The national student front. Left, reformism, and peronism in debate, 1966-1973

Abstract

The National Student Front (FEN, by its initials in Spanish) was born in 1966, shortly before the coup d’État that intervened the national universities occurred. Under the "Argentine Revolution", the militants of the FEN would cut quickly their ties with the left-wing reformism, in order to join Peronism. The FEN would thus become one of the most representative groups in the university world of this trend, being the Universidad de Buenos Aires the largest of its kind. Nevertheless, this movement would begin to lose relevance at the beginning of the seventies, once they made relations with the Iron Guard. In this article, I intend to explore this journey, establishing the stages covered by the FEN, and focusing on Buenos Aires. In this regard, diverse sources will be analysed, among them, materials edited by the own organization which, until now, were not explored. The theoretical point of view that organizes this research focuses on the social confrontations in which the FEN was involved, observing fundamentally the reflections that its militants extracted of their participation, and how these musings influenced the internal transformations mentioned.