“Homeland security” as a State policy in 1970’s Argentina

Abstract

This article analyses a series of legal and illegal state policies and ruling-party strategies, of a repressive nature or involving political persecution, which were implemented by Peronist governments between 1973 and 1976, in the period prior to the military dictatorship that imposed State terrorism in Argentina. The observation of these practices is combined with the study of the discourses of diverse members of the political system from the period.

The study reveals the gradual establishment of a discourse about “national security”, that is to say, based on the idea of a subversive enemy of a domestic nature and alien to the “national spirit”. The Argentinian case study shows that this type of discourse, which is generally associated with the military regimes of the Southern Cone, also existed and was put into practice in constitutional regimes.