From a pedagogy of the word to a pedagogy of silence

Rural Movement and Agrarian Leagues. Rural political subject and the repression of State terrorism in northeastern Argentina (1960-1983)

Abstract

During the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s, producers and rural workers staged a process of formation and political organization in different provinces of northeastern Argentina. This process was promoted by young people belonging to the Rural Movement of Catholic Action, with the support of the bishops of the region and converged with other historical experiences of organization of the rural subject. Throughout the region, a political-cultural project was deployed for the formation of "leaders" that laid the foundations for the formation of the Agrarian Leagues in 1970. Since the beginning of the 1970s, ruralists and liguistas were systematically repressed, finally becoming victims of state terrorism perpetrated during the last Argentine civic-military dictatorship (1976-1983).

We start from considering that the project promoted by the Rural Movement of Catholic Action was founded on the promotion of a "pedagogy of the word" which was supplanted -through state terrorism- by a "pedagogy of silence". From an anthropological perspective which takes as its starting point the construction of social memories, we propose to reflect on the configuration of the rural political subject as a victim of State terrorism and problematize the meanings and representations that permeated the process of transmission of that experience within rural communities.