GENERAL STRIKE COUNCIL
PRESS BULLETIN
To the people:
I. There is no normality, the problem is not resolved.
The government and authorities played their strong card repressing the movement to disintegrate it, but they did not achieve this, the General Strike Council (CGH) resisted the blow and is reorganizing. Now they pretend that nothing happened and the institutional life of UNAM has begun again. They lie, the situation is different. In the schools and faculties of UNAM there lives a great indignation for the manner in which the university authorities decided to exit the situation. Even before they realized the fraudulence of the plebiscite, the authorities had already decided to repress the movement by means of the military police, violating the autonomy of the university, they did not solve anything and today there are 300 CGH members accused among other things of posing a "threat to society."
The authorities wagered that the students and professors would return to classes en masse, but they were mistaken, they do not understand the dignity of the university community which they themselves lack, just as the discussion between strikers and non-strikers, when these were convened to be the ones to break the strike, is in the territory of liberty and dialogue for a solution to the conflict. Therefore, the authorities resort to groups of conflict, now led by academics and investigators who, because of distribution of favors, ally themselves with the authorities, to make people believe that there is total rejection of the strikers. This situation reveals that there will be no normality at UNAM as long as the demands of the CGH are not resolved through dialogue, respecting the accords of December 10th, and while each and every one of our imprisoned comrades is not unconditionally released. Normality is not obtained by decree, the rector of UNAM continues conducting double discourse wanting to deceive the community into believing he has dropped the charges when the comrades remain imprisoned and their legal situation has worsened, some of them have been mixed in with the guilty and some female comrades have been [fichado], at the same time the directors continue repressing any expression of struggle and solidarity with the comrades. [¡No señores authoridades!] The struggle continues, the dignity and eagerness for justice cannot be stopped with jails nor with the intention to plant fear.
II. National Work Stoppage
Recently the convocatory power of the CGH was demonstrated, once more the educational sector and the people demand:
1. Free education at all levels.
2. A solution to the UNAM conflict by means of dialogue.
3. Unconditional and immediate liberation of all the political prisoners.
Intervening strikes, active strikes, demonstrations and diverse activities, the ENAH, UPN, UAM, Chapingo, the Autonomous University of Guerrero, the Juarez University of Durango, teachers of rural schools in the state of Mexico, the CNTE in the Federal District and Michoacán, the Autonomous University of Puebla, students, professors, and the SME of Morelos. To all of these and those unnamed, we thank for the solidarity they demonstrated with out just struggle and we request that they do not abandon us in this moments in which the government of Zedillo and Labastida decided to use the force of the army to annihilate our movement, but they did not succeed. The struggle and the strike continue, therefore we invite you all to organize with us to continue struggling, at the gathering on Saturday February 19th at 12:00 o'clock at the Ho Chi Minh auditorium of the Faculty of Economics, with the objective initiating a national strike with the following [ejes]:
Free education in all levels imparted by the state. Immediate and unconditional liberation of political prisoners, as well as the annulation of all warrents of arrest of the anticonstitutional bodies of the Federal Preventive Police and the Grenadiers. Genuine autonomy for the public univiersities. Because the only solution to the UNAM conflict, through dialogue, is repecting the accords signed December 10th.
III. Repudiation of the repression against the MEXE.
The MEXE Hidalgo is a normal high school with a great tradition of struggle, from which Lucio Cabañas egressed, that throughout our struggle has given diverse demonstrations of support raising the flag of free and public education. We energetically repudiate in the new assault of the government to remove out comrades of the MEXE using violence through the local police, during a sit-in protesting for the reopening of their educational center and for the liberty of the imprisoned from their school and from UNAM. IV. The distribution of bones has begun. After having arduously dragged themselves after the rector and attacking the CGH, José Narro, Enrique del Val, Réne Drucker and Alberto Pérez Blas receive their prize. They have begun their university reforms creating new positions of the high bureaucracy and reaccomodating their followers in the cupola of power of the university, without consulting one single member of the community and excluding everyone, the repressor De la Fuente appoints and removes people depending on their political and non-academic interests, there is the normality into which they want to make us fall, so that all remains the same, above all their vertical scheme and archaic forms of government.
V. Do they expect to accomplish it?
The senior president of COPARMEX has lost his tongue in announcing the urgency of the owners of money in splitting the university, to the giant, this giant that has succeeded in stopping the plans of his neoliberal politics. This same way, Limón Rojas announced that which we all already knew, that they will try in the future to impose the unconstitutional tuitions in the UNAM, but they will not, because the struggle we are putting up today will succeed in establishing gratuity, and if by chance they intended to, we confide in the fact that the society would not permit it.
VI. Thanks to the People for they Boycott.
Since the 6th of February, the members of the CGH made known the proposal to boycott the CENSO as a form of protesting with the indignation of the acts that occurred the same day. This measure was approved in the joint session of the CGH on Tuesday Feb. 7th at the UAM Xochimilco and initiated by the gigantic march on Wednesday February 9th. The CGH thanks all the families that supported this boycott, and invites them to remain attentive to the actions that we will initiate to be able to act together in the defense of public and free education apart from demanding liberty for all of our comrades.
Press and Publicity Committee of the CGH (General Strike Council)