Origins and Applications of Political Policing in Argentina

Charles Tilly, and the LAP reviewers for their remarks and suggestions on an earlier version of this article. The military coup that ousted President Hip6lito Yrigoyen from power in September 1930 had profound implications for Argentine society and poli-tics. After 1930, military power was consolidated and used in a more overt and violent fashion and political initiatives came to count on the armed forces to provide with force what was lacking in majoritarian support. Repressive politics were institutionalized, enshrining the armed forces as the final arbiter of the nation’s political destiny (Halperin Donghi, 1961; White, 1991). The period of reaction that followed the 1930 military coup has been dubbed &dquo;the infamous decade&dquo; (Rock, 1993: 173). Oligarchic dominance in the political system went hand in hand with what many observers and social scientists characterized as a conspicuous dependence on Britain epitomized by the Roca-Runciman pact of 1933 (Rock, 1987: 214-223; Pla, 1969: 105; Galasso, 1969). ’ Curiously, analysts who reject the indictment of this decade and view Argentina as successful in overcoming the crisis of the 1930s draw more attention to another aspect of this period: the systematization of a sur-veillance machine. Fraga ( 1991) and Aguinaga and Azaretto ( 1991) convey respect rather than criticism when they point to the extensive information service established after 1932 by President Agustin P. Justo to monitor the military, political parties, and society.2 The military coup that deposed th