Argentina- The Reinvention of the Armed Forces in the Face of the Challenges of Demilitarizing the Nation-State

SABINA FREDERIC

Latin American Military and Politics in the Twenty-first Century A Cross-National Analysis

Routledge

Lugar: Nueva York; Año: 2023; p. 64 - 75

Since the last military dictatorship at the beginning of the 1980s, the Armed Forces ofthe Argentine Republic (hereinafter FFAA) have undergone a far-reachingtransformation. The memory politics of truth and justice and the legal action takenagainst the culprits, together with the defeat in the Malvinas War, all played a key rolein that transformation. This pattern aptly called ‘the traps of the past’ meant thatArgentina’s post-authoritarian transition differed from that of other countries in theregion, like Chile, Brazil and Uruguay.Accordingly, this chapter focuses on describing the process that led to the peacekeepingoperations and roles of the FFAA, with the accent being placed on how the militarythemselves limited the expansion of their functions as regards homeland security. Inparticular, this had to do with the greater involvement of the Joint Chiefs of Staff(hereinafter EMCO) in peacekeeping operations and their leadership by a generation ofservicemen interested in the professionalisation of the military component of nationaldefence and in gaining public recognition. To this end, an analysis is performed here onthe creation of the Operativo Integración Norte (Northern Integration Operation,hereinafter OPINOR) in 2018, which leveraged the legacy of the decade that Argentinahad participated in the UN Mission in Haiti (hereinafter MINUSTAH) between 2004and 2015.