Explain the efficacy of a peace operation, searching recognition as militaries. The experience of argentinean peacekeepers in Haití

Abstract

The former Argentinean peacekeepers considered the peace operation in Haiti as the most important of their professional carriers. Between 2004 and 2015 were deployed to it thirteen thousand militaries, the majority from the Army. When telling their experience, members of the firsts battalions explained efficacy in pacification, introducing their sensibility toward Haitian poverty into the operational environment, and the consequent achievement of civic actions. Thus in their narratives they also answer to the lack of Armed Forces recognition in the domestic stage. Analyzing the operational environment construction, we are going to show how an operation considered military ascribe its success to a variety of civic tasks of approach to the local population, and in which way it produced ambiguities in military condition as warriors and humanized. We study that question in ethnographic interviews made to ex peacekeepers to introduce us in the debate about the role of Argentine Armed Forces in the Post-cold War process; the reference of the national stage in the operational environment construction in extraterritorial peace operations; and the shifting condition of the militaries in pacification processes.