13 43. Violence and aggression perpetrated against cultivation and the intergenerational transmission of ideas have assumed several forms. As pointed out in a book originally published in Bologna in 1991 (Il Passato, la Memoria, l'Oblio), "(...) La historia de nuestro siglo, como bien sabemos, aunque tratemos de olvidarlo, está llena de censuras, supresiones, ocultamientos, desapariciones, condenas, retractaciones públicas y confesiones de traiciones innominables, declaraciones de culpabilidad y de vergüenza. Obras enteras de historia fueron rescritas borrando los nombres de los héroes de un tiempo, catálogos editoriales fueron mutilados, fueron robadas fichas de los catálogos de las bibliotecas, fueron reeditados libros con conclusiones distintas de las originales, pasajes enteros fueron suprimidos, fueron antologados textos en un orden cómodo que permitiera documentar inexistentes filiaciones ideales e imaginarias ortodoxias políticas. Primero se quemaron libros. Después se los ha hecho desaparecer de las bibliotecas con el intento de borrarlos de la historia. Primero se eliminaron innumerables seres humanos, después se trató de suprimir esa supresión, de negar los hechos, de obstaculizar la reconstrucción de los acontecimientos, de prohibir el recuento de víctimas, de impedir el recuerdo. (...).”23 44. A University cannot fulfill its function if the free flow of ideas of each time, which constitutes culture, is inhibited by the State security forces. The armed invasion of a University, apart of being a serious crime in detriment of the victimized university students (kidnapped, tortured, executed and disappeared), is an obscurantist aggression against a supranational institution (the Universitas), - an aggression which affects the whole social tissue. During the 20th Century, several Universities in different places around the world were attacked. Numerous Universities, in a certain moment of their existence, were violated and forced by the State security forces.24 45. Some of these aggressions have become renown, and today they appear in the specialized bibliography of Human Rights International Law. It is the case of the University of La Cantuta, brought to the knowledge of this Inter-American Court.25 Others, which did not reach the Court, have left a lesson; for instance, to evoke another renown episode, in a more distant past, "The entering of police horses in the Universidad de Buenos Aires and the violent and ferocious repression of the so called 'noche de los bastones largos' –night of the long sticks- of July 1966, constitutes a fundamental landmark of the repressive political project of the armed forces. All these events contributed, to a great extent, to push young people of the middle class towards the fields of “national and popular” opposition.26 Despite the repression against Universities, the freedom of spirit has reacted against the repressing State forces, which have damaged the ideals of the new generations with the force of their ideas and purpose to build a better world than the one which was given to them. After the shadows, the light came. 23 P. Rossi, El Pasado, la Memoria, el Olvido, Buenos Aires, Ed. Nueva Visión, 2003 [reed.], p. 33. 24 As it happened, inter alia, during the first years of its existence, also with the University where I lecture International Law since three decades ago: the University of Brasilia. 25 According to a recent account, “President Fujimori had decided not to leave any free space to his opponents. Thus, he ordered his parliamentary majority to set forth the reorganization of the Universities of San Marcos and La Cantuta, places where the students had claimed his responsibility in crimes against humanity” ; Efraín Rúa, El Crimen de la Cantuta - La Desaparición y Muerte..., op. cit. supra No. (14), p. 276. 26 M. Raffin, La Experiencia del Horror - Subjetividad y Derechos Humanos en las Dictaduras y Posdictaduras del Cono Sur, Buenos Aires, Edit. del Puerto (Colección Tesis Doctoral, No. 5), 2006, p. 147.