Infidelities: Morality, Revolution and Sexuality in Left-Wing Guerrilla Organizations in 1970s Argentina

ISABELLA COSSE

Amherst

Conferencia; Berkshire Conference of Historian Women; 2011

University of Massachusetts

In the 1970s, left-wing guerrilla organizations in Argentina penalized infidelity, glorified monogamy and condemned sexual freedom as a petit-bourgeois deviation that delayed the revolution. This reveals the limited scope of the changes in sexual morality proposed by these revolutionary groups, as pointed out in various studies. Instead of elaborating on these studies, this article will take a different approach. Infidelity will be seen here as a particularly significant node representing the connection between the private and political worlds and between sentimental and political loyalties, a node where conflicting ways of understanding morals, relationships and sexuality converged. To do that, the debate on infidelity will be reconsidered from two perspectives: within revolutionary organizations and outside them. In the first, the contradictions between the moral dictates of revolutionary leaders and the actual couple dynamics of the members of these organizations will be analyzed. In the second, the positions advocated by leftist guerrilla groups will be contrasted with discussions common at the mass culture level during that period. This reconstruction will be based on interviews included in the Open Memory Archive (Archivo Memoria Abierta), testimonial literature and debates in mainstream media. The analysis will shed light on the dilemmas that armed groups and their activists faced with respect to infidelity against a backdrop of redefining moral duplicity, family values and gender differences in Argentine society.