Los reformistas is the sixth volume in the series Los Argentinos published by Editorial Jorge Alvarez. Previous volumes have been concerned with such elements of the Argentine historical scene as the caudillos, the socialists, the workers, and others. The authors or more properly the editors of the present work, native porteños both, are products of the Faculty of Law in the national university and have long concerned themselves with the university reform movement in Argentina from the active inception of that movement in 1918 down to the present day.
The reformers with whom we are here concerned are those who were associated with the movement in its own day or the liberal, intellectual heirs of the movement in ensuing years. Brief extracts from their works are arranged chronologically in relationship to the post-1918 stages of Argentine history, and these help to interpret the evolving meanings and implications of the original movement.
The editors stress that their primary concern throughout is “lasconexiones entre el movimiento reformista y la política nacional” (p. 16). In other words, while the immediate impetus to action in 1918 derived from relatively minor issues in Córdoba, the reform movement soon went beyond such modest matters. In subsequent years the concept of reform as related to 1918 has equally broadened in scope to encompass socio-economic groups, political parties, and national issues that were only vaguely comprehended and anticipated at that time.
Those familiar with, involved in, and affected by the academic activism of the present day may study with considerable interest this comparable movement of a half-century ago. Beginning in an interior city of Argentina, it spread out and left a permanent impress on higher education through half a continent. The lives, philosophies, and actions of those who were graduated from the reforming institutions eventually influenced a far greater number of people whom they ultimately came to lead.
