(From the political party to the university, and the other way around. Argentina’s radical party activism at the University of Buenos Aires after 2001)

Abstract

This article analyzes the engagement of Unión Cívica Radical party’s youth activists in the student political life of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) in recent years. It argues that, faced with electoral collapse and loss of public office after the 2001 crisis, the party took advantage of its historical roots in this university for obtaining resources that, among others, allowed it to survive as an organization and reproduce its activism. The article shows that the university functioned as a refuge that served to recompose the intra-party life of a strongly weakened local organization. It was from within UBA’s politics that internal factions were formed, new grassroots committees were created and local leadership was renewed. The article analyzes the strategies of party’s student groups to preserve or regain their power at the university schools. It shows that, in order to maintain this valuable resource for their party, partisan groups tend to hide their party affiliation and develop a depoliticized repertoire of action oriented towards providing services to the students. The findings are based on fieldwork conducted between 2017 and 2018 in the City of Buenos Aires using qualitative research methods such as in-depth interviews, direct observations in party events, and documents and web pages content analysis.