Racism, culture and the press: the Crónica newspaper during the Revolución Libertadora period (Liberating Revolution), Jujuy, Argentina

Abstract

The overthrow of Peronism and the subsequent establishmentof the Revolución Libertadora regime (Liberating Revolution)favored the emergence of a process of transformation of publicspeech, mainly issued by the press. The deperonization processinvolved a series of innovations in the public sphere in a way thatall references to the deposed regime were replaced to favor anopenly antiperonist discourse.In this framework, a process was started to impugn those elementslinked to Peronism; the press took an active role questioningthe State and demanding the suppression of any traces of theprevious government, such as the names of public places.The campaign promoted by Jujuy newspapers, specifically theCrónica, demanded renaming and renormalizing spaces namedafter indigenous appeals, such as the Plaza Tupac Amaru. Thenewspaper founded this change on the explicit savagery conditionassigned by the newspaper to the person referred to in the nameof the place.This pejorative treatment can be traced back during the Peronistgovernment and became part of the constitutive principles ofAntiperonism. This practice was expressed during this periodby reissuing the historic slogan “civilization and barbarism”(“civilización y barbarie”).This paper is aimed at determining the characteristics of theracist dimension of Antiperonism depending on the constitutionof its specific representations about particular historical events.