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Dissatisfaction and fatigue with the current state of psychology research has been going on for some time. Students complain that this situation is characterized by delayed content, lack of practice to test the knowledge acquired, uneven budget allocation (most people study psychology, but the department receives the least resources), and the conservative position of Dean Guillermo Putseys Álvarez and the teaching staff of the Faculty of Humanities. All these factors prompted the organization of the Psychological Transformation Movement.
According to two leaders of the movement, Norberto Villatoro and Luis Vallejo, the authorities convened a congress that turned out to be a farce and did not provide answers to the students’ demands, the director of psychology was fired, and there was a hiatus after that. The department and students demanded the resignation of professors. Since 1973, proposals to reform the Department of Psychology had been prepared, and at a congress on July 23, 1974, a student proposed to separate the Department of Psychology from the Faculty of Humanities. Amid applause, this proposal was supported by the Student Union, which decided to move the desks and blackboards used for classes to the “J” building, claiming it as the headquarters of a new academic unit.
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A newspaper headline at the time read: Psychologists rush into a building (El País, July 24, 1974). In fact, the student movement took over the facilities (without electricity and without finishing the construction), and on July 24 they attended a meeting of the Higher University Council (CSU) to put pressure on it to give a favorable solution to your demands. Under the leadership of the Rector Roberto Valdeavellano, CSU decided to create a new non-teaching school, dependent on the Rector. The students celebrated by lighting firecrackers and parading a coffin through the university, with the legend that “here lies the stiff, he is the psychology department that was diluted in life”.
An administrative committee was appointed, composed of some teachers sympathetic to the student movement (among them Dr. Julio Ponce Valdés, who disappeared a few years later) and leaders of the movement. The break with the Faculty of Humanities was followed by the creation of the Faculty of History, the Faculty of Communication Sciences and the School of Training Teachers of Secondary Education (EFPEM).
This unprecedented rupture and the formation of a new academic unit is explained by the existing context. The psychology student movement was part of a student movement that sought greater participation in university government and the academy’s links to social change (influenced by the revolutionary movement). Specifically, he suggested that psychology be committed to the specific study of the Guatemalan population and that the profession should serve said population, rather than falling into alienating practices that were divorced from reality.
In the context of the current university crisis, where false authorities are part of the so-called “corruption pact”, it is tempting to remember the effective struggle of the student movement and the scope of its achievements. The recovery of the university involves the exercise of memory and the appreciation of the struggle example and dignity of its members.
It also calls on psychology teachers and professionals to reflect on the history of the profession in this country and on the scientific, political and ethical visions that were proposed half a century ago.
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