Science, military dictatorships and constitutional governments in Argentina

Pablo Miguel Jacovkis

National University of Tres de Febrero and University of Buenos Aires

1. Introduction
Argentina has a long tradition of conflicts between scientific development1 (or
educational development) and authoritarian governments.2 Between 1835 and 1852,
although he was only Governor of the Buenos Aires Province and responsible for
Argentinean Foreign Affairs - that is, a sort of primus inter pares amongst the other
thirteen governors -, general Juan Manuel de Rosas ruled the country with an iron fist.
Among his obscurantist measures we may mention that he stopped paying salaries to the
professors at the University of Buenos Aires (the salaries having to be paid exclusively
through the tuition of the students, see Buchbinder (2005)). The simplified image, that
from the establishment of the constitutional republic between 1852 and 1862 on
education and support for science flourished, is reasonably true. We can mention the
outstanding work of President Sarmiento (1868-1874), who, besides strongly backing
elementary education, created, during his administration, the (later named) National
Meteorological Service, the National Academy of Sciences in Crdoba and, also in
Crdoba, the Astronomic Observatory. In particular, the creation of the Observatory is
quite symbolic, as it was necessary to have an ambitious idea of what science means to
create an astronomic observatory in a country of two million inhabitants which had just
ended a terrible war, in which 80 percent of the population was illiterate, locate it in a

In this work we shall focus in natural and exact sciences, without mentioning social sciences and
humanities.
2

Anyway, in Argentina the relationship between authoritarian (in the 20th century, usually military, or
with a strong military influence) governments, on the one hand, and science and technology, on the
other hand, was ambiguous. The military appreciated that science is needed to develop industry and the
technical potential of the nation, but they distrusted Argentinean scientists. We shall describe this
ambiguity in this work.

small city of thirty thousand inhabitants, and convince an internationally known

astronomer -Benjamin Gould- to be in charge.3 Sarmiento's approach to science has other
very remarkable characteristics, such as his lecture in homage to Darwin in 1882, in
which he demonstrated a stunning knowledge of science. Sarmiento was not alone; the
so-called generation of the 80s encouraged secular elementary education. Juan Mara
Gutirrez, as President of the University of Buenos Aires, founded the Department of
Exact Sciences, which eventually became the Faculties of Exact and Natural Sciences, of
Engineering and of Architecture, Design and Urbanism.4 Following this line of thought,
we may also mention the creation of the National University of La Plata in 1905, the
support its President Joaqun B. Gonzlez gave to science, and many other similar
developments.

There were also shadows: neither Gutirrez nor Gonzlez were successful in their efforts
to create genuinely scientific universities. The difficulties, for example, that the future
Nobel Prize winner Bernardo Houssay had to overcome to be appointed professor of
Physiology at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Buenos Aires show that the
prevailing culture at that University did not hold scientific activity in high regard
(Vaccarezza 1981). There were even outbreaks of authoritarianism which provoked, for
instance, a selected group of secondary education teachers to create a private high school
after resigning from their positions at the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires, the flagship
of secondary education for upper class children (Sanguinetti 2006). But, overall, the
liberal country that existed between 1862 and 1930, in its elitist version until 1916 and
3

Gould remained in Argentina for more than fifteen years where he developed an amazing amount of
scientific activity, especially recording stars from the southern hemisphere. He also directed the
National Meteorological Bureau (the future National Meteorological Service). A glimpse of his
professional activity in the USA may be seen in Galison (2005). For a more detailed analysis of Gould's
life, see Bernaola (2001).
4

The Department was created in 1865. As Halperin Donghi (1962) describes, Gutirrez entrusted the
Italian physician Paolo Mantegazza with the hiring of well-paid professors in Italy. Three Italian
professors were hired in this way. It is remarkable that, in spite of the huge economic -and politicalproblems due to the war against Paraguay, that (for Argentina) began the same year, the authorities
maintained the project of appointing the professors. It is clear that the hiring was part of a scientifically
-or, at least, academically- ambitious project.

in its mass-democratic version between 1916 and 1930, either supported scientific
development or did not obstruct it.5 And during this period, in 1918, University Reform
began in Crdoba, which among other things, was an attempt to modernize the archaic
university structures. It spread like wild-fire, not only all across the country but also
across Latin America. The Reformists enthusiastically supported science, although
Bernardo Houssay, who as mentioned was the most distinguished scientist contemporary
with the University Reform, and several of his colleagues, opposed it.6

2. The military incursion into national politics

From 1930 onwards the situation became more confused. That year, a military coup-d'tat
led by Jos Flix Uriburu, a general with fascist tendencies, overthrew President Hiplito
Yrigoyen, and the long period of constitutional governments, which had begun in 1862,
was interrupted. Uriburu's quasi-fascist project was unsuccessful: reluctantly, he was
forced to call a general election and a new period of constitutional governments began.
This new period was based on this first election, which outlawed the yrigoyenists and,
in addition, the period was marked by electoral fraud.7

The first President of this new period was also a professional military man, Agustn P.
Justo (1932-1938), who had collaborated with the military coup. At the same time, the

In fact, the second option, that the ruling class did not obstruct scientific development, is closer to the
truth. This is in the sense that the ruling class did not actively harm it: except for a minority of
members of the elite, including firstly the already mentioned names (and particularly Sarmiento, the
politician and statesman who most supported science in the 19th century, and perhaps in all our history),
the ruling class of that time showed more indifference towards science than actual support for it.
6

The relatively small success of the Argentinean reformists in transforming the universities in scientific
centers of excellence requires a detailed analysis beyond the scope of this work. Hurtado (2010)
carefully describes the (also failed) attempts of Houssay and his colleagues, around the 1940s, to create
private universities with a scientific orientation in order to solve the problem of scarce scientific activity
in national universities.
7

The triumphant group, among the sectors who had supported Uriburu's coup-d'tat, favored the elitist
republic from before 1916; this regression was impossible without electoral fraud.

Church recovered part of the influence it had lost during the elitist republic.8 Justos
administration was a right-wing administration, whose legitimacy was questioned by
many citizens. Significantly, Justo does not fit the traditional image that the intellectuals
adopted some years later of uncouth and ignorant coup-prone military men: Justo was an
engineer besides being a military man, and was quite cultivated. Perhaps an indication of
his, and his collaborators, intellectual capacity is the skill with which Argentina managed
to reduce the worst effects of the 1930 world crisis (faster than many other countries).9

General Enrique Mosconi was another very capable and learned man, and also an
engineer, who was fired from his position as Director of YPF10 as soon as Uriburu took
power, and would never have thought of participating in a plot against a constitutional
government. On the other hand, the father of the Argentinean iron and steel industry,
General Manuel Savio, was a right-wing nationalist who participated in Uriburus coup.
In a sense, the Argentinean iron and steel industry was born in a state of sin, because of
Savios influence. Savio was representative of the strong nationalist right-wing group in
the Argentinean Armed Forces who, during the period (1930-1983) in which the Armed
Forces exerted an immense power in Argentina, be it directly or by pressure on civilian
governments, could never solve a crucial problem:11 for those nationalists, the Armed

Given the low legitimacy of the new administration, it needed the Church's support, which in the elitist
republic had not been necessary. The relationship between the Church and General Justo's
administration (and the subsequent administrations until 1943) is described in Zanatta (1996), who also
describes the process of re-Christianization of the Argentinean Army, until then rather liberal (in the
nineteenth-century meaning of this word).
9

For instance, Hernndez Andreu (1987) points out that the Argentinean growth rate was higher than the
Canadian and American ones during the 1930s decade.
10

YPF (Yacimientos Petrolferos Fiscales) was a state-owned firm that competed against the powerful
foreign oil companies. Mosconi transformed YPF in the 1920s into an important company. Until its
privatization in the 1990s YPF symbolized Argentinean nationalism before the big international oil
firms, for the left as well as for the nationalist right.
11

The power of the Armed Forces, which reached its zenith during the last dictatorship (1976-1983),
began to dissolve after the defeat in the Falkland (Malvinas) war against Great Britain (1982), which
forced them to call a general election. The winner was Ral Alfonsn, who as soon as he was

Forces should be powerful, so that Argentina could be in a position to face Brazil (and/or
Chile), according to the hypotheses of conflict studied at the time.12 In order to have
powerful Armed Forces, Argentina should be technologically developed and
industrialized. Technological development

was obviously related to

scientific

development. The insolvable problem for the military was that many scientists (not all, of
course) were dangerous leftists or, at least, did not trust the Armed Forces.13

So, on the one hand, some sectors of the Armed Forces wanted to incorporate
scientifically and technologically trained people to their industrialist projects, and on the
other hand suspected many of these people of communism, or something similar. Unlike
Mosconi who, until he died in 1940, was not particularly appreciated by the governments
originating in the 1930 coup, Savio got along very comfortably, not only during the
fraudulent Conservative governments that survived until the following coup-dtat in
1943, but also during the 1943-1946 military government, which was originally much
more authoritarian and right-wing than the previous one, and within which some of its
members embraced a strong fascist ideology. Indeed, except for the fact that the situation
was tragic, the subsequent repression of university students and faculty by the military
authorities, including the imprisonment of many of them, would seem to be an
exaggerated caricature of military-clerical hatred of science.14 Recall that shortly after
inaugurated as President ordered that the members of the military Juntas during the dictatorship be
judged. With ups and downs, the militarys power began to decrease significantly, until it practically
disappeared during Carlos Menems and Nstor Kirchners administrations. In fact, symbolically the
disappearance of military power in Argentina may be represented by the replacement of all members of
the general staff on May 25, 2003, when Kirchner, elected with a scarce 20 percent of the votes, was
inaugurated. Furthermore, during a ceremony, before the eyes of the President, the Army Chief of Staff
removed the portraits of former military dictators Jorge Rafael Videla and Reynaldo Bignone on March
24, 2004.
12

Nationalist military men were extremely concerned for the Argentinean military power in the context of
a military government (1943-46) and the Second World War (in which Argentina was neutral until the
last possible moment). This concern is reflected in the fact that, in 1945, 43.3 percent of the national
budget was set aside for the Armed Forces (Potash, 1981).
13

This contradiction refers to mathematics and natural sciences, and their corresponding technologies. In
this work we shall not analyze how military men considered social sciences and humanities.
14

coming to power, the military authorities changed the name of the Colegio Nacional de
Buenos Aires to Saint Charles University School (inspired by the name the school had
during colonial times) and appointed Juan Sepich, a priest, as principal, (Sanguinetti,
2006).15

It is important to draw a line between the relationship of the Armed Forces with science
and technology before and after 1930, that is, before and after their irruption as a
protagonist of Argentinean politics until 1983. There was not a sudden change: on the one
hand, after 1930 the Armed Forces followed or tried to follow - policies that were not
too different from prior ones; on the other hand, their process of ideologization, involving
a special mysticism and re-Christianization, had begun before 1930.16 What happened
in 1930 was a qualitative and quantitative change in the influence of the military in
national politics. In previous years, its not inconsiderable influence was expressed in the
traditional way of constitutional democratic countries (eg the opinions of important
officers, articles in periodicals and newspapers, and so on). From 1930 on, the military
either had the right of veto or overthrew governments which did not accept their right of
veto. They began to have a power and a responsibility that they had not had before, and
their relationship with technologists and scientists and their interest in science and
technology became in a direct part of national policies.

3. Armed Forces, science and technology

As already mentioned, from 1930 onwards the Catholic Church began to recover the influence it
had held until the liberalism of the 1880s generation; part of the (successful) strategy of the Church in this
regard was to increase its influence amongst the Armed Forces.
15

This change of name was short-lived.

16

Perhaps one can establish, as the beginning of this process, the speech delivered in Lima by the great
poet (turned into a right-wing nationalist) Leopoldo Lugones in December, 1924, in the centenary of a
battle which secured independence from Spain of its South American colonies, where he uttered the
unfortunate sentence The hour of the sword, for the good of the world, has again arrived (Lugones,
1979).

The interest of the military in science and technology existed from Argentinas
beginnings as an independent country. In fact, after the May 1810 Revolution, and the
replacement of the Spanish Viceroy with a new government not appointed by Spain (the
First Junta), in September, 1810, the Junta created a School of Mathematics, and
Manuel Belgrano, one of its members, delivered a significant speech, in which he said
that a young officer would find in this institution all the tools provided by
mathematical science applied to the lethal, although necessary, art of war (Babini, 1986).
Anyway, the period until the definitive constitution of the Argentinean state in 1862 was
very unstable, so that it is worth observing that, for the Armed Forces, it was only from
this year on that any discussion about national projects, tacit or explicit, was possible.

The period 1850-1950 is described very well by Ortiz (1992): originally, military and
civilian higher education were not divided, but they increasingly separated, due, for
instance, to the creation of the Technical Higher School of the Army. Some important
military men of great intellectual capacity (Justo, Mosconi) had become engineers
studying at the universities, but eventually the officers obtained their technical training in
military institutions, and this phenomenon contributed to the separation of military men
from civilians. As their influence on Argentinean politics increased after 1930, many of
them began to think of themselves as a kind of aristocratic elite, and this feeling
permeated their relationship with science and technology. It cannot be ruled out that this
trend had been combined with the German influence in the Army (much less in the Navy,
which had been influenced by Britain), and with the influence of the Church, so as to
create a contradictory situation between the pro-industry wishes of the military and the
mistrust vis--vis scientists and technologists.

4. The Pern era

General Juan Domingo Pern was elected President in 1946 in the first non-fraudulent
elections since the 1930 coup-dtat. His administration was marked by two
conflicting aspects: persecution and support. On the one hand, there were
persecutions, firing of faculty and scientists, repression (including his unfortunate role

in a scientific-technological fiasco, in which he trusted a pseudo-scientific trickster

who claimed to be able to perform nuclear fusion under controlled laboratory
conditions, which turned out to be an international faux-pas after spending a lot of
public money).17 On the other hand, the period saw the creation of the National
Agency for Atomic Energy [CONEA] and the development of the aeronautics
industry. Both in the nuclear fusion fiasco and in the support to the aeronautics
industry, German scientists and technologists who had emigrated to Argentina after the
Second World War participated in meaningful ways: in the nuclear fusion affair the
protagonist was the Austrian Ronald Richter, and in the aeronautics project Kurt Tank18
(who had influenced in the decision of bringing Richter to Argentina). Tank developed
jointly with other migr German engineers- the Pulqui II airplane, of which five
prototypes were made, the last of them in 1959. In any event, there is a fundamental
difference between Tank and Richter: there can be no doubt regarding Tanks
professional quality, regardless of any discussion on the real value of the Pulqui II
models.19 It is possible to strongly criticize the huge budget spent in the project Pulqui
II but, on the other hand, that kind of undertaking potentially had additional benefits
that were difficult to take into account but not negligible: training of personnel;
suppliers with professional expertise that outlived their main client; spill-over of stateof-the-art technology; and so on.20 It is worth mentioning that, before the Pulqui II,
there was a Pulqui I project, which also took place during Perns administration, but
without much success. One of the main participants was the French engineer mile

17

The story of this fiasco is told pleasantly and carefully in Mariscotti (1985). It is very interesting to
see that Pern paid more attention to German scientists and engineers than to the Argentinean scientific
community.
18

The arrival of Tank and some of his collaborators has been described for instance in Goi (1998).
19

A detailed history and discussion on Project Pulqui II may be consulted in Artopoulos (2007).
20

Anyway, those projects in the military area almost always failed in Argentina. In particular, Pulqui II, as
Artopoulos (2007) describes.

Dewoitine, who fled France due to the fact that he collaborated actively with the Vichy
rgime.21

5. Peronism outlawed
Although some distinguished professors maintained their positions at the Universities, in
spite of political repression and discrimination against professors who did not join the
Peronist Party, many intellectuals, scientists and professionals, leftists and rightists,
suffered the interruption of their academic careers due to persecution22. So, it is not
surprising that, after Perns fall in 1955, due to a military coup-dtat with civilian
support in an extremely polarized society, they returned enthusiastically to the
Universities. Many of them contributed to the university revival between 1955 and 1966,
which was considered by many people as the golden age of Argentinean universities23.
In fact, historians and journalists could remark the curious phenomenon of a military
coup in Argentina which, unlike all previous (and subsequent) coups, supported
democratization of the universities and scientific and technological development.24 By
the way, those concepts do not necessarily go together: Houssays attitude vis--vis a

21

In 1948 Dewoitine was sentenced (in absentia) to twenty years of hard labour (Klich,1999).
22

Not only the persecutions. For many professionals and intellectuals the authoritarianism of the
government, the pressure on people to become members of the government party, and what could be
called (in current terminology) cult of personality (eg the name of the President and of his late wife
given to streets, cities, provinces; the manuals for elementary school which praised the authorities) were
a sufficient reason either to distance themselves from the government, or to participate in the opposition
to it.
23

Buchbinder (2005) offers a general idea of the evolution of universities in that period; Halperin Donghi
(1962) analyzes the University of Buenos Aires, but his view, although very detailed, does not cover the
final phase of this period, subsequent to the writing of his book. As a particular example of progress in
that period in one discipline, computer science, see Jacovkis (2006), and Factorovich and Jacovkis
(2009).
24

On the one hand, the coup was supported by right wing scientists such as Houssay; on the other
hand, left wing students (Reformists) had suffered Perns persecutions and had after the coup- much
influence in the universities. The military government rewarded both groups.

democratic university is a clear counterexample.25 Moreover, during the military

government (which outlawed Peronism and lasted until 1958, when constitutional
President Frondizi was elected) the National Institute of Farming Technology [INTA], the
National Institute of Industrial Technology [INTI] and the National Council of Scientific
and Technical Research [CONICET] were created in 1956, 1957 and 1958, respectively:
these three institutions which, jointly with CONEA, constitute the backbone of the
scientific and technological Argentinean system, were founded during a military rgime.

During Frondizis administration, from 1958 until his overthrow by a military coup in
1962, the government clearly backed scientific and technological development, in
spite of rapid disillusionment amongst many intellectuals who supported him. This
disillusionment was due essentially to his Congress bill authorizing private
universities to offer legal degrees, and to him signing contracts with American oil
firms that were completely opposed to his ideas, and which were exposed in an
influential book written four years earlier (Frondizi, 1954). In fact, the ideology of
President Frondizi can be called developmentalism, which meant, among other
things, the belief that scientific and technological development was fundamental to
turn Argentina, as Frondizi wished, into a capitalist developed country. In that sense,
there was not so much difference between Frondizi and the progressive scientists and
university people (the reformists) who had a strong influence in several public
universities, especially in the University of Buenos Aires. Here, they controlled its
Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences, which was transformed into an internationally
recognised research centre. In any event, Frondizi needed to hold onto power under
difficult circumstances. On the one hand he confronted the Peronists, because he did
25

The bad political relationship between Houssay and the reformist students may be observed, for
instance, in the debate in the Council of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Buenos Aires
between Houssay who, as member of the Council had proposed restrictions on the number of students
who could be admitted to the Faculty, and the members representing the students, who were opposed to
the restriction (Cibotti, 1996). And Houssays distrust in the politicization of the University is clearly
seen in his first speech as a member of the Argentinean Academy of Arts in 1939. In this speech he says
of the late academician ngel Gallardo [h]e was one of the few men who ruled it [the University of
Buenos Aires] who has not been contaminated by the so called university politics, which often is a fight
of egoisms trying to dominate (Houssay, 1939).

not achieve what he had promised them in a secret agreement that permitted the
Peronists to vote for him, thus guaranteeing his triumph in the 1958 elections. He also
had to face right-wing politicians and the Armed Forces, because that same secret
agreement was considered a betrayal of the anti-Peronist spirit. Frondizis tactic was
to try to obtain more and more support from the Armed Forces and the Catholic
Church. The Church was not particularly interested in scientific and technological
progress; its ambition was to control education, to create Catholic universities and to
avoid the implementation of projects based on subversive ideas, such as divorce.26

As on many occasions in Argentinean history, the military who overthrew Frondizi were,
in some sense, a deeply contradictory group. Frondizi had guaranteed support for any
scientific and technological advances, including science and technology with military
purposes. When Frondizi was overthrown, the Armed Forces controlled the
government despite the existence of a civilian President (Jos Mara Guido), and they
did not yet dare to overthrow the authorities of the national universities. That said,
antiscientific measures were taken, such as the dismissal, in the prestigious National
Institute of Microbiology, of its director, Ignacio Pirosky, and of some of his
collaborators. Pirosky was a distinguished scientist and his dismissal also revealed a
certain anti-Semitic bias. It is equally worth mentioning that, due to the repressive
atmosphere created at the Institute, the future Nobel Prize winner Csar Milstein
resigned from his position there and returned to Great Britain, where he continued his
brilliant career until his death (Hurtado, 2010).

6. The definitive break up between sectors of the scientific community and

the Armed Forces

26

Although many non-confessional private universities exist currently in Argentina, in the beginning the
main beneficiary of Frondizis policy regarding private universities was the Church, which was, besides,
the institution most interested in this policy. The Church mobilized many people in support of private
universities (Ghio, 2008).

The new military regime, with its civilian President, lasted until 1963, when Arturo Illia
was elected President (with Peronism outlawed) and relations between the universities,
the scientists and the government improved, in spite of the fact that student
demonstrations demanding an increase in the educational budget contributed to
weakening the government. In 1966 a new coup overthrew Illia, and the military
appointed General Juan Carlos Ongana as President. That coup, against a President who
always respected freedoms and the rule of law, during whose government the economy
grew annually by 7 percent, and who was gradually legalizing the Peronist Party, shows a
grave and deep distrust of democracy in Argentinean society at that time. That distrust
was useful to Catholic fundamentalism and to the groups that would nowadays be called
neoliberal, to impose their ideologies over several years. In fact, Illia was overthrown
almost without opposition; one of the few opposing voices came from the University of
Buenos Aires where its President issued a strong condemnation of the coup.

One month later, on June 29, 1966, what was symbolically the most important event of
the relationship between the Armed Forces and science and technology in Argentina in
the XX century took place. This was the so-called Night of Long Sticks, when the Federal
Police, under the orders of an Army general, entered the Faculty of Exact and Natural
Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires, beat students, graduates and professors
gathered there, and detained them for several hours. Although this aggression was
incomparably less grave than the repression unleashed by the military in 1976, which also
concerned university people and scientists (there were no dead in 1966, only some who
were bruised) it has been engraved in the collective memory as a potent symbol of
military brutality and of the complete incomprehension and mistrust of the military vis-vis what science means.27 As a consequence, around 1300 professors and teaching
assistants of the University of Buenos Aires resigned. Some of them abandoned their
scientific activities, others emigrated abroad (mainly to Chile and Venezuela) and others
27

On the same day the Federal Police burst into the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the
University of Buenos Aires and, besides using violence against professors, graduates and students,
destroyed mockups of buildings prepared by the students. Very significantly, this event shows the
feeling of the new military government towards intellectual activities.

took refuge in CONICET, where they were tolerated by the authorities because they had
no direct contact with students.28

CONICET was not a refuge for everybody. Despite the fact that Houssay continued being
its President, due to his personal and scientific prestige as well as his right-wing ideology,
CONICET ruled that any researchers who wished to be admitted to the institution would
need to be authorized by the Secretariat of Intelligence of the State [SIDE]., This was an
efficient method to exclude people with suspicious ideologies.29 In fact, in 1970, under
Houssays presidency, and one year before his death, the Board of CONICET proposed to
the military authorities of the country that they appoint Carlos Alberto Sacheri as
Scientific Secretary.

Dr Sacheri was the president of the group The Argentinean

Catholic City, which published an anti-Semitic, anti-liberal, anti-communist, and antiFrench Revolution journal (see Ciencia Nueva (1970)). Houssay voted against the
appointment because the candidate had no scientific background, but he considered that
nonetheless Sacheri had a good record and favorable conditions.

In the non-university scientific and technological institutions (INTI, INTA, CONEA and
others) the ideological filter of SIDE also existed, but was seldom used during Onganas
administration. In the military mindset the communist devil materialized in the public
universities. It is interesting to observe that there were sectors of the Armed Forces who
clearly recognized the importance of science and technology, and that were extremely
worried because of the crisis originating in the Night of Long Sticks (they were also
worried when Frondizi was overthrown), and who considered that the exodus of scientists
28

The bad relations between many groups of students and the Armed Forces has a long tradition in
Argentina, even before the 1930 coup-dtat. Halpern Donghi (1962) describes an extraordinary fuss
in a lecture at the Faculty of Law of the University of Buenos Aires in 1927, where subjects related to
national defense would be discussed. More than 150 officers had attended the lecture, as well as the
President of the University and the Minister of War (the future President Justo). And the
troublemakers were students of law, not future scientists. That is, the military mistrusted students
before they mistrusted scientists.
29

The corresponding resolution was passed by the Board of Directors of the CONICET at the end of 1967
(Hurtado, 2010).

endangered national defense. They were evidently a small minority, and in spite of their
pressure and of the enormous public impact of the Night of the Long Sticks, heightened
because among those beaten was a distinguished American mathematics professor,
Warren Ambrose, who sent a letter to the New York Times, 30 Ongana did nothing to
prevent the exodus of scientists. Although they could not influence the government, those
sectors tried to save what could be saved: scientist Marcelino Cereijido (Cereijido, 1990)
tells how after the 1966 assault on the University (after which Cereijido was dismissed
from his position by the new President of the University), he was called by Brigadier
Bosch, President of the Board of Scientific and Experimental Research of the Armed
Forces. Bosch was not only extremely worried about the potential loss of scientists due to
resignations and dismissals, but also offered Cereijido a position. Bosch fully understood
Cereijidos explanations of his research on biological membranes, and made very precise
and accurate comments on the importance of scientific development in the country and,
above all, on its concrete applications. Next, Bosch accompanied Cereijido to see the
Director of the Institute of Scientific and Technical Researches of the Armed Forces, Rear
Admiral Milia, who also had very sound ideas on scientific applications for development
and national security, and secured a position for Cereijido. According to Cereijido,
around one hundred scientists were protected in similar ways by Bosch and Milia.

Analogously, when in 1974 President Mara Estela Martnez de Pern (Perns widow)
dismissed the authorities of the University of Buenos Aires and replaced them with an
extraordinarily reactionary and obscurantist group, I was a witness to how Commodore
Vlez, in charge of an area of research at the National Institute of Water Science and
Technology (currently National Institute of Water), protected and offered positions to
around thirty scientists who had been fired from the University. Unfortunately, the
general political climate was extremely disagreeable, and many scientists, in any event,
eventually abandoned science or Argentina.31
30

Professor Ambroses letter, dated August 31, 1966, was published on September 11. The international
impact of the assault against the universities is indicated by the articles that appeared in the New York
Times in the days following the Night of Long Sticks.
31

The only successful and relevant military effort at tolerance, and even support, for the
scientific and technological community in Argentina happened at CONEA, where, as
an almost isolated phenomenon in modern Argentinean history, an environment that
was practically constant from the last years of Perns administration on could be
observed.32 Anyway, during the first years of its existence, there was strong opposition
by many physicists to the considerable amount of money put aside for CONEA. Those
physicists thought that it would be much more useful to use this money for
laboratories in national universities. In this regard, after Perns fall, the prestigious
physicist Enrique Gaviola proposed that the CONEA be closed and its buildings,
equipment and personnel be transferred to the universities (Hurtado, 2010); Mario
Bunge (2009) commented that he was one of the opposing physicists, which, in his
case, included a great mistrust vis--vis the Navy, under which, tacitly, CONEA
operated (technically it was not the case, but in practice almost all its Presidents, until
1983, were Navy officers).33

After a turbulent period, in which an urban guerrilla movement emerged, the military
government, with General Lanusse as President, had to call a general election with no
political party outlawed, and in 1973 an extremely unsettled time began, in which the
Peronist right prevailed over the revolutionary Peronist sector in 1974.34 As already
This protection of scientists against ideological discrimination lasted until 1976. The dictatorship
installed that year mercilessly enforced its discriminatory measures; several scientists and technologists
working in public institutions (not only universities) were kidnapped and murdered (or disappeared) and
many others were dismissed.
32

Probably the most successful fruit of the military support to CONEA is the construction of the particle
accelerator TANDAR between 1975 and 1986, described by Hurtado in his book mentioned previously
and in Hurtado and Vara (2007). That was a big science project which, although begun and finished
during constitutional governments, was carried on essentially during the 1976-1983 military
dictatorship, which backed the project both politically and economically.
33

He comments on this also in the foreword to Bernaola (2001).

34

The turbulent period 1973-1974 of revolutionary university did not seriously address the scientific
and technological problems of the country, probably because, on the one hand, it did not have enough

mentioned, the leftist authorities of the universities were replaced by rightist ones;
many professors and teaching assistants were dismissed.35 Moreover, a Dean of the
Faculty of Philosophy, the priest Ral Snchez Abelenda, exorcized his Faculty to
chase away evil spirits. With these extremely reactionary attitudes, the military had
nothing to do: the government had been elected in transparent elections and the
protagonists were all civilians, under the extremely strong influence of the Church. In
Argentina, the Church has always played a main role in the attack against free thinking
and science.36

7. The dictatorship 1976-83

In 1976 Perns widow was overthrown; the last military coup in Argentina started the
bloodiest dictatorship of the 20th century in Argentina. Curiously, many of the
scientists who had to flee from Argentina went to Brazil, where the government was
also a military dictatorship, but where they could comfortably continue their scientific
and academic careers. It is worth noting how much the ways in which the Argentinean
Armed Forces tried to impose their ideology had changed by this time: during the
1943-1946 military government they changed the lyrics of tangos, when written in
slang, so that they become more respectable; during the 1966-1973 military
government they detained unmarried couples caught in hotel rooms rented by the hour
because they were regarded as immoral; during the 1976-1983 military government
they unleashed an indiscriminate repression and thousands of people disappeared. The
ideological influence of fundamentalist Catholic fascism in the Armed Forces is
discussed, for instance, in Finchelstein (2010). Here it is interesting to see the special
role played by CONEA: on the one hand, during this dictatorship (as well as during
time, and on the other hand, it had to face the political fight against the right; further analysis is beyond
the scope of this work.
35

In fact, when the military overthrew President Mara Estela Martnez de Pern in 1976, few professors
in the University of Buenos Aires were fired, because the dirty work had been completed before.
36

When the University Reform began in Crdoba in 1918, the rallying cry was No to the priests! (see
for instance Bruera (2009)).

the others) some scientific institutions, mainly CONEA, were strongly supported and
their scientists and technologists could work without too much political interference;
on the other hand, for instance in CONEA, some scientists disappeared, and its
President, Admiral Castro Madero, did nothing to save them.37 CONEA and related
institutions, on the one hand, enjoyed a stability and the existence of an environment
that are striking in a context which, generally speaking, was so harmful to scientific
and technological development. On the other hand, modern mathematics was
considered subversive38 It is possible that this protection of scientists and
technologists working in CONEA is related to secret militaristic wishes: that to have
an important war industry, and therefore powerful Armed Forces, modern science and
technology are necessary. The cost of having modern ecological niches in some
areas, completely isolated from the general state of development of the country, tends
to be high. The archetypical example is North Korea, which has the atomic bomb and
simultaneously suffers frightening famines. We think that a similar situation in
Argentina would be politically unfeasible.

It is worth mentioning that the contradictions of the Armed Forces were not related
exclusively to the scientific and technological communities. In general, the military
governments in Argentina, with the exception of that of 1943-46, established economic
policies which, in current parlance, we could call neoliberal. But nevertheless, their
nationalism led them to prevent any privatization of a public enterprise. In fact, the most
neoliberal of the military governments, the 1976-1983 dictatorship, not only did not
privatize any enterprise, but nationalized a very important one: the Italian-Argentinean
Electric Company.

37

On the website http://ate-cnea.blogspot.com/2011/04/35-anos-del-golpe.html a list

exists of the 14 people who disappeared in CONEA.
38

Tern (1979) mentions that on December 13, 1978, the Buenos Aires newspaper La Opinin
informed that the Ministry of Education consulted formally the National Academy of Exact, Physical and
Natural Sciences about the potential subversive power of modern mathematics.

8. The scientific and technological community in democracy

From the democratic restoration in 1983 onwards, the Armed Forces lost their influence
in the control of the scientific and technological institutes, and from the 1990s on, they
lost all influence in the country. However, only in the last few years, from 2003 on, does
there seem to be a state policy that supports science. During Alfonsns administration
(1983-1989) and in the second part of Menems administration (1989-1999) there were
competent people in charge of the then Secretariat of State for Science and Technology:
Manuel Sadosky, a distinguished intellectual, and founding father of computer science
studies in Argentina, and Juan Carlos del Bello, respectively. Nevertheless, although all
ideological discrimination disappeared for people who wanted to obtain a position in the
national system of science and technology, the budget for science and technology
continued to be very meagre, scientists and technologists continued to earn low salaries,
scientific laboratories continued to be poorly equipped, the mean age of researchers
continued to increase, and a significant

proportion of young (and not so young)

researchers emigrated, for economic, not political, reasons.

Furthermore, the ambitious project of making up for lost time in the computer science
area, through an intensive training of human resources promoted by Sadosky, was
interrupted when Carlos Menem became President in 1989, and a large part of the effort
was wasted. 39 During the first years of Menems legitimate and democratic government,
the same obscurantist sectors that had occupied positions of power in all military
dictatorships recovered these positions,40 which shows that obscurantism was deeply
ingrained in civil society, and in particular in the intellectual sectors of the Peronist right.
Those sectors had no influence during Alfonsns administration, save for the fact that
39

The project consisted in the creation of the Latin American Higher School in Informatics [ESLAI], a
high level university institution which did not survived the change of government. The history of
ESLAI may be consulted in Jacovkis (2004) or Aguirre (2003), for instance.
40

For instance, Bernab Quartino, President of the University of Buenos Aires between 1971 and 1973,
was the President of CONICET at the beginning of Menems administration (1990-1991).

they conserved institutional power and limited the governments room for maneuver.
Criticism of Alfonsn is more related to his governments indifference to science and
technology than to an obscurantist policy, which by no means existed while he was the
President. In some respects, given that President Menem was legitimately and
democratically elected in 1989 (and reelected in 1995), his attitude regarding science and
technology, especially during his first years of government, is an alarming sign of lack of
interest and incomprehension of an important part of Argentinean society regarding the
importance of science and technology in a developing country. 41 And of that phenomenon
one cannot accuse the Armed Forces.

Summing up, one can say that, in Argentina, usually the obscurantist sectors vis--vis
science were also obscurantist regarding education; that the Church was the intellectual
force behind them, and they obtained more and more power from 1930 on. Also, that they
influenced so much in the military that the Armed Forces became the armed wing of
national obscurantism. But the Armed Forces had no monopoly on obscurantism. Not
all was darkness during military governments, and not all was light during democratic
governments.

Acknowledgements
The author thanks Amparo Gmez her kind invitation to participate in the IV Seminar of
Politics of Science: Science between Democracy and Dictatorship, and to the Spanish
Ministry of Science and Innovation its economic support through the Research Project
FFI2009-09483 and the Complementary Action FFI2010-11969-E. He also thanks Rosita
Wachenchauzer and Israel Lotersztain their comments and observations, and also Amparo
Gmez and Antonio Canales and, especially, Brian Balmer, for their careful review and

41

As a symbolic example, which the scientific community remembers very well, the powerful Minister of
Economy during several years of Menems administration, Domingo Cavallo, contemptuously referred
to scientists (and particularly to female scientists) suggesting that they go wash the dishes.

criticisms of this work, although of course none of them is responsible for the opinions
here expressed.

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