Waiting for another October 17: The middle-class identity and the experience of 2001 crisis in Argentina

This article seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the political dimension to middle-class identity in Argentina, by analyzing an image that appeared after 2001: that of a "17th October of the Middle Class''. This curious image, and the shifts in its meanings from its first introduction to its most recent manifestations, is interpreted by locating it into two different contexts. On one hand, the socio-economic, political and identity changes that Argentine society experienced during and after the 1990s. On the other hand, the longer context of the trauma that the emergence of Peronism produced in 1945, which still casts effects on Argentina culture. The image of the "17th October of the Middle Class'' in thus interpreted as a fantasy of closing the Peronist political horizon, by replicating the event that opened it in 1945, this time with the middle (and not the working) class in the leading role.