Age of Youth in Argentina

by Valeria Manzano

  The examples show a rising societal concern with the handling of intergenerational relations, chiefly as it came to young women and their desire to leave home. But how extensive was the practice of running away for young women? At least in the City of Buenos Aires—as in some North American cities at the same time—police data show that in the late 1950s it was on the rise.42 Federal police issued a daily report listing runaways (fugas) and disappearances (desapariciones). In their terms, someone was defined as fugado when the person filing the report had clues about intentionality, like a quarrel. On the other hand, someone was defined as desaparecido when there was no clue as to why they left. Young women between fourteen and twenty-five made up 85 percent of all the reported cases between 1953 and 1965. In 1953, 491 young women were reported as fugadas or desaparecidas; 629 were reported missing in 1955; 648 in 1957; 724 in 1960; 683 in 1963; and 679 in 1965.43 Although the cases comprised a tiny minority of the fourteen-to-twenty-five age group, the statistics indicate an ascendant curve that reached its height in 1960 and then decreased. Existing data also provide insight into the class standing of the girls, since they include the police stations and thus the neighborhoods where the cases were reported. While most neighborhoods were represented every year, working- and lower-middle-class neighborhoods had the highest numbers in 1953 and 1955.44 These findings concur with others for the first half of the twentieth century, which showed the predominance of working-class girls who ran away and, at that time, were sent to prisons.45 However, the data show that beginning in 1957 the majority of cases were reported in middle-class neighborhoods.46 Thus the increase of desapariciones and fugas on the eve of the 1960s was due to this practice spreading to middle-class girls.

  Police data also offer a glimpse into the age of fugadas and desaparecidas as well as some of their patterns of “leaving home,” but provided no clue as to where young women went or how long they stayed away from their homes. Police data show that the median age of young women who ran away fell from eighteen in 1953 to sixteen by 1963. Although cases were reported throughout the year, in 1960 a large percentage—around 30 percent—was reported between January and March. This coincided with school vacations, possibly when young women would have spent more time at home. Finally, the reports contained scant evidence to support the most common representation of runaways and surely the most common fear among parents: that young women left their homes in the company of boyfriends. In fact, looking at police data for eight years, I only found six cases in which the persons who filed the report—possibly the parents—indicated that girls had “definitely” run away with boyfriends.47 What happened to these girls? Most young women likely would have spent relatively short periods away from home, perhaps as a sign of their unhappiness with what they conceived of as parental authoritarianism or to show their discontent with particular decisions. For example, María Emilia recalls that she ran away for just one day in 1961, when she was sixteen. “We always fought at home,” she recalls. “My parents made a fuss about everything: my friends, my clothing, what I read . . . everything.” Tensions escalated, especially when her mother decided to transfer her to a private Catholic school that she did not like: “I just left and spent the night at a friend’s. My mother came to look for me.” In contrast to what the movies showed, nothing at her home changed after she ran away: “My parents were even stricter, and I ended up at that school,” she concluded.48

  While most cases were short-lived attempts at resolving family dilemmas, the media soon created connections between runaway girls and what was dubbed, after the release of Federico Fellini’s movie, “Dolce Vita.” In March 1961, for example, La Razón informed its readers of the case of a girl, age eighteen, who after graduating from secondary school and having a quarrel with her parents about a “petty issue” decided to run away and go to a seaside resort on the Atlantic coast. Once there, the newspaper story described how the girl “looked for work in a nightclub” and how she met an “elegant” woman who promised her a job. The girl visited the woman’s house (“a true den of iniquity worthy of the Dolce Vita”) where she interacted with youths “lost to the worst vices,” including cocaine. Fortunately, the chronicle concluded, the girl managed to “get out of that life” and “let people know its secrets.”49 Several components of that exemplary story would often be repeated: running away as a result of “petty quarrels” at home, the “elegant woman” as a nexus, and the move to leisure resorts.50 The archetypal narrative drew on previous tales about women’s “fall” into prostitution, yet the story line was not only updated to reflect contextual references to youth culture; it also focused on middle-, rather than only on working-class, young women—as was the case with prior narratives of “women’s falls” in tango and popular melodrama since the 1920s and 1930s.51 In the media representation, then, the Dolce Vita amounted to a hedonistic lifestyle (sexual activities and drug or alcohol abuse) and represented the destination for young women who ran away from their homes, either because they chose to join that life or because they “fell” into criminal networks. The Penjerek case was made to fit into the prevalent narratives of the Dolce Vita.

  Returning to the case described at the opening of this chapter, the unsolved murder of Norma Penjerek—a “girl next door,” to draw on media language—was the basis of what amounted to the most famous moral panic of the 1960s. The only child of a lower-middle-class Jewish family from Flores, a typical neighborhood in the City of Buenos Aires, Norma was a senior at a female-only secondary school. Norma’s mother, a housewife with primary schooling, proudly told the reporters that her daughter was deciding whether she would pursue a university career—likely dentistry—or continue her training to become an English teacher. Just as many other youths used to go to the movies to watch American films and listen to songs with English lyrics, Norma was “really into her English classes.” Her mother regretted allowing her to attend her English class starting at 7:00 P.M. on May 29, 1962. It was a rainy and rather unusual evening: the Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT, General Labor Confederation) had called for a general strike, and the streets were empty.52 On that evening Norma Penjerek disappeared. Her body was found in mid-July. What had happened to Norma? The lack of answers favored the spread of rumors. Initially, some saw Norma’s murder as a possible vengeful act against her father or as part of the wave of anti-Semitism that swept Argentina in 1962. The police examined the never-proven connections between Norma’s father and the Mossad, the Israeli secret police, which had worked in Argentina to extradite Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, who was executed in Jerusalem the same week that Norma disappeared. Similarly, some read the Penjerek case as another example of anti-Semitic activities carried out by Tacuara, an extreme right-wing nationalist group that had attacked several Jewish students.53 Yet most people soon believed that the Penjerek case simply represented one of the many fugas and desapariciones of young women.

  Although it bears recalling that the actual number of reported cases of fugas and desapariciones in the City of Buenos Aires had began to drop since its peak of 1960, and although Norma’s mother vehemently refused the notion that her daughter had run away, neither the media nor the groups involved in family and youth issues cast doubt as to whether the Penjerek case fit into the already-established pattern. Moreover, that certainty reached “confirmation” in July 1963, when the sex worker Mabel Sisti offered a judge her declaration. According to Sisti, Norma Penjerek had met an “elegant woman” named Laura Villano who acted as a link between her and a house in the Greater Buenos Aires area. There Penjerek and other girls would have consumed drugs and taken part in nude photo sessions. Sisti went on to assert that the head of that house was Pedro Vecchio, who had a troublesome relationship with Norma. One day when she wanted to leave, Vecchio murdered her and hid the body.54 Sisti shaped her declaration to the judge in the style used by the press when reporting on young women’s fugas and desapariciones. Sisti’s declaration provided a curious public with names and places that would
acquire celebrity status, and stories went so far as to indicate that, at the supposed crime scene, pornography and vampirism were involved.55 Although afterwards Sisti contended that she had made her declaration under police threats, and that none of her testimony was accurate—as the judges later proved—her story was critical in promoting the moral panic stretching from August to October 1963.

  The multiple anxieties that young women’s changing life experiences as well as the so-called Dolce Vita had incited since the early 1960s soon became outright panic. One of the signs of that panic, perhaps the most widespread, was the reinforcement of parental supervision. Some parents took their daughters to school and, in many cases, forbid them to go out after sundown.56 Other parents asked the minister of the interior to establish a “state of siege” so the police could more easily imprison the suspects, Vecchio and Villano.57 Although the police in fact took several weeks to imprison the suspects, they soon began to carry out raids. On September 28, the police raided 2,800 nightclubs in the Greater Buenos Aires area: a thousand people were taken into police stations to have their penal records checked. Among the detainees were one hundred boys and girls under eighteen years old.58 Meanwhile, federal police patrolled the Palermo area, known for its parks, in search of raboneros (truants) from secondary schools who should have been in class. The minister of education asked school principals to telephone the parents of children who did not attend classes and to publicize the names of the thirty-nine boys and twenty-six girls identified by the police in Palermo on October 8, posting the roster of truants at the entrance of every school.59 Meanwhile, conservative Catholic groups supported the most extreme policies while at the same time attempting to frame them more broadly. A communiqué from Catholic Action claimed that it was by favoring “the most absolute liberty for adolescents and youths” that “all moral deviations were made possible in Argentina.”60 An editorial writer concurred and asked parents to curtail the “liberties that young people enjoy,” given that “many adolescents cannot elude the dangers they face.”61

  The most vehement voices wanted to narrow the “excess of liberties” for young men and, chiefly, young women. In doing so, they openly voiced the fears that lay behind many parents’ attitudes vis-à-vis the autonomy that their daughters demanded and carved out. The Penjerek case served as an excuse to discipline young women by reinforcing patriarchal authority and by drawing them back to the safety of “home.” It is not surprising, then, that not only conservative Catholic groups but also many unaffiliated parents supported policies promising to restrain young women’s gradual autonomy, which also meant a chance to reconstruct their perceived loss of authority. It is also unsurprising that the voices of some advisers, like Dr. Eva Giberti, went mostly unheard. An aim of her “School for Parents” was to help democratize family relations that she saw as hierarchical and authoritarian. Besides advocating for increased family dialogue, she suggested that parents gradually grant more autonomy to their adolescents.62 During the Penjerek case, she assured parents that their “fear was logical,” yet advised them to limit their control over their daughters. Young women, she went on, needed to learn to take care of themselves.63 Hers, however, was a lonely voice at the time: one that called for preserving a certain faith and tolerance within the family and, in doing so, dismantling the panic.

  Rather than receding, though, the panic escalated and became gradually more politicized, thus showing the mobilizing potential of the connection between youth “deviance” and what began to be known as the “enemy within.” In fact, no political actor could afford to remain silent. From the minuscule, left-wing Movimiento Nacional de Liberación (Movement for National Liberation) to the powerful CGT, going through all the variants of the Unión Cívica Radical (UCR, Radical Civic Party), the entire political spectrum signaled the “grave moral crisis” that the Penjerek case represented and created connections between morals, corruption, and politics.64 No politician, though, became more identified with the issue than former representative Ernesto Sanmartino of the UCR, who acted as the Penjereks’ lawyer and was a “moral entrepreneur” in his own right. Making use of his privileged position as the family’s lawyer, Sanmartino repeatedly called press conferences to argue that by following the path of runaway or abducted girls, it was possible to discover that the “Dolce Vita’s main players” were “linked to Communist cells that used drugs and sex as components of a broader plan to infiltrate our country.”65 Sanmartino’s conspiracy-oriented reasoning achieved broad legitimacy since his was the authorized voice in a case that shocked almost everyone. His rationale was indebted to and part of a transnational anti-Communist discourse. As scholars have shown for the United States in the McCarthy era, fears of “deviant sexuality” melded with fears of the “Red scare,” leading to a politics of containment of both.66 Cold War rhetoric centered on the figure of the “enemy within” made its way into Argentina in the early 1960s, gaining societal approval by blending with gendered and sexual fears.

  The moral panic around the Penjerek case was, in Stanley Cohen’s formulation, “a line-drawing reaction” that served to delineate the figures of political and sexual deviants alike.67 It served to articulate an informal alliance that joined those who believed that revamping patriarchal authority was the only guarantee not only for caring for young women’s lives but also for preventing the “Communist threat” from spreading. That alliance had a public ceremony in a demonstration to support Sanmartino and the Penjereks attended by ten thousand people: “worried mothers and fathers from both the most humble and richest neighborhoods,” a journalist wrote. Besides cheering the lawyer, the crowd applauded Secretary of Information Nélida Baigorria, who argued that “the greater the liberties for today’s girls,” the greater their servitude to “drugs and uncontrolled sexuality” and to the “activities of Communists.”68 In this view, the Communist “folk devil” corrupted girls’ morals and ruined their futures. Rising to the surface in countless public contexts—most notably in the months preceding the imposition of the last military dictatorship in 1976—the connection between “deviant” youth, sexuality, and politics could incite intense mobilization but, concretely, could not help to solve a legal case. We will never know who killed Norma Penjerek. The only suspects were freed in late 1963: the judges did not find enough evidence to keep them in jail. As the 1960s went on, moreover, concerns about young women fugadas and desaparecidas diminished and the term “Dolce Vita” vanished.

  A gender-centered analysis of the processes of sociocultural modernization reveals how the moral panic around the Penjerek case came at a time that young women were symbolically and sometimes literally “leaving home” in greater numbers. This brought about an attempt to set limits to that movement. And it was not the only such attempt in the 1960s. For example, in August of 1966, a month after General Juan Carlos Onganía imposed a military regime (1966–70), state officers within the municipality of Buenos Aires as well as federal police conducted a morality campaign aimed at regulating youth’s leisure activities and presumed “uncontrolled sexuality.” This campaign involved raids in nightclubs and hotels and harassment of young men with long hair and young women who wore miniskirts. Although it also relied on blatantly anti-Communist rhetoric, the campaign failed to achieve the broad societal involvement incited by the Penjerek case. The press and most of Buenos Aires’ citizens envisaged the 1966 campaign as a politically driven endeavor that came “from above,” interpreting it as an authoritarian backlash against the “liberalizing” trends that Argentines had gone through.69 The moral panic around the Penjerek case, by contrast, had allowed for the public voicing of tensions that affected many families, which revolved around the “crisis” of patriarchal authority and domesticity.

  The moral panic around the Penjerek case also served to catapult an interrogation of young women’s sex lives to center stage before a hyperbolic, moralistic audience. In this respect, both the Penjerek case and the ensuing morality campaign were extreme, conservative re
sponses to emergent cultural trends and practices that shaped and expressed a more “liberal” understanding, especially with regard to youth sexuality. Far from the distorted and exaggerated imagery of the Dolce Vita and from the notions of “uncontrolled sexuality” permeating the journalistic commentary, young women certainly stood at the heart of the changing sexual culture in 1960s Argentina. In this sense, too, they were “leaving home.” Many young women contested the cultural and sexual mandates prescribing female virginity until marriage as a condition for respectable femininity as the 1960s went on.

  Sexualizing Young Women

  In a study of what he dubbed the “Argentine sexual revolution,” essayist Julio Mafud underscored that the changing sexual mores he depicted were taking place among “young women and young men.”70 In the 1960s, talking about sex meant talking about youth, and vice versa. Sex was increasingly discussed in the public arena, where experts—sexologists, psychologists, and psychoanalysts—journalists, and youths themselves carved out a new understanding connecting sex to love and responsibility. The implicit debate revolved around whether or not marriage was the only legitimate site for its practice. In this respect, young women were also at the forefront, embodying the most significant change in Argentina’s sexual culture in the 1960s: the public acceptance of premarital sex. Needless to say, this was a global trend, one of the cornerstones for the sexual revolutions that swept across the world.71 In Argentina, while opposition mounted from different quarters, the new attitude made solid inroads and was read as evidence of the modernization of sexual mores and as a sign of the “irreversible” path to equal rights for men and women. However crucial this development was for recognizing women’s right to enjoy their sexuality, the changes that accepting premarital sex brought to gender order were ambivalent: they implied a redefinition, rather than the disappearance, of a double sexual standard.