The Age of Youth in Argentina: Culture, Politics, and Sexuality from Perón to Videla

In her book The Age of Youth in Argentina, Valeria Manzano studies youth as a social and cultural category from its first appearance in national debates with Juan Perón's establishment of the Unión de Estudiantes Secundarios through the subsequent explosion of secondary school and university enrollments under Arturo Frondizi and other democratically elected governments to the development of a nonconformist counterculture with the onset of the Juan Carlos Onganía dictatorship in 1966 and, finally, its history under the last military dictatorship. The book's early chapters analyze new trends in sexuality and such subjects as changing attitudes toward premarital sex and birth control. Argentina followed global trends on these matters but with some characteristics of its own, including the notable influence of the burgeoning psychology profession in those debates. Manzano weaves in the book's first chapters a rich story of youthful rebellion...