Tragic Week of 1919 and University Reform of 1918

The Tragic Week of 1919

The events began on January 7 with a strike at the Vasena metal shops in the city of Buenos Aires, located in what is now the Plaza Martín Fierro (Barrio San Cristobal). The strikers demanded a reduction in working hours from 11 to 8 per day, Sunday rest, and increased wages. The company sought to continue operating with scab labor provided by the Labor Association, an employers' association. A riot between striking workers and police ended with the intervention of the police, who fired rifles into the crowd. The riots quickly spread to surrounding areas, with glass breakage and the lifting of paving stones from the streets. The result was four workers dead and over thirty injured, some of whom later died.

In repudiation of this fact, the workers' associations, the Federación Obrera Regional Argentina of the Ninth Congress (FORA IX), socialists, communists, and revolutionary syndicalists, and the Federación Obrera Regional Argentina's Fifth Congress (FORA V), anarchists, initiated a general strike that took place from the 9th of that month. From 3:00 PM, many workers were summoned to attend the funeral of those killed on the 7th. At 5:00 PM, they arrived at the cemetery. There, while they listened to the speech of one of the delegates, a group of armed policemen and firemen opened fire on the crowd. The daily newspaper La Prensa counted 8 dead; the Socialist newspaper La Vanguardia raised the sum to more than fifty. This incident marked the beginning of a disorderly and chaotic struggle against the police.

Among the upper classes, paramilitary groups emerged, such as the so-called Patriotic League, created to defend conservative values, tradition, and primarily private property. These groups were quick to hunt down and kill union leaders and anarchists, but also lashed out at anyone who appeared foreign. Thus, they beat and detained Jews, Russians, Poles, and Germans, among others. The case of the Jews was notorious for the high levels of anti-Semitism within such groups. According to labor sources (the newspaper 'La Vanguardia' on January 14), the balance of the Tragic Week was 700 dead and 4,000 injured. Of the Jewish community, there was 1 dead and 71 injured.

The workers outnumbered the police and paramilitary groups. The daily La Prensa mentioned the threat of "revolutionary war". In response, the President Hipolito Yrigoyen put the city under the military orders of Colonel Luis Dellepiane, who mobilized troops throughout the city, resulting in weeks of street clashes that left nearly 1,000 dead. Later, the situation was fairly controlled, and the Interior Ministry acted as an interlocutor with the workers, who obtained wage increases that were in the range of 20 to 40%, in addition to the release of leaders of the FORA.

University Reform of 1918

Although by the turn of the 20th century, the University's influence extended into many areas, it was from 1918 that its character as a rector gained unusual force.

In line with developments in the country and the world, in June 1918 in Córdoba, university youth started a movement for genuine democratization of education that quickly garnered membership across the continent. This gesture, known as the University Reform, is one of the origin myths of 20th-century Córdoba, and one of the starting points of entry into modernity. The 1918 University Reform anticipated the "French May" by half a century and extended its influence to all universities in Argentina and Latin America.

The reformers' claims were for the renewal of the structures and objectives of the universities, the implementation of new methodologies of study and teaching, scientific reasoning against dogmatism, free speech, engagement with social reality, and student participation in faculty governance.

The programmatic bases that established the Reformation were:

• Student Co-government
• University Autonomy
• Free Teaching
• Academic Freedom
• Competitions with student participation in juries
• Research as a function of universities
• University Extension and commitment to society