Abstract

"Images of the Middle Class: Advertising National Automobiles in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile during the 1960s"

Pablo Federico Pryluka, Princeton University (ppryluka@fas.harvard.edu)

Throughout the 1960s, the notion of the middle class was transformed as Latin American economies experienced the benefits of mass consumption. Cars, for example, gradually moved from an elite luxury into a vital component of the ideal middle-class family. In this paper I will analyze how the advertising industry marketed automobiles through the 1960s in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. The meanings associated with car ownership certainly change as we travel through the borders of the three countries and when we move back and forth through time. Moreover, it would be hard to claim that there was a unified meaning associated with private vehicles since perceptions would differ across class, gender, race, and other social divides. However, at a time when developmental policies offered consumers the chance to get their first vehicles, the implications of getting a car certainly changed. As I show in this paper, consuming cars loomed large in the notion of a nuclear middle-class family ideal that coalesced during the 1960s.