Una etnografía itinerante sobre el terrorismo en Argentina: paradas, trayectorias y disputas

In Argentina, the passing of the “Anti-Terrorism Law” in 2007 brought the notion of terrorism back into the political arena. However, while, on an international level, the hegemonic ideology that sustains the “fight against terrorism” was increasingly successful as a guiding principle of the “international community” and justification for the asymmetric political and economic interventions by some States in others, that ideology had different connotations in Argentina. To explain this particularity, this study focuses on the multiplicity of opposing ideological trends which struggle to define terrorism on a domestic level. After a brief review of the main historical stages of its use in Argentina, we discuss failed attempts to apply the law. We utilize an itinerant ethnography which combines an analysis of legislation and the attitude of the mass media with field work, in order to follow the path the notion of terrorism took from the period before the Law was passed and the one which succeeded it and the opposing ideological tendencies which have sought to define the meaning of danger, violence and security during those periods. Our purpose is to define the boundaries between a political community and its threatening otherness