The Argentine Student Movement during the Dictatorship (1976-1983)

GUADALUPE A. SEIA

Londres-París/Virtual

Seminario; Seminar in Contemporary International History; 2022

London School of Economics y Sciences Po París

This article poses the question of how the university student movement organised despite persecutionand repression under the last dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983). In March 1976, the ArgentineArmed Forces perpetrated a coup d'état which interrupted the government of María Estela Martínez,Juan Domingo Perón´s widow. The dictatorship of the so-called 'Proceso de ReorganizaciónNacional' ('National Reorganisation Process') was a state terrorist regime that looked to eliminate‘subversive organizations’, discipline workers, students, and social society, and make profoundtransformations in the national economic system according to neoliberal premises. The 'NationalReorganisation Process’ also intervened in state-owned Universities, banned political activism insidethem, and outlawed most student organisations and left-wing political parties. This regimen was one ofthe dictatorships inspired in the National Security Doctrine, installed in Latin America during the 1970sby the military together with conservative allies.