Gender and Generation: The University Reform Movement in Argentina, 1918

In March 1918, students at the National University of Cordoba (UNC), Argentina, rebelled against the university system, accusing professors of being authoritarian, inefficient, clerically oriented, and obscurantist. Through strikes, rallies, petitions to the national authorities, and the seizure of the UNC in September 1918, the students successfully forced the national government to carry out the University Reform, thus serving as an inspiration to university students all over Argentina and Latin America. This 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. The essay examines the two interrelated meanings of the reformist identity: that of a distinct generation with a specific historical mission, and of a particular masculinity that embodied the ideals of science, intellectualism, morality, and heroism. The study of the reformists' agenda, corporate organization, and collective action reveals the simultaneity of student identity formation and student politics as well as the way in which the reformist identity was instrumental to the movement's political goals. Equally important, it demonstrates how an identity constructed on ideals of a distinct masculinity and generation was the product of complex relations of identification, differentiation, and opposition that the reformists established with workers, women, Catholic students, and especially, with their professors.