The sequence of illusion and disillusionment has as crucial antecedent the active involvement in youth organizations during the second half of the eighties. This dimension of the narrative is salient among middle-class and centre-leftist respondents. Without such an illusion, former collective events emerged simply via means of anecdotes – with the exception of the hyperinflation and its practice reservoir for future crises – or were simply disregarded as irrelevant events in comparison to biographical ones (occasionally more traumatic as in low-class respondents’ stories). Nevertheless, especially by those more willing to conceal a certain difficult past, the nineties might be narrated in a different way (i.e. without disillusionment). The nineties might be encapsulated as a time of consumption and richness.
After the hyperinflation, Menem’s government enforced a monetary policy of convertibility (one dollar became one Argentine peso). In consequence, the upper-middle class benefited from the new economic stance. Travelling abroad, some sort of ‘Americanization’ (symbolized by food deliveries), and a period of showing-off (e.g.
by those who could afford a bigger better car – Mercedes, BMW – or a bigger house) were recounted as a model for this Argentina. The catchphrase employed is that of an era of ‘pizza and champagne’. Following Svampa (2001), this script might easily be recognized as part of ‘those who won’ or the winners’ story. Antonia, who gave an extensive description of all these changes, concluded with a generational formula:
“I belong to the generation of change, the one that left behind the old ways of spending your vacations – with our parents along the Argentinian coast – sometimes you stayed there one month, two months – for trips to the Caribbean, Miami, Orlando (…) Europe." (Antonia, 1966)
Antonia’s feeling of change is also related to a crucial biographical decision: she moved to a ‘private neighbourhood’. Such testimony of ‘moving’ stands for a crucial and impressive urban transformation in Buenos Aires during the last twenty years, namely, the building of private residences on the city outskirts. Whilst the rise in pauperisation was increasingly visible (the emergence of ‘cartoneros’, i.e. poor people collecting and selling recyclable materials), Buenos Aires’s upper-middle class began
moving to private areas in which walls and private security created a strong in-out boundary (Svampa 2001; also Adamosvsky 2009: 421-431). During the nineties, the separation of private areas from peripheral, poor zones reinforced the feeling of a division between ‘winners’ and ‘losers’. Private neighbourhoods shifted an old culture of middle-class urban-life, bringing about a new sociability characterized by a process of isolation and homogenization. For the upper-middle class, the outer-world began to be seen increasingly as a space of risk, insecurity and crime. A new social character was proclaimed – and especially enhanced by the media: the anonymous (albeit poor) delinquent. Such new fear returned us to the childhood period of these respondents.
I have mentioned above a central rift between those who recollected a harsh militarized school and those describing a beautiful past in primary school (3.2). Such a division is hardly understandable without considering this new discourse of insecurity. Indeed, memories of childhood as a positive code were evoked by respondents encapsulating the present period as unsafe, risky and violent. What is thorny and needs to be explained is why such an evaluative clause is developed by both upper-middle-class and poor groups.
Indeed, almost all respondents drew a distinction between childhood, when they could – for instance – ride bicycles without fear, and nowadays, when their children or nephews cannot. As a matter of fact, crime rates have risen since the nineties and increased after the social crisis of 2001.39 Simultaneously, an industry of private security (alarms, walls, cameras and so forth) has developed and the popular media have intensely focused on a daily life of crime, kidnapping and murders (Kessler 2009). Hence my respondents affirmed that, nowadays, children must always be accompanied by adults outside. As a social experience, insecurity is part of the stories circulating in this generational site. Furthermore, the narrative of contemporary fear matches the cycle of the life course of parenthood and children’s
39 I will recount all the memories linked to the crisis in Chapter Five (5.3) when describing the Argentine youth cohort. Yet, not one of my respondents played an active role during the crisis, e.g. no one participated in the widespread organizations for the unemployed (piqueteros) or other middle-class organizations. I would suggest that this age cohort was too young to play a main role in those days (see main leaders: Raúl Castells born in 1950, Saturnina Pelozo born in 1950, Luis D’Elía born in 1957) but old enough to have actively participated in street demonstrations (as young activists). This is relevant because this age-group did not develop a new illusion in the course of the crisis (some kind of societal refoundation) as parts of the generation of the 1990s did.
childhood or early adolescence. For those of my respondents with children, the main worry becomes children’s situation outside the home.
However, as a central code for framing present life stories and drawing hard temporal boundaries, such an evaluation reveals itself to be much stronger in upper-middle and low social groups. Obviously, there exists a difference between the two kinds of narrativity. Low social groups have daily life experience of drugs trafficking and the highest rates of crime in their neighbourhoods. Indeed, the incapacity of the state to offer control and security affects mainly those living in conditions of poverty. Moreover, the atmosphere of violence lived by those in the outskirts, on the streets, is replicated in the home (domestic violence) (Auyero and Berti 2013). All my interviewees (especially women) in poor neighbourhoods recounted experiences of brutal violence (a husband attempting to murder his wife, assaults, beatings) and widespread feelings of fear.
On the other hand, upper-middle social groups experience widespread communication about insecurity. They live surrounded by strong measures of security and control, in protected private neighbourhoods, and constantly avoiding public spaces.
Crucially, the dialogue at the family table is often marked by media news about crimes. In other words, in one case the body becomes a memory support of fear (i.e.
the feeling of a violent near neighbourhood); in another case, the family-public-social communication is revealed to be the most important support (hearing about horror from a safe distance). To be sure, people from the low social classes nourish their fears through the media (indeed widespread fear produces more home reclusiveness and subsequently the media stand for the main communicate channel) and the upper-middle class augment every experience that some friend or relative has personally undergone.
The outcome of both experiences leads to the same narrative sequence: there was a time (a mythical beginning) when we could feel safe in the streets (long memories of riding bicycles, taking the bus, walking home at night after parties without feeling afraid). Such a nostalgic period coincides with childhood and adolescence, yet the political context is omitted. This omission is crucial due to the impossibility of denoting dictatorship as a safe place. According to Kessler (2009:102), such a transformation (omitting dictatorship) only took place after the second wave of
transitional justice as state policy during the last ten years (since Nestor Kircher’s policy; I will return to the point below).
The narrative middle is the entrance of drugs traffickers into neighbourhoods, the high rates of robberies and burglaries reported by the media, emblematic murders and kidnappings (unrelated to dictatorship), and the retirement from public life that occurred during the nineties. The narrative end is an environment dominated by evil forces and a daily life commanded by an enormous fear concerning children’s situation. Here, a cognitive map has emerged so that every daily life activity must take into account the violent context outside (Kessler 2009: 147).
Finally, the narrative entails a particular distinction between some past time full of
‘respect for order’ and a variety of signals of ‘disrespect’. Undoubtedly, the main evaluative clause of such narratives is the ‘loss of respect’. Such absence is imagined in many ways. For example, respondents refer to ways of talking (the loss of formal manners), the presence of sex on television as well as the disrespect for authority.
Let me recount Luis’s version of social order under poverty and current youth disrespect for such social order:
“Other codes governed my times. In my time, if you and I had a disagreement – so to say – and we were 15 years old (…) we had a fight, you were accompanied by your gang of 4 or 5, and so was I. Well, the fight was between you and me, if any of us fell, well, fell, but then stood up and so on (…) If we are fighting with knives, then let’s fight with knives, if we are fighting with chains, then let's fight with chains. If one of yours comes to support you, one of mine will come along as well. Do you get how it worked? Such was the code. Not anymore, he (a youth in the corner) has a .22 (a gun) (…) Look, all of them are 14, 15 years old. All of them carry guns (fierros).” (Luis, 1974)