UAM Xochimilco[*], 7 February 2000.
STRIKE GENERAL COUNCIL [CGH]
PRESS BULLETIN
Resolutions of the CGH, in its session of 7 February.
We repudiate energetically the flagrant violation of university autonomy that starting Wednesday, 26 January and culminating yesterday, Mr. Juan Ramon de la Fuente has been carrying out, along with the repressive government of Zedillo, by introducing to the University the paramilitary Preventive Federal Police.
We denounce the brutal attack against the student movement, ordered by Zedillo and De la Fuente, supported by the government of the Federal District [Mexico City]. In an action prepared beforehand they sent their paramilitaries to arrest all the delegates of the CGH who were meeting in plenary session, making use of their legitimate right to expression, as well as the students who were keeping guard in the schools and professors, workers, parents and members of organizations and universities. This confirms what the CGH had been saying: that the plebiscite was the justification for the repressive end to the student movement. It is clear that it is the university authorities who have closed all possibility of dialogue as the only way of resolving the conflict, doing violence to the agreements signed between the CGH and authorities last December 10.
They are not satisfied with all the students arrested in their operation yesterday. We know of at least two members of the CGH who were arrested later: one, Rodrigo Figueroa, last night on leaving a television interview and another, professor Alfredo Velarde, this morning in his residence. They try to generate a climate of terror. They will not succeed.
The government and rectorate are mistaken if they think that with the arrest of almost a thousand members of the CGH - political prisoners - and unleashing a "witchhunt", they are going to defeat this movement. Its whole campaign to deceive the population, saying that the CGH is a "small radicalized group", has collapsed. How are they going to explain that to "behead" that "small group" they have had to jail a thousand students? How are they going to explain that they have failed, that the CGH still exists, continues firm in its struggle and mobilizing itself with more strength?
They failed: the CGH is not beheaded, because in this movement there are no leaders, leadership is collective, we are all the CGH and it is precisely the horizontal character of this movement (that which disturbs them so much), which allows it to resist these attacks and to keep ourselves organized and ready for struggle. It is certain that this attack has struck us a blow but it has not made us give in, nor will it.
Today the CGH met, with a massive attendance and the representation of most of the schools. Their resolutions show that we continue firm in the fight for the solution of all our demands.
The people has openly raised the demands for free public education and for the freedom of our unjustly jailed compaņeros. Their jails will not succeed in locking up conscience [consciousness?] and dignity!
For the cowardly repression against the CGH, we hold responsible
Zedillo, Labastida, Diodoro Carrasco, Jorge Madrazo, Rosario Robles
and mainly their puppet, the policeman Juan Ramon of de la Fuente. We
demanded his resignation! This paramilitary has no place in the
rectorate of the UNAM. All those who participated actively in
organizing and promoting the fraud-plebiscite, knowing full well that
the latter was the prerequisite for the repression, have been stained
foever with the jailing of our compaņeros. All those clamored for the
repression against the movement, waving the flag of the plebiscito,
are those who rob the people of their rights and demands, are those
who rob with the protection of the state (FOBAPROA), the same who
snatch from the womb the children of Acteal. Those who now accuse us
of terrorism, robbery, injuries, sabotage, criminal association,
plundering and riot, are the true delinquents, the assassins of the
people. It is they who should be in jail.
Agreements
The Strike General Council:
1. Continues ready to struggle, the strike continues. In spite of the
actions that have occurred.
2. Declares that its list of demands now has 7 points [it had six],
the first of them: the immediate unconditional freedom of absolutely
all the arrested compaņeros of this movement.
3. Demands the immediate exit of the Federal Preventive Police [PFP]
from the university facilities.
4. Demands the immediate resignation of Juan Ramon de la Fuente, for
his incongruous and repressive posture against the university
students.
5. Reiterates its readiness to dialogue as the only way to resolve
the conflict.
6. Calls for a metropolitan stoppage of Universities and Unions, with
tentative date of Tuesday the 8th or Thursday the 10th of
February.
7. Calls on the people to, next Thursday 10 February, interrupt the
use of electrical energy from 10:30 to 11:00 PM, as a protest of the
repression against the university students.
8. Calls all the university students and the whole population to the
march of Wednesday 9 of February at 4 PM from the Angel of
Independence to the Zocalo (We clarify that by an error, in the
display [ad?] of the CGH published today by "La Jornada" it
referred to Tuesday). The themes of the march are:
Press Commission.
CGH-UNAM.
[* UAM is Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, a large, mostly
working-class, multi-campus public university in Mexico City. The
staff union, SITUAM, is one of the most radical and independent
unions in Mexico, and the Xochimilco campus, in particular, has a
history of radicalism. That campus is also closer than the others to
the UNAM campus, and thus a convenient place for the UNAM students to
meet.]
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