Modernization, national defense and indebtedness: Aerolíneas Argentinas during the last dictatorship. Argentina 1976-1983.”,

PIGLIA, MELINA

Pdua

Conferencia; T2M Annual Conference; 2022

Asociación Internacional de Historia del Transporte, el Tráfico y la Movilidad

This work explores the experience of Aerolíneas Argentinas, the state-own Argentine flag carrier, during the last military dictatorship, between 1976 and 1983. In those years, the bloody repression was combined with an economic policy that implied a radical shift: deindustrialization, deregulation of markets and the primacy of financial speculation. In contradiction with the public discourse of the economic establishment, which underlined the need for a subsidiary state that would reduce its participation in the economy, and with the growing worldwide questioning of the model of the large flag carriers, the dictatorship’s policy regarding Aerolíneas Argentinas followed a very different path.Rather than shrinking the company or privatizing it, Aerolíneas Argentinas, firmly controlled by the Air Force, expanded: it modernized and increased its fleet (it became the first and only Latin American airline to fly the giant B747 Jumbo jets), it inaugurated simulators, workshops, training, aircraft food processing plants that also provided services to other companies; and expanded its international routes. The flip side of this growth was an enormous indebtedness, a heavy burden that would make itself felt strongly in the 1980s.This paper explores this apparent contradiction by linking it to the interests and the role that Aerolíneas played for the Argentine military, both in terms of strategic (national) interest -something that would be seen in the Malvinas conflict- and the interests of the Air Force as corporation.