Explaining Efficiency, Seeking Recognition. The Experiences of the Argentine Peacekeepers in Haiti

FREDERIC SABINA

Civil Militar Entanglements

Berghahn

Lugar: Nueva York; Año: 2018;

What do the stories of members of the Argentine military say about their experience as peacekeepers in Haiti? How do they account for the effectiveness of this military operation, probably the most significant of their careers? Why is it considered a military operation if its success is attributed to the variety of civic tasks that established links of trust and cooperation with the Haitian population? What has been the role of the domestic and regional political scene in the construction of the operational environment of the peacekeeping mission? In this chapter I answer these questions showing how commanders and soldiers sought to reestablish their reputation in the eyes of Argentine society through the peacekeeping operation, and that the way that this claim to rectifying their reputation is based on a paradox. Members of the military claim to be warriors but neither the government, which despised militarism, nor their social tasks in Haití, underline this category of self understanding (Brubaker and Cooper, 2000). Their stories emphasize over and over the empathy and sensitivity towards Haitian people´s suffering that they felt through carrying out civic or humanitarian tasks. Nevertheless their wish to reaffirm their professional role as warriors involved a process of ?identification as a complex (and often ambivalent) process? (Brubaker and Cooper, 2000:14). Thus this chapter will argue how their stories move from the entanglments of civil military tasks to ways that tend to disentangle or moderate the civilianization that the humane role of the peacekeeper involved.