Interview with Dr. Silvia Braslavsky, a chemist, who was a research leader until her retirement in the Max Planck Institute for Radiation Chemistry (today Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion).

Silvia Braslavsky

Let’s start with a presentation of your personal story

I am Silvia Braslavsky, Licenciada in Chemistry from the School of Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires (FCEN, UBA) in Argentina. I was born and grew up in Buenos Aires and studied in what was later called the “Golden Era” (1957-1966) of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). During this decade the University underwent a democratic modernization with a strong participation of students and graduated fellows plus the very active participation of many young Professors who, in particular in the School of Sciences, put together a project for the updating of the teaching of science, in strong connection with research on novel research areas and with a deep sense of service to society. Strong changes took place in the School of Sciences, but not only there. Many changes were expanded to the whole University, such as the implementation of full-time Professors and teaching assistants, almost non-existent before 1957 in Argentina, and the modernization of teaching with strong emphasis on laboratory and workshop practices, the acquisition of modern equipment for teaching and research and the establishment of multidisciplinary research and teaching projects addressing specific needs in Argentina, such as the Institute for Marine Biology in the Atlantic Coast, a program to fight the hail in the Andean region, the creation of the Calculus Department with a state-of-the-art computer and service programs to attend the requirements of state institutions dedicated to infrastructure problems, a program for the analysis of water and soil samples, a Department of Chemical Industry with a pilot plant, as well as the development of a biological register of the Chaco region in the Nord-West of Argentina. A department structure was created in the School of Sciences with the aim to eliminate the hierarchical structure of the individual chairs. At the same time the University Council, as well as the Directing Councils of the various Schools in the UBA, including the School of Sciences, gave strong statements against several constitutional breakdowns (including military coups) that took place in the decade and also strongly condemned actions against personal freedom or racism outside the University. All this with the active participation of the entire University community.

In particular, the University Council and the Councils of several Schools (Sciences, Architecture, Philosophy and Languages and some others) strongly condemned the coup that took place in June 1966. The military Government, inspired by the “National Security Doctrine” and the “internal ideological borders”, on July 29th, a month after the coup, decreed the intervention of the Universities based on the “Communist infiltration”, eliminated the university autonomy and the participation of students and graduates in the Government of the Schools and Universities.
The same day there was a violent attack to various University Schools, in what turned to be known as the “night of the long sticks”, in particular to the School of Sciences (with an enacted execution) and to the School of Architecture (with mounted cavalry), but also to the School of Philosophy and others (see: Argentina: Seizure of Universities Leaves Intellectual Casualties, Elinor Langer, Science 153 (3742), 1362-1364, 1966).

After these events, almost 1400 Professors and teaching assistants collectively resigned to their positions. In the School of Sciences, the resignations reached almost 75 % of the full-time staff. In the Computing Centre as well as in the Editing house of the University (EUDEBA) 100 % of the respective staff left their positions. I was a graduate student working on my PhD degree financially supported through a teaching assistant position in the Department of Inorganic, Physical and Analytical Chemistry. I also resigned.

Within the frame of the “organized exodus” (which was not strictly an exile according to the UN definition, since in those days there were no personal threats and we left with all required identity documents) that took concrete form after the resignations, I emigrated with our research group on Chemical Kinetics to the University of Chile (see Braslavsky, Silvia E. “The Ford Foundation and the relocation of Argentinian Scholars, 1966-1968”, https://rockarch.issuelab.org/resource/the-ford-foundation-and-the-relocation-of-argentinian-scholars-1966-1968.html). Within this context, the idea was to preserve the research groups that have been created in the School of Sciences (as well in some other Schools, such as Engineering) in the early ‘60s with very young fellows sent abroad to obtain a PhD in different areas of vacancy in Argentina. After the night of the long sticks and with this idea, ca. 100 scientists went to Chile, another 100 to Venezuela, several to Perú. The Ford Foundation (FF) played a very important role in the financing and organization of this exodus (called a rescue operation by the FF) as well as in the financing of the “internal exodus” to Argentinian institutions that had not been affected by the military intervention, such as the Argentinian Atomic Energy Commission, and to Foundations directly financed by the FF: Di Tella Foundation, Bariloche Foundation, Centre for Urban Studies, Centre for Studies in Educational Sciences). There was great solidarity by and financial support from Latin-American Universities, such as the Universities de la República (Uruguay), San Marco (Perú), of Chile, Central University in Venezuela, Engineering University in Perú, as well as from the Governments of Chile and Venezuela.

I presented my Doctoral Thesis to the University of Buenos Aires in 1968. In 1969 I left to the US with my husband and my two little daughters (Paula one year and Carolina 7 weeks old) for a post-doctoral stay at Penn State University. My PhD title was given to me only in 1971 for political and administrative reasons.

In 1972 I returned with my two daughters (already separated from my husband in 1971) to Argentina, and joined a group that created the University of Rio Cuarto in the Province of Córdoba. This University was created within a well-financed Government Program (still a military Government) for the creation of several new State universities. I obtained a position as Associate Professor through an open contest. The University was a real success. However, the political situation in the universities across the Country severely deteriorated in the years 1973-74 and a foggy paramilitary group called AAA (Asociación Argentina Anticomunista) started threatening, killing and kidnapping people including many students and professors, with the support of the still constitutional Government of Isabel Peron (who, as elected vice-President, assumed the Executive after the death of her husband in July 1974).

In September-October 1974 all universities were closed, mass layoffs of scholars took place and many students and professors were killed, in particular in La Plata and Tucumán, and the AAA threatened many artists, students, professionals (lawyers, medical doctors, psychologists, engineers). Many scientists and professionals left their positions and the Country, this time under threatening, persecution and even imprisonment and assassination of relatives.

In December 1974 I personally received a threatening letter of the AAA to me and my daughters and in 5 days I emptied the house, packed a few things and travelled to Buenos Aires, and from there only in May (due to difficulties to obtain the documents for my daughters) returned to my former post-doctoral place in Penn State University. In September 1975 we left for another post-doctoral position in Edmonton (Canada). Paula, my eldest daughter, entered the second grade and Carolina the first grade in a marvellous Canadian primary school.

In October 1976 we crossed the Ocean to Germany, where I accepted the offer to start working in the Max Planck Institute for Radiation Chemistry (Strahlenchemie) in Mülheim (Ruhr). I got the contact thanks to the scientific networks, of which I was already participating. According to the Canadian system, I would have been better qualified for immigration those days, should I had cleaned streets or windows, since there were too many chemists in Canada.

The Max Planck Society supported very generously my work and my further developments. I retired in 2007, after a very successful career and am still connected to the Institute and the Max Planck Society.

Since the recovery of democracy in 1983 I have been in very strong contact with the academic and scientific system in Argentina. After the dictatorship years, the first democratic Government of Raul Alfonsín established a partnership agreement with the German Government, implemented by the GTZ (German office for joint technical work), for the financing of the Department of Inorganic, Physical and Analytical Chemistry of the University of Buenos Aires, devastated by the resignations in 1966 and never reconstructed until 1984. I had the honor of being invited to evaluate the project, together with three German colleagues. 4,2 million DM (German Marks) were granted for basic and state-of-the art equipment as well as for travelling of scholars in both directions. Several scholars who had resigned or had been laid off returned to Argentina and took positions at the Department.

 Can you identify socialor political factors that played a key role in the attacks to researchers? In the case of Argentina, have these attacks always been linked with military coups and dictatorial regimes? What do you think has motivated the assaults?

Argentina has a General Education Law since 1884 that establishes that education is free of charge and free of religion, which applies essentially for the primary and in part to secondary school. Up to 1960, the great majority of students used to go to public (state) schools (like I did and all my classmates at the University). Resuming the longing of the so-called Reform Movement of 1918 (a student movement born in Córdoba and Buenos Aires that fought for autonomic administration and organization of the Universities, for free university studies, for periodic public contests to cover the Professors positions and for the co-participation of students in all decision-making University- and School boards. This movement marked the starting of a deep renovation in the universities in Argentina and extended its influence to all Latin America) the first quinquennial plan (1947-1951), of the first Peronist Government proposed that the Government should finance the university studies for all those that could not afford them. In 1949 the Government established the free-of-charge entrance to University studies and promised full financing to universities. That same year the National Minister of Education was created (Argentina is a Federal Country, the National Universities are under the jurisdiction of the National Minister of Education). In 1954, the Law 14297 was approved by the Parliament, establishing that the university studies at the National Universities are free of charge. During those years, there were also conflicts with Professors that would not accept the obligatory affiliation with the Peronist party; several Professor were fired and left the Country and some others (like the Nobel Prize Bernardo Houssay) left the UBA and went to private labs.

The fact that the university studies were free of charge permitted a very high social mobility and opened the Argentinian universities to members of the middle and blue-collar classes. In particular, many immigrants and the sons and daughters of the millions of poor European immigrants that arrived in Argentina at the end of the XIXth and starting of the XXth Century, could enter the universities. The above-mentioned factors have made a strong difference in the social structure of the Argentinian university students with respect to that of other Latin-American countries. This social structure explains the high social sensibility of the academic communities in Argentina. In general, the academic communities in Argentina have expressed themselves against the constitutional breakdowns and have undertaken projects of technical and social importance for the development of the society and the local communities.

In the last years, this has been evident in the academic answer to the COVID-19 pandemic. Several projects for the infection prevention and for the development of vaccines have been developed in Argentina, with strong support of the Government and its Minister of Science and Technology. Thus, the origin of the attacks and persecution to members of the academic communities and to scientists, that even crystalized in a sentence by a minister during a constitutional Government in the ‘90s [Domingo Cavallo, finance Minister of the Government of Saul Menem, sent the scientists to “wash the dishes”], can be found in the very general and permanent attitude of the academic communities defending the constitutional order and claiming for higher financial support for the Universities.

Unfortunately, the progressive privatization of the primary and secondary schools, in turn a result of the permanent low and decreasing financing of the state schools and Universities, as well as the creation of private neighbourhoods with their own schools, have created a strong social segregation which has also changed the social structure in the universities and, as a consequence, of the academic medium.

Which have been the consequences of the attacks to the scientific and academic community in Argentina?

The Argentinian society as a whole has gone through several cycles of progress and regression. It was a rich society, with a very promising future at the beginning of the XX century (without forgetting the strong social differences that already were very present), with an excellent general education law (1420) that rapidly secured a wide alphabetization to more than 95% by 1950, with a free health attention system (unique in the world). A very dark period started with the military coup by José Félix Uriburu in 1930.

The military coup of 1966, that overthrew a civil, democratic Government – although it was elected with the Peronist movement banned from participation – found a country almost free of foreign debt. With that coup (1966) the country entered into a long period of extreme neo-liberalism which, as said above, affected also very strongly the scientific development and the academic communities.

Taking into account that many scientists come from the middle class and are mostly descendants of the immigrants who arrived in Argentina in the XXth Century, their own possible emigration seems easy for them and the major consequence is the exodus every time that a cycle of regression (military coup or financial crisis or political instability) occurs.

As explained above, the “organized emigration” in 1966 aimed at the preservation in Latin America of research groups that had been created and grown in the 1957-66 decade, to facilitate the possible return to Argentina whenever the situation would improve, as it happened with several of them in 1972. In other moments of exodus such as 1945-50, 1974-80 and then in 2001 during the economic crisis, and in 2016-17 due to the neo-liberal defunding of the scientific system, there was a great dispersion to Europe (Italy, Spain, France, Germany and the UK) and to the US, but also to Brazil, especially in the 70’s.

Which are the personal and colective consequences of the exodus?

The major consequence is for Argentina as a Country, that is the brutal consequence, for me more important than the individual consequences. Argentina suffers the brain and technical drain. With each regression the country loses its possibilities of leaving its situation as exporter of raw materials, it leaves behind the possibility of improving its industrial production and its infrastructure, its mining and its energetic independence (which it had in the ’50s), as well as it impoverishes its medical and educational systems.

The country loses a large technological and academic crowd which, in addition, owes its formation to public funds, that is, the public education at the universities is financed by the girls and boys that cannot finish their primary school and are obliged to work in the field or even to beg in the streets of the big cities and pay taxes for each minor thing they acquire. Those taxes finance free higher education. In the meantime, those possessing large fortunes, buy dollars and send them to the fiscal paradises. This has been acknowledged even by the International Monetary fund. When the brain drain was very large (for example in the 90’s) getting a PhD degree in Argentina was equivalent to getting a passport to go abroad. Several prominent institute Directors used this comparison when trying to gain graduate students for their research projects. And this occurred in parallel to high indices of school dropout in the low-income sectors of the society. There were even moments when CONICET (the Argentinian Research Council) offered fellowships to make a post-doctoral stay abroad, but could not offer these young fellows a position in Argentina upon return. CONICET would even recommend them to stay abroad. A disguised expulsion.

The number of prominent Argentinian academic colleagues in other Countries is very large. Starting with Cesar Milstein, Chemistry Nobel Prize in 1984 (who left Argentina due to the political closure in 1962 of the very successful Malbran Institution, where he was working) up to many researchers, Institute Directors, Professors, men and women in Germany, France, UK, US, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Canada, Finnland, and others. All of them represent in conferences and learned societies the countries that hosted them; whereas they were educated for free in Argentina, but Argentina had despised them, either politically or economically.

In many countries there are networks of Argentinian Scientists abroad (See for example the network Raíces that work for the reinforcement of the academic ties between Argentina and the respective countries of residence. It is also interesting to see the list of Raíces Prizes awarded by the Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation of Argentina since 2010 to Argentinian Scientists who, from abroad and without returning, contribute to the Argentinian scientific development (Information and the list of those who obtained the Prize can be found here)

It is clear that also the personal consequences of the exodus are very important: family and friends losses, new language, economic losses and so forth. When the children go to school abroad it is very difficult to return to Argentina. However, paradoxically, the exodus has given many of us the possibility of better development in our careers. It is common to hear from exiled Argentinian scientists’ expressions such as “the military gave me fellowships”, or “the military were my travel agency”. It seems that abroad the higher education in Argentina is highly valued. A paradoxical situation.
I did a very successful and productive scientific career that would have been impossible from Argentina. However, what an Argentinian scientist does in an industrialized country can be done by many other scientists; what an Argentinian scientist does in Argentina, can only be done by this particular Argentinian scientist (she or he).

What measures should be taken to support and help scholars at risk?

The obvious very first measure is to avoid the brain drain. Conditions should be created in the respective countries to recover those scientists who left. That is the reality in Argentina. Preserve and value what has been already done is of great importance. Strengthen and give resilience to the scientific system to avoid the exodus. It is important to create the conditions for the return of the young fellows doing scholarships abroad. Conditions should be offered to these young fellows to establish themselves in the provinces, and not only in the major cities. In Argentina, the cities Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Rosario, and one or two additional cities concentrate most of the researchers. However, there are many problems in the provinces that may be solved with the help of young scientists. Support should be given to them to establish themselves throughout major cities. Private, autonomos institutions in these cities may also help to support the scientists working in public institutions in critical moments of political turmoil.

A critical question is that of the location to carry out the doctoral work. Argentina, Brazil and Chile have enough installed capacity to provide good conditions for carrying out doctoral training in all areas of knowledge. A short post-doctoral stay abroad could certainly complete the formation of the young fellows. In addition, if necessary for areas of vacancy, a “sandwich training” (part in their own country and part abroad) can be arranged. This type of arrangement avoids the disconnection from the reality in his or her own country that a young fellow may live through after a long period abroad at a very young age.

I believe, however, that the Argentinian scientific community in 2022 is very resilient, has grown in number, in maturity as well as in the number of research lines, even in its federal expansion and, above all, has a much larger political weight. The whole community got involved in the questions of the COVID pandemic, the Energy supply and on the study and exploitation of the long Atlantic Coast (see Programa Pampa Azul ).

It is of uppermost importance to strengthen the networks of scientists in the various scientific areas in Latin America, for example in Social Sciences, Chemistry, Biochemistry, Physics, Medicine, Ecology, Engineering and so forth. These Associations can help relocate (even temporarily) displaced or threatened colleagues. Those Associations exist and should be made more visible. For example the AAPC (Asociación Argentina para el Progreso de las Ciencias is part of the Asociación Interciencia that hosts all similar Associations in Latin America. These Associations could take in their hands the defence of the rights and the freedom of scientists in the region. AAPC in Argentina clusters together in EPAC (Encuentro Permanente de Asociaciones Científicas) more than 25 scientific societies in many diverse areas. These societies can and should work together in cases of threatening, persecution or displacement of scientists in the region.