why did they worry about immorality and link their anti-communist campaigns to cultural reforms? Based on a variety of Argentine and U.S. sources, this paper demonstrates that staunch Catholic Nationalist intellectuals shaped the officers own distinct definition of the communism threat during the decade leading up to the coup. With local concerns about the influence of leftist ideology among the Argentine youth, the military pursued methods to curb its spread that intersected with cultural reforms and religious purgatives. To the dismay of U.S. diplomats and foreign bankers ready to offer aid, they did so even before they established a clear plan for economic stabilization. I argue that the anti-communist rhetoric and actions of conservative Catholic-minded officers targeted the “immorality” of the modern youth because they believed that communism had already degraded the country’s traditional Catholic values. By constructing a moral and spiritual culture, the generals believed they could shield young people from further exposure to leftist ideology and mold them into the future conservative and Catholic leadership.
With a consensus among Gen. Onganía and his cabinet members that the failing economy warranted immediate action, why did they worry about immorality and link their anti-communist campaigns to cultural reforms? Based on a variety of Argentine and U.S. sources, this paper demonstrates that staunch Catholic Nationalist intellectuals shaped the officers own distinct definition of the communism threat during the decade leading up to the coup. With local concerns about the influence of leftist ideology among the Argentine youth, the military pursued methods to curb its spread that intersected with cultural reforms and religious purgatives. To the dismay of U.S. diplomats and foreign bankers ready to offer aid, they did so even before they established a clear plan for economic stabilization. I argue that the anti-communist rhetoric and actions of conservative Catholic-minded officers targeted the “immorality” of the modern youth because they believed that communism had already degraded the country’s traditional Catholic values. By constructing a moral and spiritual culture, the generals believed they could shield young people from further exposure to leftist ideology and mold them into the future conservative and Catholic leadership.