Jeremy Simer

Attempting to resolve the student strike that has paralyzed Mexico’s largest university since April, Rector Francisco Barnés de Castro proposed June 3 that tuition be made voluntary. On the surface, this amendment seems to satisfy the main concern of student strikers – affordability of higher education – but the plan’s small print has hidden costs, and it does not fully address any of the students’ six demands. When the new proposal was passed by the University Council June 7, the sly manoeuver largely convinced the media and the public the conflict was resolved, but in fact, it is far from over.

The strike’s central demand is that the General Regulation of Fees (RGP) be repealed altogether, making the university officially free of charge. (It has been practically free for decades, since student movements have prevented tutition from increasing since the 1940s, turning the fee of 20 centavos ($.02 USD) into a mere formality.) Barnés claims making tuition voluntary will allow even those with low incomes to attend the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), but far from making the UNAM free, the new policy still allows fees for exams, computer use, laboratories, foreign language facilities, and other services. Since the exact cost of these fees have not been established, they could be more expensive than the tuition increase that ignited the student movement in the first place.

This argument has been largely ignored by the media, including even those sympathetic to the students’ original demands. Many are now portraying student activists, who are continuing their strike, as mindless hardliners who keep protesting for its own sake.

At the root of the conflict is the question of the affordability of higher education. A major newspaper recently reported that only 7% of UNAM students come from families that earn less than $12 USD per day, an unofficial poverty line. While Barnés’ supporters argue that these figures prove students can afford the tuition increases, these data should be considered from another perspective. More than half of Mexico’s population lives in poverty, and cannot afford the books, food, transportation, time off work and other expenses required to get a college education. The CGH and other observers see any tuition increase as a form of further exclusion of the nation’s poor from higher education, and a step toward privatization. A 1997 World Bank loans package, calling for higher tuition in Mexico’s public univerisities, private loan programs, and the promotion of private education, buttresses the fears that a slight fee increase now could lead to much larger increases in years to come. This trend, dominant in higher education worldwide, is clearly seen in the steady tuition increases in U.S. public universities in recent years.

Beyond the issue of access to education, the movement is challenging the univerisity’s authoritarian ways. Two of the students’ demands are for the cancellation of all charges the UNAM has filed against student and faculty activists, and for a direct, public debate between students and the administration to resolve the conflict. Instead of opening a dialogue, however, the rector pushed through this latest revision to tuition policy in just a few days, thus ignoring calls for a more democratic administration. And while Barnés is offering an “amnesty” to all activists who haven’t been involve in “grave” infractions against the university, charges still stand against those who recently confiscated materials proving the infiltration and surveillance of student organizations by UNAM employees.

So the strike continues, and is growing more complicated. The good news is that the conflict has spawned various new alliances. Students from more than 30 Mexican universities created the new National Student Coordinating Committee (CNE) June 12 in Morelia, Michoacán, and resolved to collaborate on national actions to defend free higher education. Parents of UNAM students continue to build their own assembly for affordable education while supporting CGH actions, and they are forming a longstanding non-profit organization to pursue similar ends. The University Front, composed of UNAM students, staff, faculty and parents, formed last month and is planning a mass meeting June 23 in UNAM’s Olympic Stadium.

The bad news is that repression against student activists has become apallingly violent. Though the rector insists that using police forces to take back the campus is the least desireable option, at least four UNAM student activists have been abducted by armed men, who drive them around the city while beating and threatening them, before releasing them hours later. Juan Carlos Zárate, a 17-year-old from the south campus of College of Sciences and Humanities (“CCH-Sur”) claims to have been abducted various times, threatened with death, and cut with a knife on his back and chest. A 16-year-old girl from the east campus of the CCH, one of UNAM’s high schools, was also abducted, and raped, by men who interrogated her regarding her involvement in the strike. Furious students responded by shutting down major arteries throughout the city.

At this writing, the CGH is considering an offer from the Chamber of Deputies to host a direct dialogue between students and administrators within the national legislature. Rector Barnés has already agreed to this proposal. If these talks take place, they might lead to the resolution of this bitter conflict that almost everyone is hoping for. Or they may lead to nothing, considering the unyielding attitudes of both the administration and the student strikers. The rector took months to establish a negotiating committee to resolve the conflict, he dismisses the CGH’s calls for a University Congress to revise UNAM’s organization, and still refuses to recognize the CGH as a legitimate, representative student organization. For its part, the CGH refused to begin even preliminary talks with the administrations until it fulfilled three conditions: the repeal of the RGP, the cancellation of off-campus classes held during the strike, and an end to the violence against student activists. No matter how legitimate these demands may be, setting them as conditions to any discussion contributed to the impasse that has held the movement in place for months.

Meanwhile, conservative legislators have renewed calls for UNAM to call in police to take back the campus, held exclusively by students for two months. Though Barnés has claimed this should be avoided at all costs, it is not hard to imagine the administration using force to remove a group of students it considers to be “intransigent” and unreasonable.