“Su pueblo llora, América se inclina”: la eficacia política de una muerte argentina

Abstract

This article studies a public funeral in different cities of Argentina. It shows the power of the Unión Civica Radical (U.C.R.) at mobilizing a population, and the importance of local political experiences in the generation of political identities. Analyzing the transnational repercussion of the death it is argued that the dead body became a symbol for the path many Latin-American political regimes took: a changing from a liberal republic to a dictatorship. From the analysis of a particular death, the article revises some interpretations of the first mass political party in Argentina, it sustains the need to embed history into a bigger context and proposes a dynamic reading of funeral rites.