Cold War Toys: Material Cultures of Childhood in Argentina

This project provides a cultural, political and affective history of Argentine toys during the Cold War, specifically between 1946 (the emergence of Peronism) and 1983 (the end of the last civic-military dictatorship in Argentina). It will analyse their production, circulation, consumption, value and meaning as material playthings. Moving beyond the obsession with the US-USSR divide, particularly in terms of popular and material culture, the project aims to shift our attention to other spheres of ideological struggle, namely the material culture of childhood. Research questions include: How did political struggles influence the design, commercialisation, advertising and consumption of playthings in Cold War Latin America? What role did toys play in movements for social change, populist governments and authoritarian regimes? And what role do toys, souvenirs, crafts and other everyday objects play today in the collective remembrance of the Argentine traumatic past? The project brings together museums, sites of memory, collectors, curators, educators, practitioners and academics via a series of public engagment activities, including an exhibition at the Remembrance Park-Monument to the Victims of State Terrorism in the midst of events commemorating the 45th anniversary of the 1976 coup (2021) and the 40th anniversary of the return to democracy (2023), a series of workshops with teachers at the ESMA Museum and Site of Memory, and a co-authored book.

Since the first Peronist era, Argentina has been at the forefront of recognising the cultural, political and historical value of toys in Latin America. The Southern Cone country also has one of the region's more progressive memory politics. While scholars' research into toys ends in the 1960s with the decline of the local toy industry, this project will also consider toys and games produced and consumed after that decade, particularly those manufactured and played with during and after the 1976-1983 dictatorship. Based on collaborative action research and using a broad theoretical and conceptual framework that includes concepts and methods from media archaeology, memory studies, political philosophy, art and literature, the project will engage with factual, industrial and historical information as well as with the symbolic, political, and even poetic narratives attached to children's material cultures.

Cold War Toys will thus consider toys as commercial goods, as the products of an influential (trans)national industry, and as collectors' items, historical documents, souvenirs and narrative devices. Toys bring together intellect and emotion, carrying meanings and experiences. They are objects of transmission and mirrors of a culture. Toys are the mediums through which children first grasp history. They symbolize the spirit of a time, the vision that a particular society has of its present, and the role that children play in it. Toys also tell us a great deal about our relationship with the market, for we learn to be consumers with toys. The uses and values of toys demonstrate that they are not only representations of history but are themselves part of history and, in that sense, they are of considerable cultural importance.

The project is timely because the Cold War continues to resonate in the tense context of US/Latin America relations, not least as the regions continue to deal with the fallout of Donald Trump's return to a 'bad neighbor' policy (2017-2021). In South America, moreover, the relatives of the dictatorships' victims continue to protest past atrocities, exhume graves, and actively press legal claims against perpetrators. Domestic toy industries in the region have also all but disappeared. The collections the project will look at remind us of a time when national production was valued. They say a great deal not just about the history and memory of toys but also about the industries of these countries and the history of design in the region.