Facundo Iglesia 
The unauthorized entrance of Jujuy Police officers into the National University of Jujuy (UNJu) campus to burst into a meeting of the Superior Council on Wednesday has been met by widespread condemnation, from human rights organizations all the way to Jujuy Governor Gerardo Morales, who stated he wasn’t aware of it and said there would be consequences.
“I have already asked that the police officers who trampled on university autonomy be sanctioned,” tweeted Morales, who is also a vice-presidential candidate for opposition coalition Juntos por el Cambio (JxC).
According to the human rights organization Provincial Comission of Memory, which also condemned the incident, the incident happened while the Council was debating “the regressiveness of the constitutional reform promoted by the provincial government,” which was adopted on June 20 amid protests and police repression.
The police eventually left the premises after professors and students asked them to, but recordings show they remained at the campus entrance.
Political, human rights, and educational organizations widely condemned the incident. “We defend the principles of autonomy and self-government that national universities have and that are guaranteed by both the Constitution and the Law of Higher Education and we cannot allow this type of event to occur in Jujuy or in any university,” the National Minister of Education, Jaime Perczyk, said in a press release.
Some hours after the incident, the police arrested Iván Blacutt, a professor at the university who had called attention to the persecution and filmed the officers. However, after the arrest, the Jujuy Public Prosecutor Office said that Blacutt was arrested for allegedly having been involved in the “violent” protests against the provincial Constitution reform.
“This person was filmed in the events that started in the legislature on June 20 and can be seen carrying a stick of important size and throwing stones,” prosecutor Diego Funes said in a press conference, showing a blurry image as evidence. “Sadly, information that is not true is going viral.”
In the last two days, at least ten people have been detained in Jujuy, including lawyers. More than forty arrest warrants were issued in early July against people who allegedly took part in different protests against the constitutional reform. Amid the situation, President Alberto Fernández ordered a takeover of the local Peronist party, which voted in favor of Morales’ constitutional reform.
Behind the breach
“Police intrusion without a search warrant is a clear violation of the university’s autonomy,” Mariana Katz, a lawyer at the Peace and Justice Service (SERPAJ, its Spanish acronym), an NGO led by Nobel-prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, told the Herald. Together with Amnesty International and other organizations, SERPAJ filed a habeas corpus petition for the arrested lawyers.
“Lawyers in Jujuy are terrified,” she added.
According to Katz, university autonomy is “a way of protecting the freedom of thought.” A document issued in 2001 by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on academic freedom vows to protect this right. “The intervention of state security forces in academic institutions violates their autonomy and generates an intimidating effect on the academic community,” it reads.
According to Katz, Jujuy’s provincial police act under the orders of the provincial government — meaning that the order to go into the university, if there were any, would have come from Morales’ cabinet.
Morales, however, said that “such an abuse of power is inadmissible and should be condemned.” “Argentina’s issues will be solved not with authoritarianism but by respecting the law,” he stated.
Earlier this week, Morales had said that he was analyzing the expropriation of the Buenos Aires University (UBA, its Spanish acronym) building in Tilcara, Jujuy, on the grounds that its members were involved in the protests.
“They are the ones who encourage the roadblocks,” he said in an interview with Channel 7 of Jujuy. “I have already made a presentation to the UBA, if they don’t answer we are going to expropriate,” Morales added.
“This is not going to stay like this… We are going to finish imposing order.”
“To call him ‘cynical’ would be an understatement,” Mariana Katz said about Morales.
A presidential take over
President Alberto Fernández, who is also the head of the National Council of the Justicialist Party (PJ), ordered a takeover of the Jujuy party branch in order to “align it with [the same position] Peronism has in the whole country — a clear opposition to the government of Gerardo Morales and his repressive policies.”
Last month, Jujuy Peronist representatives voted in favor of Morales’ constitutional reform, which sparked the protests. With this decision, Fernández displaced provincial deputy and national senator candidate Rubén Rivarola from the Jujuy PJ leadership.
“We are concerned with institutional violence. We have never accepted it in our administration, and are concerned that provincial governments in some parts of the country do that kind of thing,” Fernández said on Friday.
