Argentina and the United States: An Alliance Contained

6. Descent to Dictatorship, 1970–1983

6 Descent to Dictatorship, 1970–1983 During the 1970s, Argentine-U.S. relations experienced their most strained period since the first Perón presidency. During Jimmy Carter’s presidency, the United States established human rights as a foreign policy priority. Americans turned their attention to the abuses of the Argentine dictatorship (1976 –83) and punished the military by prohibiting the sale of military equipment and working to isolate the regime diplomatically. Carter’s human rights emphasis, though, was anomalous. The 1970s represented a high point in bilateral ties in other areas. Cultural relations were never better. Moreover, the Argentine military took its inspiration from National Security Doctrine and U.S. military training in its war on a growing domestic terrorist menace. In addition, and despite a period of economic nationalism in Argentina that reflected a forceful anti-Americanism, commercial and financial ties remained strong throughout the decade and into the early 1980s. Cultural Ties During the 1970s, U.S.-Argentine cultural ties continued to expand and deepen. Boxing reached an apogee in Argentina both for fan support and the number of exceptional champions who fought. Ties with the boxing world were never stronger. On 30 June 1975, in a remarkable night at New York’s Madison Square Garden, the Argentine Carlos Monzón—possibly the best middleweight fighter in history—successfully defended his world title against Tony Licata. On the same card, the Argentine middle heavyweight Víctor Galíndez also retained his world title. A product of the Luna Park gym in Buenos Aires, super bantam150 weight Sergio Victor Palma won the Argentine championship in 1977. But to win the world title he had to consciously retrain himself as an American-style fighter. This meant doing away with his cautious and defensive style of jab-and-run in favor of a more aggressive “American” technique that he modeled after Joe Louis. Palma began to attack in close, relying much more than he had in the past (or than did other Argentine fighters) on quick combinations of upper cuts.1 In 1980, Palma put what he described as his American tactics to work in winning his world title over the American Leo Randolph in Spokane, the first Argentine to win a world championship in the United States. American musical influences in Argentina were vital. During the 1970s, Argentine rockers, the most influential of whom was Charly Garc ía, took their lead from American musical forms. But the sway of Argentine “Rock Nacional” remained limited by military government censorship . With the return of democracy in 1983, there was a deluge of foreign popular music, most notably American rock and pop. One consequence of the rapid entry of music from the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s that had never been heard before was that Argentines had little sense of the chronology of American rock. As a result, many musical groups in the 1980s and 1990s that were influenced by American music, including Los Fabulosos Cadillacs and Bersuit, frequently mixed a broad range of compositional, performance, and interpretive styles that drew on different periods in the era of rock. Bersuit, for instance, played in a range of U.S.-influenced styles that included tejana, heavy metal, and rock ballads.2 While less popular than rock, jazz was even more subject to American influences. Unlike rock, jazz remained below the radar of nervous military leaders during the 1970s. Its exponents were freer than rock artists to follow foreign trends. Many Argentine jazz musicians continued to play the music of the American greats to modest followings in Buenos Aires nightclubs. Having played jazz professionally since the 1930s, Enrique “El Mono” Villegas now emerged as Argentina’s most dynamic interpreter of Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, and a range of other American jazz icons. After a year in the United States, Villegas made his return to Buenos Aires in 1971, where he played 151 Descent to Dictatorship George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” at the Teatro Colón opera house to overwhelming acclaim.3 If “El Mono” represented an older generation of American-style jazz in Argentina, Gato Barbieri became the cutting edge. A tenor saxophonist , Barbieri was South America’s most innovative jazz composer and artist in the 1970s. Profoundly influenced by Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, and Astor Piazzola, among others, Barbieri consciously wove together Argentine folk music styles with 1950s- and 1960s-era American...