This early declaration—most likely written when Tucumán Arde [Tucumán Is Burning] was taking shape (early October 1968)—presents some of the basic ideas behind the group’s collective work. First, it denounces General Juan Carlos Onganía’s government for the strong repression of university students and labor movements, which impacted the vanguard art groups as well. It goes on to present the situation of the “revolutionary artists” who refuse to be absorbed into the social spheres of bourgeois culture. Thus, these artists produce a “new revolutionary aesthetic based on creative action, using the reality of society as a raw material, with the goal of modifying its structure.” It records the group’s efforts as “a series of voluntary acts of aggression” toward the bourgeois culture’s institutions, among which the boycott to the Braque Prize (French Embassy in Argentina 1968) stands out.

It presents Tucumán Arde as a “denouncing operative” against the government’s official plan called Operativo Tucumán, which masks the profound social consequences of the closing of the sugar mills in the northern Argentinean province. In order to carry out this collective work of art, the artists must “assume the role of propagandists and activists in Tucumán's social struggle,” generate a subversive culture that runs parallel to the official system, support the political action of the opposing labor unions, and use mass media to reveal what has been investigated.

Tucumán Arde marks the first time in Argentine art history that an alliance as forged between the working and the artistic classes.

Tucumán Arde [Tucumán Is Burning] is the most famous collective production of emerging vanguard art in Argentina, both in Buenos Aires and Rosario, and it took place at the turning point of the artists’ political and artistic radicalization in 1968. Its design implied a complex process of research and counter-information as well as a mass-media campaign. Given the fact that they were an integral part of the investigation, many artists (mostly from Rosario) traveled to Tucumán for a second time in October 1968. It was in that province that, with the support of trade-union members, journalists, and other collaborators, the artists developed an underground registry of work pertaining to the social situation of sugar mills (closed by then), schools, hospitals, and so forth, seeking information that would evidence the official campaign’s deception respecting the so-called Operativo Tucumán. A variety of media was used, including recordings, photographs, and films. In order to prevent the obtained information from falling into the hands of law enforcement agents, the artists sent the results to the city of Rosario on a daily basis, where a group of collaborators would process them. This document is a brief mimeographed declaration that was handed out to the public that attended the Tucumán Arde exhibition in Rosario (it was also likely handed out in Buenos Aires). Theexhibition took place during fifteen days in an old house belonging to the CGT (Confederación General del Trabajo de los Argentinos), in Rosario. Even though public gatherings were forbidden by the dictatorship, an estimated three thousand people attended the exhibition. The artists signed Tucumán Arde documents using various names. Since 1966, the Rosario group had maintained the denomination “Grupo de Arte de Vanguardia de Rosario”; after they merged with the artists from Buenos Aires, who did not have a collective name, they used various names, including Grupo de Artistas de Vanguardia, Grupo de Artistas Argentinos de Vanguardia, Comisión de Artistas de la CGT de los Argentinos, and even Comité Coordinador para laImaginación Revolucionaria. Some documents are signed with one of these generic names; others were not signed at all; and some of them contain a large list of first names.