This letter, signed by the regional secretary of the CGT (Confederación General del Trabajo) in Rosario and addressed to Tucumán’s CGT regional delegate, informs us about the existing tight bonds and mutual support between artists and labor-union members during the production of Tucumán Arde [Tucumán Is Burning]. From it, we can see that both Rubén Naranjo and Eduardo Favario were treated by Quagliaro as representatives of the traveling artists from Rosario. Juan Pablo Renzi stayed in Rosario, coordinating the campaign that was being developed simultaneous to the second trip. Even though the letter never mentions the name of the work, it mentions “an exhibition of vanguard art that will take place at the appropriate time.”

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. A small group, made up of two artists from Rosario (Rubén Naranjo and Juan Pablo Renzi) and two artists from Buenos Aires (Pablo Suárez and Roberto Jacoby), carried out an exploratory trip to Tucumán, where they tightened their bonds with labor-union members and university student leaders from the area. Later, a larger number of artists (mostly from Rosario) traveled to Tucumán on October 22, 1968. There, supported by union members, journalists, and other collaborators, the artists developed an underground account of the social situation of the sugar mills (closed by then), schools, hospitals, and so forth, seeking information that would prove the falsehood of the official campaign regarding the so-called Operativo Tucumán. Once they arrived in Tucumán, the artists stayed at the union headquarters and in private homes of student leaders or delegates of the FOTIA (Federación Obrera Tucumana de la Industria Azucarera) [Tucumán Sugar Industry Worker Federation].