The Argentine Silent Majority: Middle Classes, Politics, Violence, and Memory in the Seventies by Sebastian Carassai (review)

Docile, indifferent, and without ideology—this is how Sebastian Carassai describes the Argentinian middle class of the 1970s in his work, The Argentine Silent Majority: Middle Classes, Politics, Violence, and Memory in the Seventies. This book seeks to explain the seeming apathy of the bourgeois strata of Argentinian society in the face of immense political repression and the revolutionary reaction that ensued. Previous studies have focused primarily on highly politicized elites and revolutionaries rather than the far larger and perhaps more influential middle classes. Carassai explores this untouched trove of data with an innovative use of oral history and contemporary media.

Sebastián Carassai is a native of Argentina and serves as a research associate at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET). He teaches political theory and leads a collective research project about civil society and the state in Argentina at the University of Buenos Aires. This work, which was his dissertation, has been awarded the Esther Kinsley Ph.D. Dissertation Award for 2011–2012. Carassai has also published in several journals dealing with cultural studies and Latin America.

The primary question that the book seeks to answer is why the middle classes did not react more strongly against government oppression and military rule. Carassai answers this by revealing the relationship between politics and violence in Argentina at the time. His primary argument is that while the middle classes detested violence from both Marxist rebels and the government, they did not believe that they had the agency to change the situation. They believed that those killed by the state must have been guilty of some crime. Perceived omniscience on the part of the state helped to solidify this sentiment and lump moderate dissent in with guerilla terrorism.

The methodology used in the interview process relies on an interesting combination of media and oral history. Each participant was interviewed three times over the course of two and a half years. The second and third sessions were prefaced by the presentation of a documentary video comprised of contemporary news reports from 1969–1974 and 1975–1982 respectively. As a control, three locations which experienced differing levels of unrest were selected to create a more accurate representation of Argentina as a whole. These interviews are inserted throughout the book to create narrative touchstones and to provide supplementary support to the author’s claims. Carassai also deconstructs the television and radio programs from the time and uses them as a window into the hearts and minds of the middle classes.

The basic premise of the book could be described as a negative correlation between violence and middle class dissent. As the violence increased to higher and more spectacular levels, the middle classes withdrew more into the perceived safety of silence and nonparticipation. These escalations can be seen in the progression of the book itself. Chapter 1, “Political Culture,” gives a brief political background of the Peronist regime, which was openly opposed by the middle class. The next three chapters examine the differing and escalating forms of violence that would engulf Argentina. Chapter 2 explores the impact of social violence in the form of student-led protests. These revolts evoked sympathy from the middle classes and in some cases their direct participation; however, this would not last. Chapter 3 describes the middle classes’ negative view of the escalation from student protests to armed guerilla attacks. Chapter 4 shows the inverse relationship between violence and middle class indifference most clearly.

The interviewees consistently showed sympathy to victims of state violence but insisted that their fate was avoidable. They cite the argument that if one has done nothing wrong then there is nothing to fear. Carassai demonstrates the extent to which violence had pervaded Argentinian middle class culture in chapter 5. Advertisements from the time are examined and their violent, weaponized content is presented as evidence for the middle classes’ begrudging acceptance of violence.

The book...