Dictatorship, Censorship and War in Billiken (1976–1983)

Abstract

Dictatorship, Censorship and War in Billiken (1976Billiken ( -1983 'You can show children from all over the world the truth about our country. ' Embedded in two otherwise unremarkable issues of Billiken in 1978 is the magazine's most explicit endorsement of the dictatorship that had been installed by military coup in March 1976. Billiken's readers are instructed to help their mothers send out the postcards from Para Ti, 'the magazine your mother reads' . The Para Ti postcards ' Argentina toda la verdad' [Argentina, the whole truth] initiative is one of the most emblematic examples of Editorial Atlántida's promotion of, and attempts to legitimise, the military regime. Atlántida was complicit with the dictatorship, putting its publications, in particular Para Ti, Gente and Somos, and its access to a mass readership, at the service of the regime. 1 Billiken's incorporation of Para Ti reinforces the children's magazine's place as part of the Atlántida 'family' and the imagined link between the readerships of these two magazines. Here, mothers and their children are co-opted into telling the wider world about 'who we are and how we live' to combat an alleged campaign of disinformation: 'You will have heard lately about a campaign that exists in Europe against our country. Huge lies are being told about us. 'This page, published on 29 August 1978 and repeated the following week, is the one instance in which Billiken explicitly calls children to action in support of the 1976-1983 civic-military dictatorship. Billiken was not apolitical and, from the time of the first Peronist government onwards, there was no sense of political content being inappropriate or out of place in this children's magazine. As 'future citizens' , Billiken's readers were viewed as political beings who must play their part in the ongoing nation-building project. For the military regime also, children were the future, envisaged as the leaders of the year 2000. 2 Until the treatment of the Malvinas/Falklands war in 1982, Billiken's political content How to cite this book chapter: