La Toma

I went to UBA for my history class on Wednesday, to find a "toma," i.e. a taking of the school. Students had locked one of the two entrances and had moved all of the desks into the hallway,. At the open entrance, they had barricaded the entrance to the main hallway and stairs, and were standing on tables passing out literature and explaining the situation. I found a very friendly boy in a hammer and sickle t-shirt, and he explained the situation to me. Apparently, there had been an assembly of social sciences students the night before, and they had voted, with heavy encouragement from the professors who attended, to take the school. Although they're super into protesting here, a "toma" (I think) is a bit more serious. The last time they did it, in 2006, was in protest to the appointment of Atilio Alterini, a figure in the military dictatorship, to the position of Rector.

A group of students and a professor announced that they were on their way to the student march, so I decided to tag along. As I said, Argentinians like they're marches, so I've encountered quite a few since arriving. However, this was definitely the biggest one I've seen, and also the one with the most energy. It seemed like everyone marching was either carrying a sign, shouting into a megaphone, beating a drum, or leading the group in a protest chant. I'm terrible at estimating crowd sizes, but, for reference, I'm pretty sure we took up at least a city block. There were lots of social sciences student groups there, as well as student representatives of political parties, and supporting student groups from other facultades like engineering and architecture. We marched to the ministry of education building, where I met a very nice group of communications majors who answered my many questions, told me their opinions, and invited me to get a beer with them afterwards (we have plans to meet up again soon, which is really exciting for me).

As far as I can tell, two events precipitated this strike, in addition to the generally bad conditions at UBA. First of all, a ceiling beam fell on a student in one of the social sciences buildings last week. Also, the government announced that it will pay back its debt to the Paris Club that it repudiated in 2001, despite the fact that it hasn't increased UBA's budget since the 2001 financial crash and ensuing inflation (I'm still a bit hazy on the facts, so if someone, for some reason, knows I'm wrong, please tell me). If you're interested:, here's a better explanation of the debt repayment than I can give: http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/09/02/argentina.debt.ap/index.html.

The main student complaints are as follows: the lack of gas and water in the buildings, the lack of evacuation plans, the lack of salaries for professors, the insufficient number of classes, and the division of La Facultad de Ciencias Sociales among three buildings, which makes organizing more difficult. I can't quite figure out the relationship between UBA and the government. Obviously, its the main source of their money. Despite this reliance, students, professors and alumni all have some say over the allocation of this money and over other important decisions, which I find really interesting. One of my history professor's main complaints is that only full-time professors get to vote, leaving virtually all the staff disenfranchised.

I'm very curious about the inner-workings of UBA, and I still have a lot to learn. But attending the march was a great start, as well as a fun evening.