student groups of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the UBA They faced each other this Tuesday in a pitched fight in the hall on the first floor of the headquarters of this university, located at Puan 480, in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Caballito, and the authorities decided to suspend classes “until further notice.”
As reported in a statement, it was a violent confrontation between students who are members of the New More, Partido Obrero, and a group of sympathizers of the Socialist Workers Party group. The conflict would have started after they took down posters with various slogans, among those calling for the release of Jaru Alexander Rodríguez, one of those arrested for the attack on Cristina Kirchner’s office.
In a video that was shared on social networks and recorded by a student who belongs to the Socialist Workers party, you can see the moment before the confrontation between the two groups. The young man relates that members of the Nuevo Más take down posters and flags consigned by their group.
“This is the ‘Ya Basta’, this is the New More, in order to defend their interestsThey are capable of ripping out a poster of Jaru Rodríguez to put up a poster of Manuela Castañeira, to stick your own. They are tearing up posters of the dismissed workers of Latam, They don’t care about the struggle of the workers or that there are political detainees who are from the University of Buenos Aires. This is how ‘Ya Basta’ works”, denounces the student in the video.
The messages did not take long to appear on social networks, as did the images of those who were present at the time of the confrontation and managed to record with their cell phones. In another video, you can see the level of violence that was experienced in the hall of this faculty where a crowd of students faced punches between shouts.
For his part, Castañeira, national leader of the New MAS, spoke about the incidents through his Twitter account. “We repudiate the violence of the FITU against our student group ¡Ya Basta! in Philosophy and Letters from the UBA, that he cannot stand an adverse electoral result and that with Stalinist gangster methods he wants to overwhelm our group and its achievements obtained with militancy in recent years and the historic vote of days ago, ”he wrote.
In another tweet, he added: “We also warn against the threat of sanctions from the authorities for acts of which ¡Ya Basta! he is the victim of a front of more groups. No sanction for the students!”
These incidents occur after on Saturday the results of a very disputed election in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters were known, where El Colectivo triumphed, the list of the groups of the Frente de Todos, for a difference of 85 votes on the list of The Left to the Unity Front (PTS, PO, IS, MST and Obrera Policy).
As it transpired, from the beginning of the campaign the leftist groups argued that with unity it was possible to recover the Student Center, currently run by El Colectivo. Many students who voted for the left questioned that the Ya Basta-New MAS has broken the list of unity and, consequently, has facilitated the victory of the ruling groups.
The Left to the Unity Front ended with 31.69% (1,900 votes) and was left with the minority representation on the Board of Directors, in addition to obtaining the majority on the History career board and the minority in Arts and Philosophy.
After the incidents the university authorities convened an extraordinary session of the Board of Directors for Monday, April 18 at 1:00 p.m., “in order to define the application of the disciplinary framework of the UBA”.