In Argentina, the Ford Falcon is associated in popular memory with two competing narratives—economic stability and the trauma of military dictatorship. Historian Karen Robert’s 2025 book Driving Terror: Labor, Violence, and Justice in Cold War Argentina puts these divergent memories at the center of her book, opening with a scene from the official retirement of the last Ford Falcon Taxi in 2004 in which a taxi driver, interviewed by the newspaper Clarín, states, “This is the last Falcon Taxi to be touched by the nostalgia of forty-three years of shared stories in Buenos Aires.” Robert contrasts this view by that of playwright and psychotherapist Eduardo Pavlovsky who countered, “Whenever a Falcon passed or slowed down, we knew there would be kidnappings, disappearances, torture, or murder.”
The detention of Ford’s workers was an example of direct collaboration between U.S. corporations and the military dictatorship.
The same year as the Taxi’s retirement, human rights lawyers submitted a claim against Ford Motor Company in U.S. courts on behalf of 16 former autoworkers at Ford’s manufacturing plant in Argentina who, in 1976, were detained and tortured on Ford premises. The detention of Ford’s workers, notably those participating in union activities, was an example of direct collaboration between U.S. corporations and the military dictatorship. According to the case, documented in the book, “the company did so in order to suppress trade union activity at the Ford Plant.” Amnesty laws in Argentina made it difficult for human rights trials to take place in the country, hence the recourse to courts in the United States. However, the case was later moved to Argentina after the Amnesty laws were overturned in 2005.
The case, Robert notes, sheds light on aspects of the dictatorship that have been overlooked,including the experiences of workers and union activists as well as the collaboration of business leaders in the state’s violence. While Ford produced the Falcon in Argentina from 1963 until 1991, the book spans a slightly lengthier period from the 1960s until 2018. Robert provides a detailed look at Ford’s history in Argentina, including the role of industrial workers, who launched strikes to challenge the assumption that higher wages would lead to complacency; the use of Ford Falcons for kidnapping and disappearances; the Ford workers who were abducted in 1976; and the various attempts at seeking justice, including the court case against Ford Argentina. The focus on Argentina’s workers is particularly important given that, according to the 1984 Nunca Mas human rights report, 32 percent of Argentina’s detained and disappeared were workers.
To provide wider context on Argentina’s war against its workers, Robert situates her narrative firmly within the Cold War. She notes the tight links between Ford and the Kennedy administration by focusing on Robert McNamara, a man who helped design the Ford Falcon and served as President of Ford Motors in 1960. McNamara left Ford to become U.S. Secretary of Defense, a position from which he promoted the U.S. National Security Doctrine in South America. The Doctrine sought to prohibit communist influence in the region while financing militaries in an attempt to avoid direct risk of U.S intervention.
While Robert illuminates the politics dictating the U.S. security strategy in the region at the time, she focuses her story on the ideals and political projects of the era’s everyday Argentinians. Through the story of Ford’s workers in Argentina, Roberts shows how their activism and political projects put them in direct confrontation with corporations who utilized the military dictatorship’s policies for their companies’ profits.
Ford’s role in Argentina started in 1957 but it was during the government of Arturo Frondizi (1968-1962)—in which an intense emphasis was placed on the creation of a strong middle class to promote economic stability and resist the rise of an organized left— that Ford became prominent in the country. In 1959, Ford Argentina purchased 250 acres of land in Pacheco around 10 miles north of Buenos Aires to manufacture Ford Falcon sedans. Using U.S. branding and advertisements, the Falcon promoted a lifestyle of comfort and ease that sought to win workers over to the U.S.-backed vision of industrial modernization.
Working at Ford Argentina was initially a huge opportunity for Argentine workers, who received sufficient wages and overtime shifts to purchase their own homes. However, labor militancy soon increased as the Fordist bargain—intense production for high wages—was rejected by workers who decried rising inequality and issues related to workplace health and safety. Grassroots labor activists at Ford Argentina became part of a revolutionary mass political force that spread across the country in the wake of the 1969 Cordobazo strike, which pitted industry workers against corporate policies.
In 1976, just three weeks after the military coup, 24 union activists were kidnapped, tortured and disappeared for several weeks. Several Ford workers were detained and transported in Ford Falcons.
While workers challenged their bosses and the Argentine state, they were divided as to how best to move forward. While some favored nonviolent political movements, others opted for left-wing guerrilla movements like the Montoneros. In response, workers were often surveilled at their jobs—Robert notes that undercover agents frequently monitored union meetings and political discussions at Ford Argentina, making the workers vulnerable to state-backed political violence. As organizing and guerrilla activities in Argentina increased, so did the attempts of management at Ford Argentina to cleanse its factory of left-wing workers and activists by offering severance packages. Meanwhile, the autoworkers’ union, (Sindicato de Mecánicos y Afines del Transporte Automotor, SMATA), was under the influence of the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), which sought to eliminate communist and socialist influence in Argentina under the guise of financing and training labor union leaders; the aim being to keep track of any insurrections.
Ford Argentina was also strategically located in the vicinity of Campo de Mayo, a secret detention and torture center during the dictatorship. This made collaboration with the military easier in terms of strategy, surveillance and cooperation.
Though Robert notes that there are no precise statistics on how many Ford workers were detained and disappeared on the premises, the book focuses on the union activists who survived their detention and sought justice for the violence they endured while imprisoned.
The book notes that from 1976 onwards, Argentina’s collective memory of the Ford Falcon was largely shaped by the abductions and disappearances.
The book notes that from 1976 onwards, Argentina’s collective memory of the Ford Falcon was largely shaped by the abductions and disappearances. Likewise, the company’s premises became a military base while Ford’s executives publicly aligned themselves with the dictatorship. “For bystanders who witnessed the loud and violent abductions, the Falcon came to function as a sentinel, a constant reminder of the military’s ubiquitous power,” Robert writes. The book also quotes writer Graciela B. Gutierrez stating, “When a story contains any mention of a Falcon verde, our memory immediately associates it with thirty thousand voyages toward torture and death.”
In 2018, an Argentinian federal court found two former Ford executives and one military commander guilty of the kidnapping, detention and torture of Ford’s union representatives. As Robert points out, the Ford Falcon was a focal point in the investigations, resulting in significant outcomes. The collective memory associated with the vehicle’s history of violence brought together activists, academics, archivists and survivors to piece together the case details. In turn, the case not only sought justice for the abducted Ford workers, but exposed the ties between the US company and the military dictatorship.
In explaining the reasoning behind the convictions, the presiding judge noted that “shop floor organizers like the members of Ford’s internal claims committee had been targeted because they threatened the military’s goal of restructuring Argentina.” The case against Ford’s executives marked the first time Argentina had taken legal measures against a multinational corporation—an achievement made more difficult by the obstacles created by the government of President Mauricio Macri at the time to further repress the struggle for memory and justice.
Situating the Ford Falcon at the center of a country that moved toward industrialization, Robert’s chronological account makes it easy to imagine the happenings as they unfolded, particularly the competition occurring in the background between workers and U.S.-backed corporations. As Roberts convincingly argues—and declassified U.S. security documents confirm—organized autoworkers did indeed pose a mighty threat to the military junta and the multinational corporations that backed them. Instead of focusing on the diplomacy sustaining the dictatorship, Roberts exposes politics in action and the workers’ collective organising against corporate and dictatorship terror. By following the workers’ story, Robert illustrates the crimes against humanity inflicted on a population whose collective memory of a single car model proved to be a unifying factor in the struggle for justice.
Ramona Wadi is a freelance journalist and book reviewer. Her writing covers a range of themes in relation to Palestine and Latin America; the latter with a focus on Chile, Argentina and Cuba.