Un Pájaro Progresivo: Pop Music, Propaganda, and the Struggle for Modernity in Argentina

• In Event: Media, Music, and Popular Culture

Abstract

In the mid-1960s to mid-1970s, North America and Western Europe became cemented as modern liberal democracies, increasingly emphasizing civil liberties, individualism, egalitarianism and diversity. In the Southern Cone those same modernizing tendencies faced strong opposition from the landed elite and the military, who targeted the counterculture’s young people and staged numerous coups in an attempt to turn back the clock. The propaganda of Argentina’s brutal and humorless Proceso dictatorship attempted to recreate an imaginary past, a caricature of classic ideals such as el Angel del hogar and the Latin Honor Code. But its repressive machinery was countered by another “machine,” a rock band headed by Charly García called La Máquina de Hacer Pájaros, who combined music, film, comics and pop culture icons in a witty discourse that subtly contradicted that of the military government, at a time in which any dissent was extremely dangerous. La Máquina , which cartoonist and contemporary “Crist” described as "un pájaro progresivo," deconstructed the regime’s authoritarian discourse, reconstructing in its place a lyrical depiction of liberal democratic ideals.

Author

• Timothy D Wilson, University of Alaska/Fairbanks