Repressive processes and productive, territorial, and social reconfiguration in the south of Tucumán (Argentina, 1966-1983)

Abstract

This article examines the social transformations that took place in a strip of foothills located in the southwest of the province of Tucumán (Argentina) following two critical events: the closure of sugar mills ordered by the dictatorship that called itself the “Argentine Revolution” (1966-1973) and the systematic policy of forced disappearance deployed since Operativo Independencia (1975) and intensified by the last military dictatorship (1976-1983). From a situated perspective, both junctures are analysed as crises –in the Gramscian sense– that radically altered ways of life and reconfigured the territory. The research combines previous studies, press analysis, judicial documentation, interviews, and graphic and cartographic sources to identify continuities and ruptures between the two moments. It argues that while the first crisis generated resistance that limited the deepening of the transformations, the second consolidated, through terror, a new economic, social, and political order.