La cuestión Malvinas en la Argentina del siglo XX: Una historia social y cultural

Abstract

The war between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the Malvinas Islands (also known as the Falklands in English) in 1982 has a prominent place in Argentine national politics as well as historiographical debates. In large part, this is because the war, based on Argentina's historic claims of sovereignty over the islands occupied by Great Britain since 1833, captured two seemingly contradictory processes: launched by a declining murderous military regime, the war counted on widespread support by the Argentine society, even by those who opposed the regime. To these debates, this book contributes a fresh perspective, approaching the Malvinas conflict through the intersection of war with cultural and social history based on the theoretical concepts of mobilization and war culture. Mobilization is understood as a process encompassing not only military and economic dimensions but also cultural and political ones, including mobilization by different social actors themselves. War culture refers to representations involving common imaginaries, values, practices, and experiences that allow society to adapt to the war period and that legitimate the conflict.This theoretical framework, presented in the introduction, is developed in eight chapters organized along three thematic axes. First, three chapters explore the trajectory of the Malvinas cause and its social and cultural impact throughout the twentieth century before the war. María Inés Tato shows the power of appealing to the Malvinas in Argentina by analyzing how such appeals were used by domestic and international actors during the First World War. Gonzalo Rubio García details the long-lasting anti-imperial critique against Great Britain built around the islands by several Argentine nationalist intellectuals in the 1930–50 period. Gustavo Carrère Cadirant studies how the popular newspaper Crónica and its owner, Héctor Ricardo García, were involved in highly publicized trips to the islands in the late 1960s and early 1970s that had a noticeable impact on public opinion and prompted official reactions.The second theme, mobilization during the war, is then dealt with in four chapters that privilege the role of the press, periodical publications, and the media. Agustín Desiderato focuses on two periodical publications that targeted school-age children, Billiken and Croniquita, to analyze strategies and messages for gathering social support, justifying the Argentine war effort, and building a negative image of Great Britain. Maximiliano Britos looks at messages and representations in newspapers and sport magazines to illustrate how sport events and athletes became explicitly involved in the conflict. Felipe Mistretta deconstructs the gender stereotypes behind the image of the enemy built by Crónica through offensive and sexist attacks that demonized and dehumanized the United Kingdom's prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. Iván Rey provides a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the war coverage by the main and most watched news program in Argentina during the conflict, 60 minutos, and how it contributed to the Argentine war culture.The book's third theme, on the challenge of how to approach the war given its loaded political and historical contexts and meanings, is spread through the different chapters but is specifically addressed in the last one, by Luis Dalla Fontana. By using Marcelo Dascal's theory of controversies, he reflects on the need to go beyond rigid and emotional approaches by incorporating cultural and social history and the history of emotions as the basis for scholarly inquiries and scientific knowledge on the war.Clearly written and well organized, the book establishes a direct dialogue with the work of scholars such as Federico Lorenz, Rosana Guber, and Vicente Palermo on the Malvinas issue's historical roots and political and social aspects in Argentina. While some chapters are deeper theoretically and empirically than others, the book as a whole effectively makes the case for reconceptualizing the Malvinas within the proposed analytical framework. By establishing clear links with studies on gender, war, media, and popular culture, the authors demonstrate that support for the war and the Malvinas cause was the product of not only coercion and propaganda but also consensus and popular support built over generations. Thus comic strips in children's magazines, popular newspapers, sport publications, and gender stereotypes highlight more profound connections of the islands and the war to language, practices, and meanings in Argentine history and society. In this manner, the book dialogues with studies by scholars such as Daniel James and Eduardo Elena on the connections between Peronism and popular culture, by David Sheinin on social support and sports related to the Argentine dictatorship, and by Natalia Milanesio on the gendered meanings and tensions embedded during and after the military regime in Argentina. In all these ways, this book is a very valuable piece of scholarship that would interest scholars and a more general public alike in Argentina and elsewhere.