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

FAIN: FT-248749-16

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

A history of Argentina's transition to democracy in the 1980s.

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 The study draws on unpublished sources and oral histories that illuminate the less commonly known actors and events that established the meanings of a just, democratic society.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."

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