Politics, Human Rights, and Argentina's Transition to Democracy in the 1980s

FAIN: FEL-257019-18

Jennifer Adair
Fairfield University (Fairfield, CT 06824-5195)

A book-length study of Argentina’s transition to democracy, focusing on the Raúl Alfonsín administration (1983-1989).

“In Search of the Lost Decade” is the first in-depth history of Argentina’s transition to democracy following years of military rule and fiscal crisis. Through a focus on state programs to alleviate hunger and to fortify the foundations of a faltering welfare state, the book traces how citizens and government leaders forged an everyday politics of human rights that defined basic necessities and food security as the litmus tests of constitutional return. The study draws on unpublished sources and oral histories that illuminate the less commonly known actors and events that established the meanings of a just, democratic society. While grounded in an investigation of the daily contests that shaped post-dictatorship Argentina in the 1980s, the book reveals the social logics that justified the rise of neoliberalism at the end of the twentieth century, and offers a critical reinterpretation of the aftermath of Cold War authoritarian regimes and Latin America’s so-called “lost decade.”

Associated Products

In Search of the Lost Decade: Everyday Rights in Post-Dictatorship Argentina (Book)
Title: In Search of the Lost Decade: Everyday Rights in Post-Dictatorship Argentina
Author: Jennifer Adair
Abstract: In 1983, following a military dictatorship that left thousands dead and disappeared and the economy in ruins, Raúl Alfonsín was elected president of Argentina on the strength of his pledge to prosecute the armed forces for their crimes and restore a measure of material well-being to Argentine lives. Food, housing, and full employment became the litmus tests of the new democracy. In Search of the Lost Decade reconsiders Argentina’s transition to democracy by examining the everyday meanings of rights and the lived experience of democratic return, far beyond the ballot box and corridors of power. Beginning with promises to eliminate hunger and ending with food shortages and burning supermarkets, Jennifer Adair provides an in-depth account of the Alfonsín government’s unfulfilled projects to ensure basic needs against the backdrop of a looming neoliberal world order. As it moves from the presidential palace to the streets, this original book offers a compelling reinterpretation of post-dictatorship Argentina and Latin America’s so-called lost decade.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: http://https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520305182/in-search-of-the-lost-decade
Publisher: University of California Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780520305182
Copy sent to NEH?: No

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