Dictatorships in the Southern Cone and the restriction on university admission

the coup to the university

Abstract

Starting in the middle of the 20th century, a wave of dictatorial governments developed in the countries of the Southern Cone that explicitly set out to stop the advance of communism in the region. Seen in a regional key, the experiences of Argentina, Chile and Uruguay have as their starting point the military coup conducted in Brazil in 1964, against the democratic Government of Joao Goulart. Now, these dictatorial governments were different from previous dictatorships in the region and paid special attention to the limitation of university life: youth had to be repressed and controlled so that communism did not advance. This text, constructed from a survey of secondary – documentary – sources, describes and analyzes the policies of restriction on university admission that were developed during the dictatorships of the second half of the 20th century, considering the cases of Argentina (1976-1985), Chile (1973-1990) and Uruguay (1973-1985). The bibliographical search allows us to account for the typical modus operandi of the dictatorships of the time that aimed to restrict the democratization processes of university education and install the politics of terror in the university environment. Thus, the dictatorships of that time dealt the coup to the university. The universities were subject to strong state intervention, with measures that limited access to higher education through the reduction of available spots, the establishment of stricter academic requirements, and the exclusion of social groups considered dangerous or subversive by the military governments.