CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Theconstruction of a ?drug problem? experienced profound transformations intwentieth-century Argentina. After a first period of intense preoccupation withthe drug problem in the interwar period, there were two other, differentiatedmoments of public concern, which together marked the making of that problem asa staple of Argentina politics and culture. This paper will look at theshifting meanings of the ?addict?, and the attendant perceptions of socialthreats, by looking first at the decades of 1960s and 1970s, when the prevalentapproach was embedded into national security doctrines; and second at the 1980s,when the paradigm shifted from national security towards public health. In thispassage, Argentina?s politicians and experts appropriated elements oftransnational discourses and practices (and especially to those emanating fromWashington) to confront local dynamics, such as the negotiation of the legaciesof the country?s last military dictatorship (1976-1983) and the difficulties ofthe transition towards democratic rule. In this context, toxicologists,legislators, politicians from the entire political spectrum, and youth groups,among others, coincidentally linked the signifier youth to ?victimhood?. Bytracing similarities and differences between these two contexts in terms of thepolicies, representations, and experiences related to the public constructionof the drug problem in Argentina, I expect to show that the lines between?social threat? and ?victimhood? were porous and fluid. As delineated anddiscussed throughout the 1980s, the figure of the young addict was at thecenter of public debates over individual and collective rights?which for thefirst time in decades tested the limits of a prohibitionist approach todrugs?yet the prevalence of the notion of victimhood ultimately served tolegitimate the enforcement of repressive legislation that reconfigured, ratherthan vanished, the links between youth, addiction, and social danger.

enviar mensaje