ABSTRACT
The National Security Doctrine promoted throughout Latin America by US strategists during the Cold War inspired the military repression in Argentina between 1974 and 1983. This anticommunist ideology gave the armed forces of the region the messianic mission of rebuilding their societies by eliminating political “subversion.” Because the repression in Argentina was directed against political groups, the question arises whether it is appropriate to describe these events as genocide. I will argue that it was precisely the attempt to transform Argentine society through partial annihilation of the national group that justifies the use of the term, both legally and sociologically. By considering genocide as a social practice, we gain a deeper insight into the underlying purposes of genocide in the modern world, of which the distortion of collective memory is only one.
