1979. La larga celebración de la conquista del desierto

• Main Author: Javier A. Trímboli
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Centro Científico y Tecnológico-CONICET, Mendoza & Universidad Nacional de La Pampa 2013-12-01
• Series: Corpus: Archivos Virtuales de la Alteridad Americana
• Subjects: dictatorship; Conquest of the Desert; historiography; media
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/corpusarchivos/568

This article explores the political, journalistic and historiographical interventions made in 1979 on the occasion of the centenary of the so-called Conquest of the Desert. Though the 1976-1983 Argentine military dictatorship was clearly the protagonist among these celebratory evocations of the past, publications such as the special issue of the newspaper Clarín examined here indicate that it was not alone. Within a context of general support for the ‘Process of National Reorganization’, contributions from different sources and by different authors constructed a wider consensual narrative on the event in question. Even the differences and objections within that narrative never ultimately disrupted their shared ideological tone. Though the Malvinas War brought about the dismantling of this historical situation, some of the key texts written at the time would survive that collapse, eventually contributing to the way democracy and new historiographical production would co-exist with those –at the very least– conservative tones.