Political Violence and Trauma in Argentina. Antonius C. G. M. Robben
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never experienced them.
Crowd Alliances: Students, Workers, and Peronists
The involvement of young Peronists in the street conquests during the second half of the 1950s, as described earlier in this chapter, came to an abrupt halt in 1960. The crackdown on the Peronist worker resistance also imprisoned many youth leaders and incapacitated the Peronist Youth organization or JP (Juventud Peronista) founded in late 1957.54 Surprisingly, their place was taken by the student body, an unsuspected segment of society that had always shown an aversion to Perón and his mass movement.
The rapprochement of university students and young working-class Peronists was rooted in the student protests against Frondizi’s 1958 proposal to allow the foundation of private universities. Rectors and students opposed the legislation because it would lead to the creation of private Catholic universities with a conservative curriculum. Street fights took place around the National University of Buenos Aires as rival groups of students in favor or against the legislation tried to occupy the buildings. Many students and young Peronist working-class activists received their fire baptism together in these clashes. So also did an adolescent Ernesto Jauretche who came from a family of militant Peronists, and became impressed by the battles with the police near the Medical School: “There, I saw the police back away for the first time. I saw the police run, I saw them fall under a shower of stones. For the first time I saw what a street fight was. There I began to learn throwing stones, to fight…. to see them withdraw was thrilling, to see the police run away suddenly gave a rush of happiness. It was marvelous. I think that this was for me the beginning of almost a linear process and so it was for almost all the other activists…. We began to discover there that they were not invulnerable.”55 The street opposition culminated on 19 September 1958 in a protest crowd of about three hundred people who listened to speeches by politicians and student and union leaders. Frondizi’s bill was defeated in the house of representatives, amended and approved in the senate, and finally adopted by Congress.56
The social and ideological rapprochement of workers and students intensified considerably in the early 1960s as increasingly more students began to have leftist political sympathies. This radicalization was worldwide, and had to do with the rebellious mood of the times. The radicalization of students in Argentina had its roots in the development of an intellectual new left which stood initially under the influence of Sartre’s existentialism and later became attracted to Marxism. Sartre argued that the objective structures of exploitation did not predetermine people’s consciousness, but that people were active subjects who produced history. Volition entered the political thought of Argentine intellectuals, a volition demonstrated in practice by the Cuban revolution.57
These heterogeneous influences fell in fertile soil among the Argentine students of the early 1960s. They were a disenfranchised generation which felt politically gagged by the proscription of Peronism, the repeated military coups, and the paternalism of the authorities. The former Montonero guerrilla commander Fernando Vaca Narvaja recalls the growing social consciousness of his student days: “The university begins to embrace Peronism, begins to nationalize itself in the sense that the student breaks with his own isolation, his own environment and begins to develop … a social commitment with his people…. We became close to the working-class neighborhoods through social work.”58 Student leaders wanted a curriculum that addressed social rather than purely scientific problems, and a research agenda that relieved the poor health and social distress of the underprivileged classes. The working class was, in the eyes of students and intellectuals, the only social sector in Argentine society with a true revolutionary potential. Solidarity with the working class in their struggle against the ruling powers was an inevitable step, even if many workers were Peronist and not socialist.
The July 1963 amnesty of Peronist activists incarcerated in 1960 gave a new impetus to the political alliance of students and young Peronists. The Peronist Youth held its first national congress on 27 October 1963 and elected Héctor Spina, Envar El Kadri, and Jorge Rulli as the executive committee. Perón supported the insurrectional convictions of these leaders. He reiterated in a letter of 20 October 1965 that the JP must “Have a close relation with the masses—the tactics and strategy must fuse with the masses—never forget that the combatants emerge from the masses and that revolutionary work is impossible without support from the masses.”59 Similar ideas were heard in the prisons of Caseros and Villa Devoto where militant Peronists were held. John William Cooke invited university students to join the Peronist movement because they could help raise the revolutionary consciousness of the working class.60 The time of dialogue had passed. Time had come for a revolutionary takeover. This revolution had to be fought with all means at its disposal, and should not shun the use of violence.
The rapprochement of students and workers was watched with growing concern by the military. Soon after Lieutenant-General Onganía came to power in 1966, he sought to curb the student radicalization by assuming control over the universities. Presidents, rectors and deans lost their autonomy and became administrators in service of the Ministry of Education. The law of 29 July 1966 stipulated that student centers were forbidden to engage in political activities.61 These repressive measures provoked a nationwide protest of students and faculty.
At 10:00 P.M. on 29 July 1966, about two hundred students barricaded themselves with benches and desks inside the Faculty of Architecture and Urban Studies in Buenos Aires. Similar occupations occurred at other faculties of the National University of Buenos Aires (UNBA). The Infantry Guard of the federal police responded eagerly.62 On the evening of 29 July, policemen ordered students to vacate the Faculty of Exact Sciences within fifteen minutes. After the time was up, the men forced their way in with tear gas while angry students pelted them with all sorts of objects. Once inside, the students were forced to walk the gauntlet with their arms held up high while policemen wielded their rubber batons on the protesters.63 Warren Ambrose of MIT, who was a visiting professor at the time, gave the following eyewitness account to the New York Times: “The police entered firing tear gas and ordered everyone to face the wall with our hands up…. As we stood blinded by the tear gas against the walls of the classrooms, the police then began hitting us. Then one by one we were taken out and forced to run between rows of police spaced about 10 feet apart. That is when I got seven or eight wallops and a broken finger. No one resisted. We were all terrified, what with the curses and gas.”64 This incident gave the event the memorable name the “Night of the Long Sticks” (la Noche de los Bastones Largos). The police authorities claimed that their actions had been provoked by the student violence. Their press release emphasized the political character of the occupations stating that Marxist literature and contribution slips to the communist party had been found at the Faculty of Architecture.65
The Night of the Long Sticks spoke to the imagination of all Argentine students, and came to stand not only for the beatings and the hundreds of arrests, but also for the exodus of thousands of professors abroad and into private research institutes. The long-term economic and intellectual loss of this brain drain is hard to assess but the political cost became clear immediately. Students and faculty were driven to the political opposition by a dictatorial government whose repressive measures, authoritarianism, and budgetary neglect of the universities contributed to the escalation of violence in Argentine society.66 Four years later, Onganía confessed that his approach to the universities had been a serious political error: “It was our first big mistake. And we committed it thirty days after getting into power through a coup.”67 The public beatings, arrests, interrogations, and incarcerations during the Onganía dictatorship became markers of political initiation for students that made them kindred in spirit to Peronist activists and intransigent unionists, radicalizing them towards armed resistance.
The repression of the student protests was also a mistake from a crowd perspective. The police drove the students literally and figuratively speaking into the streets. Members of the Peronist Youth entered the university to forge the ties between workers and students.68 The crowd began to supersede the unions and student organizations as the principal social collective to which people adhered and through which they expressed their anger. As Moyano has observed, the first step to political involvement consisted often in attending a solidarity meeting, a protest rally, or a street demonstration