The last Argentinian dictatorship at the center of recent historiographical debates and tensions

This work was written for a round table on historiographical debates centering on recent dictatorships in the Southern Cone and was presented as part of the Second International Present-Day History Seminar, organized by the University of the State of Santa Catarina, Brazil (UDESC) in October of 2017. The work analyzes the most recent debates that have taken place within the field of recent history on the last military dictatorship in Argentina. The analysis takes into consideration three topics that have been controversial: the types of nomenclature used for state crime; the ways of naming the 1970s authoritarian regime; and a series of broader discussions on court cases dealing with crimes against humanity, and path predominantly taken by the judiciary in the case of Argentina. Although the focus of the analysis is on historiographical debates of recent years, due to the nature of the topics under discussion, the analysis shows how political, judicial, intellectual and academic areas are superimposed, crosscut and influence each other. This makes clear the highly political nature of the academic field of recent history and the relative autonomy of researchers with respect to other, non-academic spheres of action.