A Laboratory of Men for the Nation

Abstract

Human rights violations during the Malvinas War in 1982 are usually thought of as continuities of the political repressive logic of the last civic military dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983). But the memories of some protagonists of the war suggest longer histories. This article analyzes
ten testimonies of argentinean Malvinas veterans stored in the Oral Archive of Memoria Abierta from a
feminist perspective sensitive to the body, paying attention to certain disciplinary practices and ways
of managing the troops. It suggests that the continuities between the mandatory military service—
which began in the early 20th century—and the war of 1982, speak of key sites for the making of hegemonic masculinity in Argentina; laboratories that modelled men´s bodies and the most toxic forms of heteropatriarchy