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 in the company of friends.69 Such experiences had a radicalizing effect, especially if accompanied by police violence.
The student-worker alliance erupted with full force in 1969 with three memorable crowd events in Rosario and Córdoba. The day of street fighting in Córdoba on 29 May has become known as the Cordobazo.70 This violent crowd will be discussed in the next chapter because of a historical significance which places it on a par with the epoch-making 17 October 1945. Here, I discuss the events of one week earlier in Rosario because, unlike the Cordobazo, the Rosariazo on 21 May 1969 was initiated by students instead of workers.
As is so typical of major crowd gatherings in Argentina, the events in Rosario of May 1969 had been preceded by months of small street mobilizations. Since the beginning of the year, students had been objecting to the curtailment of student enrollments. These protests were successful in the faculties of Philosophy and Letters, but restrictions continued in other disciplines. Although not all demands were met, the students realized that their demonstrations were effective, and that the authorities were tolerating the street protests. It was in this turbulent climate of May 1969 that student restaurants were privatized, and meal prices raised.71
The student opposition arose in the northeastern provinces of Santa Fe, Corrientes, and Entre Rios.72 Classes were boycotted, student restaurants were occupied, and daily street protests were held in the towns of Rosario, Corrientes, and Resistencia. The students understood that the authorities had no intention of reversing the price hike, and began to approach social sectors sympathetic to their demands. Students in Resistencia sought the support of progressive forces in the Catholic church, while students in Corrientes asked for help from Ongaro’s combative CGTA and Tosco’s electricians union. Of particular importance was the labor unrest among metal workers in Rosario where three hundred workers were confronted with a lockout. The UOM called for a general strike on 23 May 1969.73
The tense situation escalated when police in Corrientes attacked a street demonstration on 15 May, wounding four students, and killing the nineteen-year-old Juan José Cabral.74 The indignation was nationwide, and unions condemned the disproportionate police response. The UOM national headquarters expressed its solidarity with the students in Corrientes and the striking workers in Rosario, while continuing to strengthen the links between the two sectors: “We refuse to accept the hunger to which they are submitting us, and the violent repression of every form of protest. We already know that the regime kills, here in Corrientes, in Córdoba, or in any other place. They are killing the best we have: our young students and workers.”75 The protests multiplied in all major Argentine cities, and a student strike was announced for Tuesday 20 May. The students intensified their protests during the intervening days when another casualty fell to police bullets. Rosario was this time the location of police brutality.76
On 17 May, there were the usual daily demonstrations in Rosario. The Night of the Long Sticks was casting its shadow over the protests when protesters linked the death of Juan José Cabral two days earlier to that of Santiago Pampillón, a student and part-time auto worker who died in September 1966 during a student protest in Córdoba. Some activists were carrying molotov cocktails and shouted the slogan “Cabral and Pampillón, the martyrs of the road to freedom.”77 That afternoon, groups of students were throwing stones at the police and at several financial institutions in Rosario, when police officer Lezcano stepped out of his car and shot the student Adolfo Ramón Bello through the head. According to a police communiqué, the victim was part of a group that had cornered the officer, thrown molotov cocktails, and tried to overturn his car. The officer drew his pistol in self-defense and fired an accidental shot which killed Adolfo Bello.78
The killings provoked a public resentment impossible to appease. The students called upon everybody to repudiate the deaths of Cabral and Bello in a silent protest march on 21 May. The demonstration was called for six o’clock in the evening at the Plaza 25 de Mayo in downtown Rosario. The trajectory of the march was to run for twelve blocks from the square to the headquarters of the CGTA. As an indication of the alliance between students and workers, secretary-general Raimundo Ongaro promised
