A wasted opportunity. The right wing argentine catholic press between the defeat in the Malvinas war and the democratic return (1982-1983).

Abstract

The last military dictatorship brought together different expectations in the Argentine Catholic right, which in general terms shared the exhortation to recover order, repress political-military organizations, discipline unions and end populism. While some of its leaders projected an ascetic and professional dictatorship, others demanded a Catholic restoration. Thus the Catholic right navigated between a sober and austere interruption that after ordering the country to call elections to return to a conservative republic and a refoundation with corporatist characteristics in light of the Catholic renaissance of the 1930s, and a whole scale of horizons political, economic and religious possibilities between one and the other. This article studies the editorial positions of a group of publications of the Argentine Catholic right between the defeat in the Malvinas war in mid-June 1982 and the return of democracy in December 1983 when they were forced to readjust to a situation that was far from their ideals.