Exactly 55 years after the murder of Líber Arce by the Uruguayan police and to commemorate the day of the Student Martyrs, Uruguayan students and unions demanded justice so that such acts do not happen again.
High school students and students from the University of the Republic (Udelar) mobilized from the university headquarters to the Legislative Palace, with a historical claim of student struggles, and also demanding budgets and improvements in the conditions of educational centers.
From the student union of the Alfredo Vásquez Acevedo Institute (Iava), with slogans such as “From the blood of our martyrs will sprout the wings of the Revolution,” they declared: “Another August 14th and we must remember our comrades who were murdered for fighting. We have to remember them as a form of struggle and resilience.”
With a symbolic representation, the students invited the educational community to make a pilgrimage to Udelar Alley to remember this date. “It is a tradition that over the years has been forgotten, but this year we want to resume it. We invite the educational community to bring any red flower, even if it is made of paper, as a symbol of memory and resistance,” said the collective.
They also added that the real name of the “Alley of Udelar” is “The Road of Carnations” because since the murder of Líber Arce, “every year, relatives, friends and students filled this alley with red carnations every August 14 in memory of our comrades killed in struggle.”
For its part, the Association of Teachers of the University of the Republic (Adur), who also participated in the mobilization from its Twitter account shared the call to accompany the student march from the university esplanade to “50 years of the General Strike where “we continue to fight for the education of the people.”
Líber Arce was a student of Architecture and the School of Dental Prosthesis, who was a militant in the Union of Communist Youth, and is considered the first student martyr of that South American country.
He died on August 14, 1968 as a result of bullet wounds he received two days earlier in the femoral artery, by the police, while he was about to participate in a mobilization in favor of the students’ demands.
