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GENDER AND GENERATION: THE UNIVERSITY REFORM MOVEMENT IN ARGENTINA, 1918
| By Natalia Milanesio |
Indiana University, Bloomington |
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In March 1918, students at the National University of Córdoba (UNC) rebelled against the university system, accusing professors of being authoritarian, inefficient, clerically oriented, and obscurantist. Founded in 1613 by Jesuits, the UNC—Argentina's first university—was run by conservative members of Córdoba's most prestigious and richest Catholic families. In 1856, when the university fell under the administration of the national government after the period of Jesuit and Franciscan control, UNC faculty members began a tradition of anti-secularism and nepotism that continued even after 1885 when the Avellaneda Law gave the university the right to govern itself without state intervention.1 The University Reform Movement, as it came to be known, rapidly took on a national character when university students in Buenos Aires (1918), La Plata (1919–1920), Santa Fe (1919), and Tucumán (1921) joined their fellow students in Córdoba in the protest. Through strikes, rallies, petitions to the national authorities, and the seizure of the UNC in September 1918, the reformists successfully forced the national government to carry out the University Reform. The distinctive nature of the movement derived not only from its radical demands, but also from its extremist tactics, the level of sophistication of its organization, and its major continental impact. In fact, the Reform Movement rapidly spread from Córdoba to Lima (1919), Cuzco (1920), Santiago de Chile (1920), and Mexico (1921).2 |
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Traditionally, historians have analyzed the demands and ideological contents of the movement, its different historical stages, and the numerous setbacks it suffered from counter-reformist governments during the first half of the twentieth century. When emphasis was placed on the students who participated in the movement, scholars wrote their biographies and focused on their ideological trajectories from the time of the Reform through later stages in their lives.3 In contrast, this essay is an analysis of the collective self-representation of the reformists—the young, male, and socially privileged students who participated in the University Reform Movement. In 1930, former student leader Julio V. González argued that "this reform has allowed us to discover ourselves, to recognize ourselves as a generation, that is, as men ready to work together for common ideas."4 My goal is to examine the process of construction of the reformist identity and to analyze what I consider its two most significant interrelated meanings: a particular form of masculinity and a distinct generation. In order to reconstruct these meanings, I study the reformists' program of demands, their corporate organization, and their participation in violent protests. I concentrate on the events that took place on 1918, a period marked by the impetuousness of the student movement, its focus on educational issues, and the success its members achieved in meeting their agenda.5 In fact, on October 7, 1918, President Hipólito Yrigoyen approved a national decree that incorporated almost all of the reformist demands. I use sources from students, student organizations, and university student centers from all over the country, but I primarily focus on reformists from the National University of Córdoba, the National University of Buenos Aires (UBA), and the National University of La Plata (UNLP). |
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