ABSTRACT
The traditional dependency of military profession from family was challenged both by changes in family life and by the redefinition of the Argentine Armed Forces in contemporary Argentina. As a result, the military asked for institutional recognition of divorce or concubinage, which was considered by traditional military rules “an irregular family situation” that stands in the way of promotion and thus hinders the career. Also, an increasing number of officers and non-commissioned officers requested to be transferred from their current military destiny to another one that allowed living together with their family members. Nevertheless, our research about the place of family during an Argentinean peacekeeping deployment to Haiti (MINUSTAH) conveys that such challenges do not tend to dissolute the above-mentioned dependency. Conversely, the analysis of 50 ethnographic interviews made in 2014 and 2015 with male ex-peacekeepers, psychologists, and instructors in charge of pre- and post-deployment training shows other tendencies. Under the unquestionable idea that “the performance of the military who deploys does not depend just in himself but in his family,” the CAECOPAZ (Argentinean Center for Joint Training to Peace Operations) developed a specific program. Its goal is to emotionally support the family members of the deployed, and was endorsed by the United Nations International Training Standards. In this chapter, we compare convergences and divergences between that institutional resource, and the way ex-peacekeepers managed their families before, during, and after deployment to Haiti.
