Call for Essays: 50 Years After the Civic-Military Coup in Argentina
Latin American and Caribbean democracies are currently facing a critical juncture. The spread of authoritarian rhetoric, the rise of the far right, the political manipulation of the judicial system, the criminalization of social protest, the militarization of security, and attacks on human rights policies have created a scenario of open conflict over the meaning and strength of democracy. In this context, policies of memory, truth, and justice are not a consolidated legacy, but rather a battleground that continues to be fought daily. Their questioning, erosion, or relativization are part of contemporary political strategies that seek to redefine the boundaries of democracy and deny the past.
Within this historical and political context, this year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the civic-military coup that established a dictatorship in Argentina, imposing a regime of state terrorism. The structural economic and social effects, the power dynamics, and the symbolic disputes of this event directly impact Argentina's current political situation, with regional repercussions. Therefore, creating a collective memory of the 1976 coup is, today, a way to engage with the present and envision a better future.
The state terrorism established in Argentina was not merely a repressive machine. It was the enabling condition for an economic, social, and cultural project that reorganized society through violence, dismantled popular organizations, and laid the foundations for a model of inequality that persists to this day. This project was part of a regional cycle of dictatorships in Latin America and the Caribbean, linked to transnational interests and strategies of political control and extermination that transcended national borders. Therefore, 50 years after the coup, memory demands a reading situated in the present and with a regional perspective.
In Argentina, the current regional processes we have referred to are taking on a particular intensity. The consensus built since 1983 around the "Never Again" movement, the prosecution of crimes against humanity, and the centrality of human rights is being challenged by discourses and practices that trivialize state terrorism, promote denialist narratives, or present memory as an obstacle or a biased ideological construct. These disputes are not merely symbolic: they have concrete effects on institutions, public policies, democratic life, and the ways in which social conflict is expressed.
En este marco, el Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales (CLACSO), los Centros Miembros CLACSO Argentina y el Consejo Interuniversitario Nacional (CIN, Argentina) convocan a la presentación de original and unpublished essays that critically analyze the relationship between historical memory and the current political situation, articulating the recent past with contemporary challenges to democracy in Argentina, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Global South, engaging in dialogue with the Global North and including a forward-looking perspective. This initiative is also supported by the National University of Rosario (UNR), the Metropolitan University for Education and Labor (UMET), the National University of Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica and the South Atlantic Islands (UNTDF), the Institute of Social Studies in Contexts of Inequalities of the National University of José C. Paz (IESCODE-UNPAZ), the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires (FSoc, UBA), the Interdisciplinary School of Advanced Social Studies of the National University of San Martín (EIADES-UNSAM), and the Cultural Center of Cooperation (CCC).
This call to action stems from a clear political statement: Memory is a tool for interpreting the present, challenging meanings, and projecting more democratic and just futures.Thinking about the 1976 coup 50 years later involves questioning the current conditions that enable new forms of authoritarianism, denialism and attacks on hard-won rights, as well as the social, institutional and cultural resistances that build alternative and superior proposals.
Deadline for essay submissions: June 4, 2026
Date of publication of results: July 30, 2026
- El golpe de 1976 y el terrorismo de Estado como antecedentes de las configuraciones actuales del poder político y económico.
- Memoria, verdad y justicia en disputa: ofensivas negacionistas, retrocesos institucionales y resistencias contemporáneas.
- Democracia y autoritarismo en la coyuntura regional: extremas derechas, lawfare y redefinición del Estado de derecho.
- Criminalization of social protest and control of political conflict in formal democracies.
- Desigualdades y democracia: continuidades históricas y formas actuales de vulneración de derechos y negación de diversidades.
- The role of the State and the Armed and Security Forces: dictatorial past, democratic transitions and current tensions.
- Cultura política, medios y batallas por el sentido del pasado, el presente y disputas por el futuro.
- Latin American and Caribbean experiences of democratic resistance against processes of authoritarian regression.
- Memoria y futuro: cómo las luchas del pasado informan las disputas políticas del presente y los horizontes de transformación.
- For the nomination of researchers, teachers, communicators, members of CLACSO member centers, activists, and representatives of social, trade union and human rights organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean.
- For applications from young people (people under 35 years of age without a doctoral degree) and undergraduate and postgraduate students.
- The proposals that pass to the next stage will be evaluated by an International Committee that will assess the quality and relevance of the trials.
- Las situaciones no previstas en la presente convocatoria serán resueltas por CLACSO.
- El dictamen será inapelable.
- The authors declare that all rights to the winning works of this competition belong to them entirely and exclusively, and they assign and transfer to CLACSO all exclusive worldwide rights of publication and sale in all languages and in any format that CLACSO deems appropriate. The authors will not receive any royalties.
- Los registros de ISBN y Depósito Legal serán tramitados por CLACSO. CLACSO se reserva el derecho de incluir el libro digital final en su Biblioteca Virtual y Librería Latinoamericana, así como de disponer del mismo para su difusión y descarga en acceso libre e irrestricto.
- Likewise, CLACSO may make the work available to establish publishing partnerships that allow for a greater and wider circulation of the material through print and digital media.
