Army, Social Conflict and Domestic Order in Early Twentieth-Century Argentina

Abstract

This research is intended to explore the relationship between the Army and homeland security from the perspective of military representations of social and labor conflicts during the 1920’s in Argentina. It does so by analyzing the magazine issues published by the Círculo Militar, which were addressed to various sectors of the Argentinian Army. The purpose of doing so is, firstly, to shed light onto little-known periods of the Argentinian military history – on which the existing studies, for the most part, focus mostly on the 1930’s onward, when the Armed Forces seized the Argentinian political system with praetorian authority–. The 1920’s have been particularly understudied, almost exclusively with a focus on corporate tensions under the presidency of Hipólito Yrigoyen, a member of the UCR Party. Secondly, it is aimed to further contribute to the broader debate on the relationship between the Argentinian Army and military interventions in domestic conflicts considered a threat to social order. This topic has been profusely addressed in connection with the military appropriation of the “Homeland Security doctrine” and the construction of internal enemies since the second half of the twentieth century under the influence of the Cold War and local conflicts around Peronism. Certain data will, however, be presented in order to revisit these periodizations.

The present work is thus meant to examine the magazine issues from Revista Militar, Revista del Suboficial and El Soldado Argentino, published by the Círculo Militar between 1919 and 1930. The representations of social unrest -which generally involved the working class and the immigrants- and the Army’s role will be examined. The analysis will show a heated nationalism at the service of an anti-communist and anti-anarchist trend, according to which social conflicts were merely a threat to domestic order and, as such, to national order. Faced with increasing social "disorder", the Army -and, by extension, the Armed Forces- presented itself as the guardian of social order and the backbone of national defense. This legitimized military disciplinary interventions when it came to domestic order and, to the same extent, its withdrawal from other types of inner political conflicts.