On October 13, 1980, the leadership of the Argentine civic-military dictatorship refused to take on the news that came to them from the Norwegian Embassy in Buenos Aires, which announced that Adolfo Pérez Esquivel had been awarded the distinction of the Nobel Peace Prize. the architect, sculptor and teacher began to get involved in different movements that fought for peace and actively participated in the founding of the Peace and Justice Service (Serpaj), a movement in defense of Human Rights in Latin America.
That militancy earned him 14 months in prison under the dictatorial regime that fell on Argentina. However, for the Norwegian Committee that awards the Nobel Prize, Pérez Esquivel had lit “a light in the darkness of violence in his country.” For this reason he was awarded the distinction of the Nobel Peace Prize he received on behalf of the Peoples of Latin America.
Upon receiving this distinction he declared not to receive it as a personal title but “In the name of the peoples of Latin America, and in a very particular way of my brothers and sisters the poorest and smallest, because they are the most loved by God; on their behalf, my indigenous brothers, the peasants, the workers, the youth, the thousands of religious and men of good will who, by renouncing their privileges, share the life and path of the poor and fight to build a new society”.
Currently and since September 1998 he is the holder of the Culture for Peace and Human Rights Chair, in the Faculty of Social Sciences and in 2006 the UBA gave him the Doctorate Honoris Causa.De this way he became the fourth Argentine to be awarded with this distinction, of the five Nobel prizes that were awarded to Argentine personalities.
