?Commercial aviation, modernization, development and nationalism in an authoritarian context: Aerolineas Argentinas during the dictatorship of 1966-1973?.

PIGLIA, MELINA

Shanghai

Conferencia; T2M Annual Meeting. Shanghai, 2020. Session: Transport Planning and National Policies in Latin America; 2020

International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic & Mobility

Created in 1950, from its origins Aerolineas Argentinas was seen as a key element in the of affirmation of national sovereignty: a fundamental piece of national defense and in the promotion of territorial integration and economic development. The state owned enterprise would later manage to articulate a powerful and enduring association with national identity, which would become an important factor in the resistance to economic policies that, since the late fifties and during the sixties, pursued the sanity of public budgets, efficiency and modernization.This work seeks to analyze the ways in which this nationalist conception modeled air policy at a specific time: the dictatorship inaugurated by the coup d'etat of 1966. The new de facto government's commercial air policy based the entire fleet of the flag line on Boeing jets, deeply reformed commercial air routes and made an unprecedented investment in airport infrastructure, in a general context of rationalization, adjustments and strong political repression. This paper will be especially interested exploring the tensions within the military corporation and between economists and military which were expressed in this context around the articulation between efficiency, development and governance.