Caught between soldiers and police officers: police violence in contemporary Argentina

The central aim of this study is to examine the continued police violence that followed Argentina's return to democracy in 1983. This article shows that although a clear continuity of violence can be traced in the deployment of security actions between the last military dictatorship of 1976-1983 and the recent democracy of the 1980s and 1990s, instances of variations can be displayed as well: while under military rule hard-line security operations were carried out to neutralise 'subversion', under new democracy these were mostly targeted at problems related to 'violence' and 'criminality'. This article begins with a contextualisation of contemporary Argentina before engaging with the relevant literature on legacies of violence. It uses Foucault's theory of discontinuity to address both continuities and changes in the violence and introduces a case of violence that occurred during the dictatorship, comparing it to the practices of the Policia Federal Argentina [Argentine Federal Police; PFA] of the city of Buenos Aires during the democracy. Finally, it addresses the question: Was Buenos Aires guarded by police officers or by soldiers?