Feb. 11, 1999: Francisco Barnés de Castro, Rector of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), announces a proposal to raise tuition from almost nothing to more than $100 per semester for undergraduates, as well as to increase fees for UNAM’s high school and graduate students.
Feb. 19: The University Student Assembly (AUE) forms to fight the “Barnés Plan”
Feb. 25: About 10,000 students march through southern Mexico City to UNAM to protest the “Barnés Plan.”
March 4: Approximately 20,000 students march against the proposal. The new University Student Assembly (AUE) plans a 24-hour shutdown of campus in protest, and sets March 23 as a deadline for dialogue with the Rector.
March 11: Activists shut down about a third of the UNAM’s classes for a day, shutting down the classes of 90,000 students.
March 14: Civilian members of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation arrive to Mexico City (and hundreds of other municipalities) to promote its “National Consultation for the Rights of the Indian Peoples and the End to the War of Extermination.”
March 15: The University Council meets in a secret location to avoid protestors and quickly approves the tuition increase, with modifications. Undergraduate tution is raised from 20 Mexican cents ($.02 USD) to $65 USD. Dissenting students immediately march throughout the enormous campus to inform others of the decision.
March 16: Economics students occupy the Ho Chi Minh auditorium, a focal point for activism beginning in 1968, which has been used as a junk storehouse for years. Administrators claim it is structurally unsound for use as an auditorium, and by the next day, its is refilled with broken toilets and furniture, and the auditorium’s doors are refenforced with steel bars.
March 18: About 100,000 people march to Mexico City’s main square, the “Zócalo,” protesting President Zedillo’s proposal to privatize the state electrical industry. Led by the Mexican Electricians Union (SME), the march includes hundreds of UNAM students.
March 19: Zapatistas demonstrate with students against tuition increases, in front of UNAM’s administration building.
March 21: National Consultation for the Rights of the Indian Peoples and the End to the War of Extermination.
March 24: The second 24-hour student shutdown closes 95% of UNAM facilities. Activists build barricades around entrances to campus and buildings, and organize a day of rallies, debates, and planning meetings. Economics students knock down the doors to the Ho Chi Minh Auditorium.
March 25: AUE releases its first “Manifesto to the Nation”
March 29—April 4: Easter vacation postpones conflict for a week
April 7: AUE votes to begin a general strike on April 20
April 8: Third march, this time including sizeable contingent of students’ parents
April 9: Forum, “What kind of university? For what kind of country?”
April 15: General University Consultation, a plebiscite for students, faculty and staff, modeled after teh Zapatista Consultation. Students close facility number seven of UNAM’s Preparatory system (“Prepa 7”) to protest administrator’s lack of response to physical aggression against activists days before
April 19: General Strike Council (CGH) forms and issues its Manifiesto to the Nation. The student movement’s six demands are: the derogation of the tuition policy; cutting ties with the national testing service CENEVAL; the cancellation of all charges filed against activists in courts and the University Tribunal; a direct, public dialogue with all members of the university in order to solve its problems; the cancellation of reforms passed in 1997, which ended the automatic passage of students from UNAM’s high schools to its undergraduate programs, and which put limits on the time students can remain enrolled; and making up for all classtime lost during the strike, so that activists would not be hurt academically.
April 20, midnight: Students raise the black and red banners that designate a legally recognized workers’ strike at all but three UNAM deparments About 8:00 p.m.: Students from various departments push their way into the Law Department building, guarded by students and workers loyal its director, after two student assemblies vote to join the general strike
April 23:Tens of thousands of students from UNAM and the National Polytechnic Institute march from the IPN to the Zócalo, tracing the steps of the 1987 student movement that halted a tuition increase
April 24: Students from around the country attend the first National Student Encounter at the UNAM.
April 29: Protest outside TV Azteca because of the network’s distortion of the the UNAM conflict; protest outside national Chamber of Deputies (lower house of Congress) for increased funding for UNAM and for 8% of the Gross National Product to be earmarked for education
May 1: International Workers’ Day. Thousands of students join tens of thousands of unionists in a traditional march through downtown; an UNAM activist is a featured speaker at the rally in the Zócalo.
May 5: The second National Student Encounter is held at UNAM on “Cinco de Mayo,” a patriotic holiday.
May 12: Students, labor unions and community organizations march to the Zócalo from Tlatelolco, site of the infamous 1968 student massacre. This march also follows the route taken by the 1987 student movement.
May 15-16: At the third National Student Encounter, students from 33 universities agree to form the National Student Coordinating Committee, a permanent, radical student organization, such as has never existed.
May 21: UNAM students march with members of the National Coordinating Committee of Educational Workers (CNTE), the dissident wing of the national teachers’ union, from the Zócalo to Los Pinos, the presidential residence. Shortly before arriving, the march is halted by hundreds of riot police blocking the road with metal fences, officers, horses, and vehicles. CNTE holds a rally and delivers a letter of protest to presidential representatives, and block the road with students for two hours, before dispersing.
May 22: Student activists from the 1968 movement and the current strike reinaugurate the “Che Guevara” Auditorium, in UNAM’s Philosophy and Letters department.
May 23: “Miss Huelga” contest in the Che Auditorium
May 27: The Metopolitan Consultation collects hundreds of thousands of votes across Mexico City in favor of free education
June 2: CGH representatives deliver its proposal for dialogue to the Rector’s “Encounter Commission,” which rejects it within hours because of the conditions it puts on student-administration talks: cancellation of off-campus classes held during the strike, an end to violence and threats against activists, and the derogation of tuition.
June 3: Rector Barnés announces his proposal to the University Council to leave the new tuition rates in place, but make them voluntary. The CGH soon rejects this plan, since the mandatory fees for exams, laboratories, computer use, and other requirements could be more expensive under the new plan than the originally proposed tuition.
June 10: Students, teachers, parents, unions, and community organizations march from four different points in Mexico City to the Zócalo to reiterate the CGH’s list of six demands
June 12-13: Students from more than 30 universities meet in Morelia, Michoacán, to form the National Student Coordinating Committee, the first of its kind.
June 14: A 16-year-old girl from the east campus of the College of Sciences and Humanities (CCH-Oriente) is abducted and raped by men who interrogate her about her involvement in the strike. That night and the next day, groups of students block major streets in protest
June 17: Students march from the monument to the “Angel of Independence” to the Secretary of the Interior (Secretaría de Gobernación) to demand that the rape of a high school activist June 14 be fully investigated and that violence against students cease