On 24 March 1976 a military junta deposed President María Estela Martínez de Perón and assumed power in Argentina. From the first days of the takeover, the authorities worked vigorously to restore what they defined as legitimate Argentine values. This article shows how the family became a focal point of the government's efforts because of its double function as an agent of and a target for renovation. A microcosm of the Argentine nation, the family was considered the basic building block of society, a guarantor of the civic well-being of the nation and, as such, an important ally of the authoritarian state in the fight to restore Argentina's ‘traditional’ values. The analysis focuses on the civic-military regime's efforts to fashion a family canon, which would become the only legitimate version of the Argentine family, and the broad repertoire of strategies used to impose it on the Argentine population.
