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class was becoming quite nationalistic in its politics in the early 20th
century. It castigated the oligarchy for its cozy relationship with British
interests and supported the expansion of the state bureaucracy as a way
of regaining control over the foreign-dominated economy. On the other
hand, the middle class accepted many elite values. One was a respect
for university education as a mark of prestige, and the other, a fear and
loathing of the uncouth working classes.
Yrigoyen could deal with the educational aspirations of the middle
class more easily than with their antilabor sentiments. The university
strikes of 1918 and 1919 gave him the opportunity to address the for-
mer. When Yrigoyen came to power, Argentina had three institutions of
higher learning: the University of Córdoba, which had colonial origins;
the University of Buenos Aires, founded just following independence;
and the University of La Plata, established in 1890 in the capital of
Buenos Aires province. Government budgets supported the universi-
ties, and although enrollments in these higher institutions had risen
to 14,000 in 1918, the schools remained bastions of the elite. Their
administrations were conservative, and instruction favored law and the
classics over the sciences. If the government was becoming more demo-
cratic, why not the universities, too? The growing body of middle-class
university students boycotted classes beginning in 1918 in an effort to
democratize the administration.
The Radical government seized this opportunity to reform the uni-
versities. Each received a new charter giving the students a voice in
administration. Budgetary controls were tightened, and the student
bodies were expanded to include more middle-class entrants. The state
also founded two new universities, one in Santa Fe and the other in
Tucumán. University education expanded in a manner that subsidized
the middle class and extended additional opportunities to people in the
interior.
Controlling the Popular Classes
The Radicals had found it convenient to cater to another political
constituency: the urban workers. They had learned from the 1916
elections that the middle class, still quite small on a national scale,
did not suffice by itself to overturn conservative rule. Yrigoyen
purposely appealed to urban laborers, but not to rural peons, who
remained under the thumb of the landed oligarchy. The courtship
made political sense: The city of Buenos Aires contained about one-
fourth of the nation's voters, most of whom belonged to the working
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