La Noche de los Bastones Largos

1966 state violence Buenos Aires

La Noche de los Bastones Largos ("The Night of the Long Batons") was the violent dislodging of students and teachers from five academic faculties of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), by the Federal Argentine Police, on July 29, 1966. The academic faculties had been occupied by the students, professors, and graduates (the autonomous government of the university) who opposed the political intervention by the military government of General Juan Carlos Onganía to unilaterally revoke the academic freedom established in the 1918 university reform.

On June 28, 1966, a coup led by General Juan Carlos Onganía had overthrown elected president Arturo Illia and started the military government known as the Revolución Argentina. The Argentine public universities were by then organised as dictated by the university reform, which established the autonomy of the university, and a political power divided in a tripartite government of students, professors and graduates. The repression was particularly violent in the faculties of Exact and Natural Sciences and Philosophy and Literature of the UBA. The Argentine Federal Police, which was under military control since June 28, 1966, had orders to repress victims harshly. The name given to the events refers to the long batons used by the police to hit students, professors and graduates while removing them from the buildings. 400 people were detained, with laboratories and libraries completely destroyed.

With the intervention of the military government to the universities, a strict censorship was applied to the contents of the programs, and the scientific project of tight relationship between education and investigation in the universities. The act of the military government is considered a central reference of the cultural and academic decadence, and the brain drain in Argentina.