Strike began at midnight, April 20th, with a fanciful moment of the masked, caped superhero "Superstrike" and other students raising the black and red strike banner at the main flagpole. (I got an exclusive interview with Superstrike.) All but a few departments were occupied by students, barricades were built, etc. The next morning, admin organized a march on campus against the strike. About 10-20,000 showed up (student body is 268,000), but many were obviously staff/faculty/admin and there were widespread reports of admin coercing students into attending, threatening "problems" with grades, processing degrees, scholarships, etc. Almost all major media covered they event favorably; one of the main TV channels showed footage, said "these images speak for themselves ... they are the majority," and went on to explain that the tuiton increase that students are getting so upset about is less than the cost of a daily cheap lunch or a weekly outing to the movies, with a date. He didn't mention other educational costs such as housing, food, transportation, books, photocopies, library fees, computer lab fees, departmental fees, and time off of work, or that 70% of all UNAM students' families have a household income of less than $13 USD per day.

The Secretary of the Interior (Gobernacion) intimated that lots of members of the center-left PRD are involved, but won't name names. (PRD has claimed absolutely no official connection, but admits some members are involved as individuals, and ran an ad saying "our hands aren't in the movement but our hearts are.") One federal legislator called for the police to move in and sort things out, but the one good thing that Rector Barnés has done is to promise that won't happen unless things get ugly on campus. (One must not forget that the 1968 student movement ended with a massacre of more than 300 people on the eve of the Olympics, which changed Mexican politics and history forever. No one wants to be associated with authoritarian violence against students. Exploitation, yes, but physical violence, no.)

By the end of the first day, even conservative Law had been taken by students, despite resistance from the hard-ass director and his circle of cronies, who remained inside the building and were removed physically (pushing, no injuries) by the students who had voted in assembly to strike. By the third day, every damned deparment, all 36 or 37 of them, were in the hands of the students. On the 23rd, 30-80,000 students, parents, unionists, community activists, and others marched from the National Politechnic Institute on the north side of the city to the Zócalo, the political heart of the capital and the nation. There they protested, with speakers from the campus union, the Electicians, and various students. When it was all over, Portuguese supergroup Madredeus happened to be playing a free concert in the other corner of the plaza. Amazing.

At this writing, the campus remains in the hands of the students, except maybe for some of the high schools. During the day, there are workshops on everything from Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed to salsa dancing. I am still not sure if the claims of a Kama Sutra workshop ("theory and practice, comrades!") were true. At night, smaller groups remain in each department to stand guard against marauding administrators or cops, or the much more likely arrival of paid agitators, called "porros." (This practice is well known to be common in all social struggles. We're not just talking about intelligence agents infiltrating the movement, we're talking groups of thugs with sticks, rocks, and the occasional explosive.) The strikers make campfires, talk, strum guitars, drink coffee, and listen to classic rock. (My favorites: Jim Morrison singing "Let it roll, baby roll ... all night long!" and Pink Floyd's "We don't need no education...")

Buildings are covered inside and out with red and black flags and hand-painted propaganda. Many posters are priceless, such as the monstrous depictions of the Rector and slogans such as "We close the university today so that it may remain open to all." Considering that most students live with their parents and that there's nothing more romantic than revolution, I'd imagine the posters reminding people to always use condoms are likely appropriate. (I have no fear in being an advocacy journalist, but I'm not getting THAT involved.)

The media and the government continue to rain down hard on the students, but the movement is growing. April 24th was the first National Student Encounter, in which representatives from 15 public universities met in the barricaded Chemistry department and spent a day discussing the state of public education under a state dead-set on privatizing everything, calling for a national day of action which shut down a few campuses this past Thursday, and making plans to meet again May 5 (yes, Cinco de Mayo, a patriotic holiday) to plan further actions. April 29, hundreds of students protested outside TV Azteca, demanding that the network treat the movement fairly, and then moved to the Chamber of Deputies, the nation's lower legislative body (like the US House of Representatives). Meanwhile, the Rector proposed a dialogue with students for the first time since this conflict began, but one with the doors closed and at which only tuition, not the strikers' other concerns, should be discussed. The General Strike Committe (CGH) came back with a counterproposal a couple of days ago, approving of the idea of a dialogue, but demanding that it be open to the media, that it lead to a resolution of the conflict, and that all five of its demands be discussed. The document was to be officially released today.

At the same time, thousands of Law and high school students in the College of Sciences and Humanities program have resumed classes in facilities organized off campus. It remains to be seen whether this will affect the strike much. The leading lefty magazine, Proceso, reported that the Rector recently told Carlos Imaz, the president of the PRD in Mexico City and a leader of a similar UNAM student movement in 1986-87, that he was "prepared for a long strike."