Malvinas. The historical construction of a national cause in the school space (1945-1973)

Abstract

The analysis of the construction in the school of a national cause such as Malvinas contributes to reflect on the role of School History in the configuration of nationalist imaginaries. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the Malvinas issue was absent from primary school textbooks. This begins to change with the edition of the ‘Peronist’ manuals. Although these school materials were suppressed after the 1955 coup d'état, the Malvinas presence was not only maintained but also strengthened, which is why publishers began to allocate an increasingly important space to it in their proposals for the primary level and secondary during the 1960s and 1970s. This trend would receive its final boost when in 1973 the national government, through the sanction of Law 20,561, set June 10 as ‘Day of the Affirmation of Argentine Rights over the Malvinas and Malvinas Islands’ of the Antarctic Sector.