The Sovereign and the Victim: Comparing Consumer Policies in Mexico and Argentina in the 1970s

• In Event: 512 - Section on Consumers and Consumption Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 05. Changing Views of the Consumer

Abstract

In the 1970s, the Mexican and Argentine governments embarked in simultaneous efforts to revamp their policies towards consumers. While public concerns about consumers had been present in both countries before that time, the consumer reached at the end of the 1970s a centrality in political discourse rarely discussed in the literature on consumption in Latin America. This article compares how the Mexican and Argentine states treated consumers in Argentina and Mexico in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In both countries, official publications for consumers encouraged people to recognize their consumer condition, to realize that, whether they knew it or not, they were consumers, and their duty was to become better at it. Both governments recruited consumers in the fight against inflation, and demanded that citizens acquire expertise about household economics as well as nutrition and health. Consuming was becoming a craft that required knowledge and continued training, particularly for children, who were having increasing weight in the consumer decisions of the household. There were, however, substantial differences between Argentina and Mexico. While the Mexican campaigns remained suspicious of free-markets and addressed consumers without erasing class and inequality, the Argentine campaigns saw the consumer as the guarantor of a new order based on the market as well as a new identity that would replace social classes. While Mexican officials framed the consumer as a victim of injustices, Argentine officials focused on the consumer as the sovereign and owner of the market.

Authors

• Daniel G. Fridman, University of Texas - Austin

• Pilar Zazueta, University of Texas at Austin