Research

My current book project, whose working title is Driving Fear: The Ford Falcon as Icon of Argentina’s Cold War Terror, analyzes Argentina’s experience of Cold War violence through a material biography of a seemingly prosaic object: a Ford Falcon sedan. The Falcon became wildly popular in 1960s Argentina as the first car locally manufactured by Ford: a symbol of American-style consumer culture and industrial development. Yet it was transformed into one of Latin America’s most recognizable icons of state terrorism when Argentina’s military used it in thousands of cases of ‘disappearance’ during the dictatorship of 1976 to 1983. The book explores this car’s place within Argentina’s cultural and political history by linking together: 1) the history of labour and political militancy in Ford’s Argentine plant in the years preceding the coup; 2) an examination of Ford’s collaboration with the military junta; and 3) an analysis of how the Falcon has been evoked and challenged as a symbol of military impunity since the 1980s.