The Argentine Silent Majority: Middle Classes, Politics, Violence, and Memory in the Seventies, by Sebastián Carassai

Abstract

The Argentine Silent Majority: Middle Classes, Politics, Violence, and Memory in the Seventies, by Sebastian Carassai. Durham & London, Duke University Press, 2014. xii, 357 pp. $25.95 US (paper). Sebastian Carassai offers a penetrating analysis of Argentine middle classes during a violent period, covering the major upheavals that marked the beginning of the end of the 1966-1973 military regime, the turbulent and short-lived democratic restoration of 1973-1976, and the subsequent military regime of 1976-1983. The book's unifying theme is political mobilization and violence during those years, both by political groups and guerrilla organizations in 1969-1976 and repressive state and para-state forces that opposed and finally crushed them. Carassai focuses on the non-activist middle classes, the largest sector of the middle classes that neither openly supported military repression nor joined activist middle classes involved in politics, including armed groups. To capture the experience of this silent majority who opposed violence, Carassai draws on a large pool of interviews carried out in three different geographical settings that vary in size and exposure to political violence. He complements them with the analysis of a broad range of primary sources and publications, television programs, and advertising material that were produced for, consumed by, and expressed the values of the middle classes. Combining political and social history with insights from works on the cultural field, memory, and the state, the book first traces the origins and evolutions of the political culture of these middle classes, firmly rooted in opposition to Juan Peron and his movement since the 1940s (chapter one). While they expressed their solidarity to some of the ideals of the politicized middle classes, they also rejected violence and saw themselves as trapped between state repression and those who fought it (chapter two). More to the point, throughout the early 1970s, the non-activist middle classes explicitly opposed the violence of the guerrilla organizations (chapter three), which explains their complex reaction toward the military regime that combined acceptance, fear, support, and a selective and often contradictory recollection of the past (chapter four). The contradiction between their solidarity with the politicized middle classes and their eventual acceptance of the military regime must be understood in the context of the pervasive presence of violence in Argentine society since the 1960s. Violence was widely depicted in magazines, television programs, advertising, and humour that targeted the middles classes. These media reflected the desire for a drastic solution for a radical change of the country's political, economic, and social situation (chapter five). At some points, the concept of non-activist middle classes seems to be stretched too far. For example, Peron's victory in the 1973 elections and subsequent strategy did involve an appeal to those middle classes and their ideals (pp. …