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    Sexualizing Youth Art Valeria Manzano

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    Sexualizing youth art Manzano V

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    Sexualizing Youth: Morality Campaigns and Representations of Youth in Early 1960s Buenos Aires VALERIA MANZANO Indiana University Berwsen ocroaee 1960 AND may 1961 the Personal Security Section ofthe Argentinean Federal Police arrested thousands of people in Buenos Aires. Police offcials captured women and men from nightclubs, transient hotels, and public squares, accused them of subverting the codes of public order and morality, and took them into the Police Departm: twenty-four, or forty-eight hours, In the the of number of arrested minors. The rhetoric of the whole campaign, in fact, highlighted the need to defe: the second morality campaign in 1960s, nos Aires. Between July and November 1966, month after the impos: ‘a new military government led by Gen, juan Carlos Ongania, the ‘Municipality of Buenos Aires geared the efforts of its General Inspection Division to harass and even arrest young females who wore miniskirts and young boys with long hair, to increase the light in the nightclubs, and to conduct daily inspection of places in which rock-and-roll bands played. As in the 1960-61 campaign, the police forces were not isolated in their “recovery of decency” project: institutions and associations of Argentinean civil society, like the Parents of Family League, raised their voices, exercised pressure, and contributed through a wide array of other strategies to con. demn and correct the “deviant” behaviors and attitudes of youth, From the late 1950s youth had become an omnipresent locus of both public hopes and concerns in Argentina, particularly in its capital city. The 434 VALERIA MANZANO government of Dr. Arturo Frondizi (1958-62) pursued an accelerated modernization of the country with the aim of including, Argentina as one of the “developed” nations. This project was supposed to remedy the al leged cultural delay caused by the overthrown and now proscribed Juan Domingo Perén (1946-55). Thus the Frondicist project reserved for youth ‘paramount role: asa metaphor of the new, it represented the promises of ‘modemization in the cultural and politcal milieus." Youth acquired an increasing visibility not only within the initial Frondi- cist official rhetoric but also through a complex network of organizations and institutions that fomented the “new” in arts and cinema as well as in the popular culture. As art and cinema historians have shown, during the early 1960s young women and men cartied out aesthetic projects that, beyond, their formal qualities, were acclaimed by critics assigns of renewal and, with it, as symbols of youth.” Erom another perspective, TV producers, and entrepreneurs of the culture industry discovered or constru niche of a proper youthful segment in the market and began to addres it new TV programs, magazines, and music.? ‘The Argentine historiography has underscored youth's increasing vis- ibility as well as the formation of different youth identities as markers of the 1960s, a process that obviously echoed similar developments worldwide. Inso doing Argentine historians have emphasized the relationship between the emergence of these identities and covert and overt forms of rebellion. In. some accounts rebellion constitutes a crucial feature of “being young” in the 1960s that found expression not only in the disruptive aesthetic projects or the troublesome intergenerational relations but aso, and most fundamentally, in the “private” contestation of the prevalent sexual norms In this vein the historiography locates in the bifurcation between “sex for procreation” and “sex for pleasure” a particular contribution to the Argentinean sexual culture that originated in the realm of middle-class youth during the early 1960s.° "For the Frondicist conceptions of modernization see Carlos Altamirano, Bajo el signa de as masas, 1943-1973 (Buenos Aies, 2001), 62-102; fr the intial engagement of intellectual youth with Frondicsm sce Oscar Tela, Nuetav aia seta (Buenos Aires La generacin del sesenta: Paracas de un mito,” in Cine gente: La ota historia, ed Sergio Wolf (Buenos Airs, 1994), in 1059 the recentdy expanded local TV sation began to broadcast a weekly program called Historias de Jones (Tales of Youths) i which “auuhentic problems of the authentic youth” were to be treated. In the late 1950s appeared Claudia, anew magazine geared 10 the “new female,” especially “Sergio Pujol, La década rebelde: os ssensa en Argentina (Bueaos Aires, 20 (Cateruzza, “Un mundo por hacer. Una propuesta para el ands de la cultura jv Argentina de lo atios seta,” Ensrepasndar 4 n0. (Winter 1997); 103-18. Maria del Carmen Fejoo and Marcela Lasin American Prspecivs 23, no. 1 (Winter 1996); Karina Felt, “El placer de clegi: Sexualizing Youth 435 While the existing scholarship demonstrates the construction of new subjectivitics and specific youth cultures and attitudes, there is not a com: prehensive study about the discourses on youth during the decade.* Perhaps asa result of this lack there continues to exista prevailing one-sided perce tion of the 1960s a an almost lineal, unproblematic process through whi youth developed a path toward the relaxing of customs and, particu sexual freedom. In this general vision episodes such as the campaigns moralization constituted only minor and almost laughable obstacles, des perate expressions of afew conservative, residual groups that neglected t0 accept the new times.” Discourses on youth proliferated in Argentina ftom the late 1950s." In addition to the language of “youth as hope and promise” that was in the center of the initial Frondicist rhetoric, “youth” (la juventud) was increas- ingly associated with “trouble.” The press and the experts—psychologists and sociologists—devoted articles, books, roundtables, and conferences to unravel the so-called problem of youth. This burgeoning discursive produc- tion constructed different visions and representations of teenagers and young women and men, Nevertheless, beyond the multiplicity of representations there was a common matrix that unified constructions of youth and shaped the “problem of youth”: those increasingly visible beings were conceived, above all as sexualized beings. To talk about youth in the early 1960s was to talk about sex, and vice versa: these categories were deeply intertwined, ‘Anticoncepcin y iberacién sexual en fa década del resent,” in Histor de las majers en Argentina, site on which sucessve regulations of “normal” [Normsal: Pesroar Tout ad the Making of Heteroceualiy With the exception of Karna Felc, who brely depicts the 1966 camp, even though bused ona single article ofa contemporary magazine, historians b 436 © VarERta Manzano ‘The morality campaigns constitute privileged moments for analyzing the discourses on youth and sex. Doubtless, they express the most conservative positions among those who claimed to face the “problem of youth” and, ‘enerally speaking, public morality. Nevertheless, contesting voices arose and found expression in the press and, in 1960-61, in the lower house of the Argentinean National Congress, the Chamber of Deputies. An analy of all these voices is central to examining the anxieties and concerns sex and youth awoke during the supposed rebel decade as well as explori the cultural operations through which especially middle-class teenagers and. prompt us to inquire into other anxieties that emerged in Argentinean so- cial, cultural, and political milcus. Lynn Hunt has noted that during times of great social change, groups remake their collective identities by targeting, victims in moments of unconscious sacrificial crisis. Often these cof exclusionary panic express a great fear of sexual boundary lo 1960s Buenos Aires, beneath the fervor to defend: and therefore to regulate its sexuality, ‘etnization and fears about the penetration of Communism into the youthful minds and bodies, especially reinforced after the In a context characterized by an ex and accelerated social change, the increas ‘women and men became the center of public scrutiny and suspicion. Yet not all teenagers and young women and men constituted “the youth” that the police, the family leagues, the experts, and the new media constructed. Rather, both conservative and liberal actors were interested, fundamentally, in middle-class youths, who allegedly embodied the promises and feats of modernization. Hence, in the first campaign the police raided mostly middle-class neighborhoods, in the early 1960s the experts addressed their advice to middle-class families, and middle-class young women and were harassed in the second, 1966 campaign. Therefore, the two moral campaigns and the representations of youth that prompted a redefinition of sexuality also made “the youth” a distinct, middle-class-based category. ‘An analysis of the differences between the two morality campaigns as well as of the discursive production on youth during the early 1960s reveals precisely the transition from the perception of an “innocent youth” that needed public protection to a “lost youth” that, according to the rhetoric that emerged from the highest authorities of the 1966 coup d'état, deserved merely repression by the state. Far from having been laughable obstacles in the “rebel decade,” the morality campaigns and the discourses and rep- resentations that informed them are central to understanding the brutal repression of politicized youth in the 1970s. In both morality campaigns "Lynn Hunt, The Family Romance ofthe French Revolution (Berkeley, 1992), chap 2. Sexewalizing Youth 437 conservatives discursively linked youthful sexuality to Communism or polit cal radicalization and therefore constructed a series of images that would become increasingly common among rightist political actors in the 1970s, ‘To a large extent the 1960s campaigns acted as a prelude and paved the way for the generalized repression in the decade that followed. Darenpin Iywocenr Yourn: THe 1960-61 Morattry Campaicy On 20 October 1960 brief news, written in an unmistakable police style, ap- ‘peared in the police pages of the most important newspaper in the country; it stated: “Officials ofthe Federal Police’s Personal Security Division pursued about fifteen proceedings in downtown nightspots at dusk yesterday. Forty people were arrested, among them twenty-six women, four of whom are inors, Likewise, several official reports were i In the months that followed the Personal Security Division, under the leadership of Capt. Luis Margaride, increased these proceedings. A new report to the press, dated 3 November, proudly asserted that 307 people were enacted. In the mid-1930s the Argeni tioned the Law of Social Prophylaxis by across the country and female prosticution legislative action represented the peak of an intense campaign in which Front, 3 November 1960. nt iy, Scand Deere Arson, Fly and Dang Arg incoln, 1991), chaps. 2-4; Jorge Sales, Médior maleantesy maricas: He olga bomoreualad en ia rman dele main Argentina (Baons Airs 1871-191) (Rosario, 1995) 438 © Varerta Manzano thorized the reopening of bordellos in as well as made explicit that the exercise of prostitution sofar as it did not imply “public incitement to immoralty.”"* ‘As Donna Guy has pointed out, the 1944 decree was embedded in an in- creasingly homophobic campaign: military authorities feared the expansion of homosexuality within the armed force and throughout the “national body” as a whole and considered that the reopening of bordellos and the relegalization of female prostitution could be helpfal in preventing “healthy males” from being “perverted.” The same assumptions underlay the last ‘morality campaign before the 1960s, which took place in the final stages ‘of Juan Perén’s government. In December 1954 La Prensa informed read- ly one night more than four hundred che same time Perén signed a decree reopening of bordellos in the city. governments that followed Perén revised and ultimately climinated most laws and edicts sanctioned in the period 1943 to 1955, it was not the case with the amendments to the Law of Social Prophylaxis. ‘Thus bordellos and “date houses” (casas de cisas) remained legally open during the mid-1950s along with the “transient hotels” authorized by the ‘Municipality of Buenos Aires. Nevertheless, the Federal Police had at its disposition other mechanisms to counteract, if necessary, the “licentious” sexual life of Buenos Aires. Police edicts and municipal ordinances consti- tuted the bulk of the legal mechanisms through which police could harass and even arrest people in the city. During the 1960-61 campaign Personal Sccurity officials repeatedly invoked the police edicts with regard to drunk- ‘enness, public disorder, and inciting to immorality as well as the municipal ‘ordinances that prohibited the “incitement to vice” in the streets and the acceptance of minors in certain spectacles and the ones that regulated the ‘Using other arguments, Socialist deputies so targeted female prostion in those years, See Gus, Sex and Danger, 105-85; Kain Grammético, “Obrera,prosicutasy mal vnéreo Unesado en busca de profi,” in Historia dela mjereson Argon, vl 2,e ernanda 's«Profilacs antivenéreay examen premupcial obligatorio, Ley 12.2 ansvenézea,decreto 10.638 /44," Cidige penal antado, ed. Mario Oderigo (Buenos Aires, 1957), 498-508. Guy, Sex and Danger, 180-203. From the early 1980s onward a svies of police edics bbegan to penalize male homosemualiy. This proces of penalization was reinforced ater the “Besancon omesemltywitin th myn 1942 Fr denied degen Jos homosenuaes en Buenos Aires,” in Brio sobre esxcrits cindades bj cndades (Buenos ), 310-13, and Osvaldo Bazin, Hinori de In homoseeualidad em la Argentina: “Ta Prnsa, 28 December 1954. ly but also the health of the “race.”"* In 1944 a decree of Sexualizing Youth 439 sient hotels.”"” Armed with o the city’s streets, night light in nightspots and the op ‘A concise analysis of the figures yielded by the police reports shows that women, perhaps prostitutes, constituted once again the major victims of the police repression: during the first thirteen days, for instance, women, ‘were 267 among the 307 arrested.” The reports made explicit that the arrested were “women performing the dishonest profession,” and this fact is confirmed by the requests of deputies, who criticized the police excesses, in the campaign but acknowledged that female prostitutes counted as the majority ofthe arrested.”” Nevertheless, they were not the only ones harassed and arrested during those months. The novelty ofthis campaign lay preci in the fact that nonprostitutes and nonhomosexu: ously targeted) were also massively located in the place of the “immor ‘The police did not respect the traditional boundaries of culturally and cially marked “crotic zones” of the city, and even recognized the dovmown whi igh, To dese places wee ae, ding the larly nicknamed “Love Villge,” so publi places eo which couples went twnere there was both mae and female peo 440 Varerta Manzano cultural and social meanings. The first critics of the campaign focused on the police excess, Indced, concerns about the magnitude of the arrests and the police methods appeared in the press shortly after the beginning of the “moralization process.” While the editorialists did not question the basis for such a campaign, they pointed out that Margaride’s official be more cautious in their methods in order not to confuse “si “innocents.” In addition, La Prensa published several lt (0 the editor jn which readers denounced the arbitrary policies of the police by recounting, personal experiences. In the first of these letters a reader narrated a “typi: cal” night downtown and stated: “On October 22, I was witness of a raid that involved more than one hundred people. The proceeding could not bbe more arbitrary: boys and girls who were eating at a pizzeria, a couple that was walking, neighbors who were at the cafeteria half a block from their houses; .. all were the same, all of them went into the police tru 3 at least some hours in the Precinct House. ¢ discriminate in their morality crusade: young boys and girls, good neighbors, housewives, and even a deputy from the offical party were arrested during the first month." The public discon- tent, articulated through the notion of excess, arrived at the Chamber of Deputies of the Argentinean National Congress in January 1961. Deputy Angel Beir6 proposed to create a special committee to investigate Federal Police activities “with regard to the illegitimate deprivation of thousands of citizens” and to inquire into the number of arrest. “98 percent [of the arrested] lived in place: were captured, had IDs, and were people of known and hones le In April 1961 the Chamber had proposed committee, and Popul yet approved the creation of the Deputy Augusto Rodriguez Araya , directly accusing Capt. L Bl culpable inocente;” La Pron, 3 November 1960; “Prudenca en los mods,” La {in the campaign appeared also on 26 Noverber an ‘were celebrating birthday were taken tothe events vermber 1960. See “Mis dela campatia dds detenciones en conte nor Nacibw, 21 October 1960. Two other cases acquired x detention ofthe locally renowned pianist Ariel ‘Ramirez, wiho was taken from his house (where with some Fiend, was supposed fiom a nightelub. See “El extao ‘aso dela suegra del hipnotizado,” Usad, 6 February 1961, and “Catgos ala accion poi,” (Garin, 15 March 1961. ‘Diario de esiones de la Ciara de diputades de le nacin, 11 January 1961, 7:5614. ‘Tbid., 14 April 1961, 75777, Sexualizing Youth 441 excesses.” In addition, Deputy Rods proceedings (raids in nightclubs an that “innocents” were the main victims of Margari in his petition to thi 2 Araya listed the most common in order to emphasize ized excesses constituted a central and al- 1e performance. The excesses the theatricalization of the moral drama that was supposed jenos Aires society and were at the core of the “moral panic” produced oughout the campaign. One of the signs of this “panic” was the ration of rumors around the nature of the i after finishing theie raids in transient order to notify them that generally, vice ipt of the rumor as perceived by its cont of the Argentine na ‘entailed the band, in the 1950s and early 1960 Buenos Aies houses generally lacked them. On the other hand, of renting aparements, 442° VALERIA Manzano ‘middle-class couple, threatened—among other issues—by the increasing, incorporation of women into the labor force. A laboring father and an at tentive mother were therefore indispensable in all homes to take care of the seeds of the new Argentina: the children and, above all, the youth.” ‘The magnitude of the 1960-61 morality campaign might be better understood as almost a direct response to the perceived “problem of youth.” The rhetoric of the campaign was organized around the objective ‘of defending a youth supposedly threatened by the indissoluble pairing of delinquency and immorality, which proliferated mainly—but not only—in nocturnal Buenos Aires. Indeed, the Federal Police gave a unique public justification for the campaign in the form of an “open letter to parents and teachers” that stated: To take care of moral and good manners and to collaborate with the protection of the minors are axiomatic and imperative legal duties of the Federal Police, which has always demonstrated a central concern with their accomplishment; a concern that increases day to day in the face of the alarming problem of the “youthful delinquency,” cause and effect of the moral criss that mark out epoch, ... The Federal Police, without decreasing its effo ‘wells from contacting people who could lead them into immoral or criminal practices.” ‘The police located thereby the minors, and youth in general a the subjects to be saved and defended, and any excess could be justified for this objec- tive. Hence while the press and the deputies noted the police excesses and. implicitly or explicitly consented to this central objective, other institutions directly intervened to support it. The Argentine Patriotic League, the Na- tional Council of Minors’ Protection, and the for instance, actively contributed to the morality campaign. ‘The Argentine Patriotic League, founded in 1919 as an antilabor move- ‘ment, recovered part ofits old splendor during the campaign. It called for a general mobilization of civil society in order to “cl ane to be increased, Sets Soler, Aner de i eal igh the project was seat vo the Chambers of Depts is dacnon ws incre yt 1963 coup inistation. Fora genera discussion ofthe transformations inthe fly daring ‘the Frondiist era and the 1960s sce Susana Torrado, Historia del mia om ln Argentina ‘madera (1870-2000) (Buenos Aires, 2003), 154-56, 268-75, 341-47, 394-95. La poiciay su aecin de moralzacibn,” La Nacién, 25 October 1960. Sexualizing Youth 443 charge cofuiing the ultimate decisions about what minors could see or listen to, offered in this context to extend its activities dramatically so as to guarantee the fulfillment of the orders. Hence, it promoted the formation of parents’ pa trols with the objective of visiting cinemas, mostly on weekends, to ensure that minors were not accepted if a movie had been previously restricted to them. In addition, pare: Is also visited night after ten o'clock at night ler to insps While the Patriotic League and the National Council sou, ‘ment or to enhance police activites, the League of Family strated itsef to be one of the most passionate supporters of Margaride’s troops when the criticisms of police excesses achiever! notoriety." In March 1961 the organization sent an open letter to the police chief, stating that “in the re parents were into the patos. Sce Actas del conejo nacional de provscm de manors, Dk. 1, ‘May 1961, 224 “The League of Family Mothers was a Catholic sstociation crested in 1961 during the tks in the reltionship beeween Perdis and the Catholic Church. Fr the immediate Jane 1960): 598-99, 444° Vanerta Manzano name of more than 80,000 mothers, we want to notify our warmest adhesion to the noble purposes that animated the police actions. We understand that all effort that is done to defend youth from all the dangers that constantly stalk it and deserves our applau ‘The police and its active supporters located youth as the symbolic ad- dressce of the morality campaign. In so doing they constructed a represen: tation of youth organized through the informed by two interrelated discourses. ‘men occupied a transitional and ther a “hormonal convulsion” that made you tions.” Hence, to avoid these of healthy youth required the common efforts of those com defense of family and morals, not to say of the whole nation, At the core of the image ‘of an innocent but endangi second discourse that focused on the threats ofthe “environm less, the first motto of both the police and ‘was to prevent youth from contacting those “bad” individuals abited the nocturnal life, including female prostitutes and other “delinquents.” Nevertheless, as the Patriotic League and the Council asserted, moral dangers were now present in almost every public activity or place. As a result, the common project seemed to be to confine youths to their homes of to recreational activities controlled by adults of “proved” morality, lke the members of the Council or even the police.” These discourses, which helped to sha well before the beginning of the campaign. In fact, they were at the root of the formation in 1960 of institutions such asthe Catholic Family Front ‘or the reorganization of the National Council of Minors’ Protection. ‘The wath as a problem, circulated La Liga de Madees digi una n ‘The police chief made the most ofthis and “El jefe de policia contest lat Maes During the campaign at least two ofthe Le Nacién editorials systematic tion: “Defensa de lajuventad,” 25 October 1960, and “La campata mordizad 1961, Tora descipton ofthe connrveson of the honmel eanto of doernce in 1950s Canada see Adams, The Trouble with Normal, 43-47. According to Adams, this “hotmonal explanation” led almost automaticaly to the discursive construction of youths 38 overserulized subject. The police chief sought to organize soccer championships in which boys col pay with police ofa and become fiends. See Recaredo Vinge, Plc, problema wzjente, 122-24 ‘Ar the same time, th Sexualizing Youth 445 Federal Police’ higher officials shared the conservative tenets underlying this formulation of “youth as problem,” and the press presented itas the crucial topic of the era to larger audiences, However, it remains to be explained ‘why this great arch concerned with youth and morality converged in 1960 Buenos Aires. Were there some speci uth in those days? ‘What were the dangers that stalked the innocent youth? the broader political and social context might give us a possl From its beginning in 1958 Frondizi’s government faced an. “unstable political situation marked by the formal proscription of litical movement, Peronism, which had prevailed through work mobilization. As Daniel James has noted, this mobilization ac response to these actions was an increasing repression, articu through the so-called Plan Conintes (Internal State Commotion Plan), by which the armed forces were supposed to be stationed in the stree order to prevent strikes and other “altrations” ofthe public order. convoluted internal landscape was added the impact of the Cu- of 1959, While initially even Argentinean liberal sectors ‘welcomed it, the radicalization of the Cuban revolt and the engagement that it provoked among the local Left alarmed not only the government but also Cat les. By 1960 the Plan Conintes began to repress not activists bur also supposed Communist ones. Indeed, 1960 and May 1961 the police pages in the press were symmetrically divided in two: one half was devoted to anti-Communist repression, the other to the raids of Margaride’s troops. ‘Communism, along with “i yhency,” was perceived as the great threat to Args its members. Indeed, an € shows, especially to young people.” Immoralty therefore was evil not only per se but also because of the damage that it inflicted on the health and tion.” Teenagers and you 1d men could manage neither their “hormonal convulsion” nor their contacts with “strange people,” hence the great conservative proposal to confine youth in the safety of middle-class homes, which of course also needed to be safeguarded, ‘The 1960-61 morality campaign, with its supposed excesses, renders visible the tensions that crossed the Argentinean social and political do- mains. The hopes of development, cultural modernization, and politi- Daniel James, Reszance and Tnsegrasion: Peroni an the Argentine Working Class ‘York, 1988), 113-19, La Revolucion ea Cuba," La Nacién, 2 January 1961. 446° VALERIA Manzano «al integration—even though neglecting the presence of Peronism—that hhad animated the initial Frondicist project collapsed in 1959-60, allegedly threatened by the interaction of working-class mobilization and Commu- nism. In this frame the youth that had been a metaphor of hope became the target of concer and suspicion, the site in which the chain of immorality delinquency-Communism could potentialy inscribe its marks. ‘Nevertheless, teenagers and young women and men, the “problematic youth” that had been constructed during those months, were merely the symbolic target of the campaign in Buenos Aires streets. Despite the police reports that daily underscored how often “minors were arrested,” they ac- ‘counted for only 3 percent of the total." The novelty of the campaign lay in the fact that adults not previously targeted were massively harasseds at the same time, female prostitutes were again the bulk of those who spent their nights in Precinct Houses throughout the ‘ampaign were decreas- stated that the police were investigating the reasons why Luisa Arias, a ‘woman who “performed the dishonest profession,” had committed suicide by throwing herself ftom the second floor of the Federal Police Central Department after she, along with 250 other women, had been arrested for violating police edicts against “public incitement to immorality.” Suspi- cions about the possible implications of police officials in such a “suicide” some voices arose expli result of this episod ing months the Personal Security Division refocused its efforts on the drug, trade, and in November 1961 Captain Margaride resigned his position in the police. In the early 1960s, then, the morality campaign came to a lose. Neither offic tigations against the police forces nor new general attempts to ‘make nocturnal Buenos Aires “moral” took place. Two films produced dur- ing the period reminded the audience of Margaride's troop’s activites, but “Thee calculation is based on the daily reports provided by La berween 20 October 1960 and 12 May 196] “sSuieise una detenidaen el Departamento de Polis” La Nasi, 13 N ‘muerte de una joven investgan,” L A group of Socialist deputies presenting as evidence that Luis Arat's dead body was found seminaked. Drawing fact, they acused police offal of raping and ultimately murdering her. Se Diario de esoner ela Camara de dsputnda de la nacin, 30 May 1 “Two years later Margaride declared in an ine hae preferred not to publicize ion. In addition, he neglected once agin the ized the staus of the campaign. See“ Margride; Primera Plane, 18 June 1963, 32-33, Sexmalizing Youth 447 these contributed rather to trivalzing them by mocking the raids on transient hotels # Nevertheless, those were crucial months in the Argentine history of sexuality and ts repression, and a new subject was born whose sexuality would become a more explicit object of scrutiny and public problematization. The innocent youth came to represent the very locus of dangerous sexuality ‘Yours: REPRESENTATIONS oF Yours: IN THE Easy 1960s the press and read en masse throughout Buenos Aires pa focused on what he labeled the gravest probl 3d perversion of the moral sense.” In part supposed pernicious effects of cinema an¢ By no means was this Ca fone in Argentina. Indeed, fro institutions made efforts to exercise control over the content of the images, through either censorship or public criticisms.** Nevertheless, the 1962 message, given by the highest authority of the Argentin these concerns crucial, especially by locating them in the preoccuy discourse that shaped the representation of the fr and innocent youth. Hence the main efforts of Catholic institutions in the a result of these Catholic efforts to ensure control over the “environ- the National Honorary Council of Cinematographic Qualification Catholic Action groups weekly publicized in Crtei theie recommendations of movies based fon their supposed moral qualities, decree ofthe executive power, signed by Dr rie presidency (1962-63). Indeed, Guido was the 448° VaLERIA Manzano was officially created in 1963.” The main aim of the Honorary Council ‘was to “protect public morality, especially all that have direct influence on youth,” and its members had the duty of inspecting all fil ally of cutting complete sequences or directly prohibiting. Among the permanent members were seven representatives of the Catholic “Family Front,” including the Family Mothers and Family Fathers and, of note, the National Council of Minors’ Protection."* ‘Nonetheless, controlling these weapons for the defense of “youth’s de- cency” was not enough cither for the “Family Front” or for the Coun in the early 1960s. The “environment” involved also TV, and the Family Moth- cers and Fathers Leagues began to organize seminars and courses in order to train other parents in “properly watching TV.” Hence they proposed to increase the responsibility of parents in controlling the “envionment” that potentially perverted the intimacy of their middle-class homes.” Meanwhile, the National Council repeatedly invoked its rights to control the contents of both movies and television programs so as to “defend youthful moral- ity” and exercised pressure on the secretary of communications in order to acquire an active presence in the recently created National Committee of Radio and Television. ‘Underlying the efforts organized by the Catholic leagues and the National ‘Council was the general representation ofan endangered, innocent youth whose sexual awareness had to be suppressed until marriage. However, the increas- ing activity of these institutions constitutes a clue that it was reacting against something new. Indced, the “innocent youth”—and the discourses that shaped it—was neither the only nor the dominant representation of the relationship between youth and sex in early 1960s Buenos Aires. Psychologists, sociolo- ists, and a plethora of new experts, representative of liberal and modernizing, ‘trend, had already begun to fice the “problem of youth” and to locate at its core the “sexual being” of teenagers and young women and men. ‘successor ofthe overthrown Frondizi and governed with the support of one sector ofthe armed forees. Inthe general elections of March 1963 Dr, Arturo Illa was elected president ‘and assumed his postion on 12 October. “Decreto-Ley 8205/63, Baletin Oficial, 27 September 1963, 3. The fist prohibition affected Ingmar Bergman’s The Silence in February 1964. For a history ofthe practices of ‘censorship led by che Honorary Council as well as other institutions daring the 1960s see Andeés Avellaneda, Censura, ansrisarioney cultura on Argentina 1960-1983, ol (Buenos ‘Aires, 1986) “For a description of the courses that led roward the fst integrative seminar see “Con

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