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House Of The University Reform Museum UNC<\/span><\/a> March for reform in C\u00f3rdoba: against the autocratic and clerical academic modelHouse Of The University Reform Museum UNC<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n The arrival of Salinas ended the rebellion that had started one year prior and whose catalyst was a current problem\u2014the dissatisfaction of medical students with the closing of student housing\u2014which triggered a movement that went beyond the university limits to reach other countries in Latin America. There was a break in an autocratic and clerical academic model, which had been adopted during the Spanish colonization and still prevailed at the University of C\u00f3rdoba, founded when Argentina was part of the vice-kingdom of Peru.<\/p>\n \u201cThe students protested against the method of teaching, which was based on repetition and obedience, and on its almost religious character, administered in cloisters,\u201d explains Denise Leite, researcher at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul and a student of the Reform in C\u00f3rdoba. She remembers that the Argentinian city was a conservative refuge, famous for resisting the fight for independence 100 years earlier, and was not aligned with the modernization happening throughout the country, which at the time had an urban middle class emerging and more than half the population living in the cities. \u201cAt the University of C\u00f3rdoba, teaching was authoritarian, the professorships in many cases were hereditary, and there was a denial with respect to science. In medicine, for example, teaching was done orally and did not offer practical experience or patient visitation.\u201d<\/p>\n Author unknown\/Wikimedia Commons<\/span><\/a> Lawyer Deodoro Roca wrote the declaration that crystalized the reformist ideasAuthor unknown\/Wikimedia Commons<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n The principles of the reform of C\u00f3rdoba were released in June 1918 in a declaration written by lawyer Deodoro Roca and titled \u201cFrom Argentinian youth in C\u00f3rdoba to free men in South America.\u201d The document exposed the teaching methods \u201cflawed by authoritarianism,\u201d which contributed to keeping the university separated from the modern disciplines and those of science\u2014ideas of Charles Darwin were prohibited\u2014and identified tenures as the root cause of \u201ca show of senile immobilization\u201d and being a \u201crefuge for the mediocre.\u201d<\/p>\n The list of demands included student participation in administration, open attendance in class, an end to tenures, university extension, social assistance for students, and university autonomy. Among other outcomes of the reform, new professors were hired, even though the tenures were maintained, and an autonomous model known as co-governance was created, which would be adopted by other universities throughout the country: through the inspiration of the C\u00f3rdoba reform, the management of public post-secondary institutions in Argentina follow a tripartite model whereby decisions are made by professors, students, and alumni.<\/p>\n Photographic Archive Alberto Leiva La Rosa <\/span><\/a> V\u00edctor Haya de la Torre, who led the university reform in Peru in 1919 and later founded the political party APRAPhotographic Archive Alberto Leiva La Rosa <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n Such ideas were echoed throughout the continent. \u201cThe university reform was a common parameter in all Latin American countries. The young people of C\u00f3rdoba presented a diagnosis of teaching and knowledge production and brought a new agenda for the social and<\/p>\n economic reality,\u201d explains historian Jos\u00e9 Alves de Freitas Neto, researcher at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) and author of an article about the Reform in C\u00f3rdoba published in 2011 in the magazine Ensino Superior UNICAMP (<\/em>UNICAMP higher education). In other countries of Latin America, delegations of students were formed and met in a world congress in Mexico City in 1921, recalls historian Jos\u00e9 Lu\u00eds Beired, researcher at the Assis campus of S\u00e3o Paulo State University (UNESP) and specialist in Latin American history. He notes that the phenomenon could not be compared to any other places in the world. \u201cThe student-led movement, which became a social movement, emerged in Latin America long before May 1968 in France or the mobilization of students protesting the Vietnam War at the University of California, Berkeley, in the United States. It is interesting that it arose in a region that is less developed and not as modern, but it was the result of the emergence of the students and young people as social and political actors, which would be one of the hallmarks of the twentieth century.\u201d<\/p>\n The Inner Voice <\/span><\/a> Eighty-three students who occupied the University of C\u00f3rdoba in September 1918 were arrested by the Army but later freedThe Inner Voice <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n Spillover effect<\/strong> The impact in Brazil was slower and more timid than in its neighboring countries, mainly because the country\u2019s first universities would only be founded in 1920 in Rio de Janeiro and in 1927 in Belo Horizonte. In 1928, a declaration was released by the students for their Brazilian colleagues. \u201cIt was inspired by the reform in C\u00f3rdoba: it defended democracy in the election of university authorities, the participation of students in administration, teaching and administrative autonomy, and in the university having more contact with society through outreach projects,\u201d underscores Jos\u00e9 Lu\u00eds Beired. \u201cBut it is signed by \u2018students,\u2019 not by some organized group. It took them some time to form a solid environment in terms of student mobilization in Brazil so that the reform would enter in the order of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nWhile the reform in Argentina was restricted to universities, in other countries where the movement reverberated, as in Peru, Cuba, and Venezuela, it gained political character and was radicalized, notes Beired. \u201cThere was a spillover effect bringing the movement to society at a moment when the middle class was emerging in Latin American countries and questioned being ruled by an oligarchy that, following the example of what happened at the University of C\u00f3rdoba, blocked their political and economic ascension,\u201d he affirms. He mentions, as an example, the assault at the Moncada prison in Cuba in 1953, where alumni of the student-led movement, which included Fidel Castro, tried to take the military bases and overthrow the government of Fulg\u00eancio Batista, in a foreshadowing of the revolution that would take place in 1959. Another example was seen in Peru with the creation of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), which was founded in 1924 by student leader V\u00edctor Ra\u00fal Haya de la Torre and is still a left-of-center political party today.<\/p>\n