Argentine University Federation

The Argentine University Federation (in Castilian: Federación Universitaria Argentina (FUA)) is the most important student organization in Argentina

The FUA was created on April 11 within the University Reform student movement originated in Córdoba, which later spread though Latin America, that demanded an autonomous system in which teachers, graduates, and students would participate in the government of the universities.

The FUA gathers the university federations of every local university, which are at the same time composed of student centres of each faculty, totalling a million and a half students throughout the country. The biggest and most important of such federations is the FUBA of the University of Buenos Aires with over 300,000 students (as of 2005). Other important federations include the FULP (La Plata), FUR (Rosario), FUC (Córdoba), FUT (Tucumán) and FUL (Litoral).

In 1894 was founded in the Faculty of Engineering of the UBA the first student centre in Argentina, under the name "La Línea Recta". Medicine and Law had their own in 1940 and 1905 respectively. The most powerful student centre nowadays is that of the Economic Sciences of the UBA, with 50,000 students, followed by UBA's Law school (35,000) and Medicine (29,000).

Since its beginnings the FUA supported a politic of Latin American unity and international solidarity. In 1920 Gabriel del Mazo signed, on behalf of the FUA, an exchange and coordination agreement with the Peruvian Federación de Estudiantes del Perú's president Raúl Haya de la Torre.

In 1921 the FUA participated of the organization of the First International Students Congress at Mexico City, from which the International Students Federation was born. In 1925 it participated of the organization of the First Ibero-American Students Congress also in Mexico city. In that congress Alfredo Palacios, Miguel de Unamuno, José Ingenieros, José Martí and José Vasconcelos are declared "teachers of the youth".

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