I argue that the symbol of the "Nation" has been the main channel through which the formation of political identities takes place under exclusionary regimes, such as the authoritarian and restricted democracies of Argentina during the period from 1950-70. I therefore examine the "Condor Operation" of 1966, when seventeen young men and a young woman hijacked an Argentinian plane that was heading for the Malvinas (Falkland) Islands, in order to assert Argentina's sovereignty over the South Atlantic archipelago which had been under British occupation since 1833. Members of the Condor group, as well as people backing and countering the Condors' action, turned the event and its effects into a quasi-Turnerian drama. It is at this point that two stories meet: that of the Gaucho Antonio Rivero and his controversial uprising against the English troops in 1834, and that of the Condors. The Condor Operation ultimately reveals the confluence of two key identities in 1960s-1970s Argentinian politics: the People and the Youth.