Scielo RSS http://socialsciences.scielo.org/rss.php?pid=1515-337120070001&lang=es vol. 3 num. SE lang. es http://socialsciences.scielo.org/img/en/fbpelogp.gif http://socialsciences.scielo.org http://socialsciences.scielo.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1515-33712007000100001&lng=es&nrm=iso&tlng=es The US-led Coalition that invaded Iraq on 2003 paved the road for the looting of cultural and archaeological resources of the country, which were rapidly incorporated into antiquities black markets. A critical view, as a mean to interpret the looting, points at three questions that should be addressed by historians and archaeologists, but also by political researchers: 1) the role of archaeological artifacts in Middle Eastern countries; 2) the ideological place that the West maintains for Eastern antiquities; 3) the policies that should be followed, taking the previous points into account.<hr/>La invasión a Irak en 2003 por parte de las fuerzas aliadas encabezadas por los Estados Unidos habilitó un acceso indiscriminado a los recursos culturales y arqueológicos de la zona, que prontamente fueron puestos en circulación en los mercados negros de antigüedades. Una consideración crítica sobre la apropiación de estos artefactos nos permite pensar en, al menos, tres problemáticas que deberían ser abordadas seriamente por historiadores y arqueólogos así como por analistas políticos: 1) el rol que poseen los artefactos arqueológicos en los países de Medio Oriente; 2) el lugar ideológico que tienen las antigüedades orientales en Occidente; y 3) qué disposiciones tomar ante las dos problemáticas anteriores. http://socialsciences.scielo.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1515-33712007000100002&lng=es&nrm=iso&tlng=es This article is a summary of Alejandro Simonoff's doctoral thesis. The thesis originated from a number of papers written since the end of the 80s in which a double phenomenon was observed: 1) the existence of political instability which had the consequence of an erratic atttitude to foreign affairs by our country; and, 2) the absence of a proper categorisation of many periods of our present history. The question posed was if this could obey to two reasons or just one of them. In order to solve the dilemma the policy of radical Arturo Illia was analysed. Such government, being weak and showing internal and external conflict, was thus unstable and had trouble in defining the Argentine position in the Cold war from an autonomist perspective.