National Territory of Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica and South Atlantic Islands. March 18th, 1962, First and Unfinished Democratic Experience in the Municipalities of Ushuaia and Rio Grande.

Abstract

In this article I analyze the results of the exploration process of primary and secondary sources of the university extension project "Women in the Centennial. Audiovisual representation of the political history of women in Rio Grande", which revealed documentary references that point to the existence of a first municipal electoral experience that took place on March 18th, 1962 in Tierra del Fuego. The work proposes to contextualize the political and social order in Argentina and in Tierra del Fuego in particular, and finally to analyze this inaugural electoral process that took place conditioned by the Peronist proscription.

The data collected indicate that the civic/military coup d'état, which took place in la- te-March 1962 and deposed the intransigent radical president Arturo Frondizi, was the event that made the proclamation of the first elected municipal authorities in Tierra del Fuego impossible. Consequently, it is considered relevant to highlight this electoral event as the inaugural democratic act in the municipalities of Ushuaia and Rio Grande. An event that precedes the foundational moment adopted by the Fuegian municipal institutions and that has been scarcely investigated in electoral studies and in narratives on the political processes of Tierra del Fuego.