ABSTRACT
Since 1983, Argentine’s Armed Forces should be considered cooperative actors with a conflict between their autonomy and historical links with the power and economic elites as well as the need of subordination and democratic civil control. State policies towards the “military question” have not been lineal during those 40 years but oscillating. The institutional, functional, budgeting and judicial reorganisation intended for the Armed Forces engaged with the national and regional democratic project. Yet a large extent of them continues to manifest with their actions and speeches belonging to a reactionary and non-democratic right, such as military uprisings and revolutions followed by a protected democracy. Historically, and especially in the Army, while being a corporative actor, the Armed Forces perceived themselves as the moral reserve and the guardians of the nation, and soon, they had to subordinate to the democratic control. Consequently, they tried to blend in like actors of the new democracy, for example, launching and establishing political parties. All this entailed transferring their own discourse from a reactionary right-wing, exclusive nationalism and moral and clerical conservatism into the environment of political debate and, therefore, to adapt chameleon-like to the supposed rule of the democratic game. In this chapter, starting with the Armed Forces’ role, their demands and reorganisation, it will be possible to observe how a conceptual configuration is reached allowing us to identify its discursivity and own actions typical of the Armed Forces traditions and right-wing variants as well as the specific challenges of the contemporary democracy.
