-Caveat Lector-
"Students 'can kidnap [the university] and force it to yield to its
demands,'' a Mexican political analyst retorted, 'but they can't force the
global labor market to reward a college education.' ''
Students Occupy Mexico University
By KEN GUGGENHEIM
.c The Associated Press
MEXICO CITY (AP) - What began as a dispute over tuition has turned into an
angry battle for the soul of Latin America's largest university and the core
of Mexican higher education. It doesn't look like it will end any time soon.
Students have shut down Mexico's National Autonomous University, occupying
buildings for more than 10 weeks, even though the university has backed down
on the issue that triggered the strike: an increase in the yearly tuition
from a symbolic 2 cents to $145.
The issue goes beyond the tuition, strikers say. It's about whether old
Mexican ideals about providing free education and academic independence can
survive in an era in which the welfare state is dying and market forces rule.
It's also about government priorities. If the country can afford a $65
billion bank bailout, why does it cut university funding?
``Education is for everyone. It's a right. It isn't a service,'' said
Veronica Velazquez, a Latin American studies student.
For administrators, what's at stake is whether the 280,000-student university
can adjust to declining government subsidies, dump its image as a haven for
loafing leftist pseudo-intellectuals and produce quality graduates that can
compete with students from around the world.
The university, known by its initials as UNAM, is winning the public
relations war.
Most Mexican news media portray the strikers as obnoxious radicals clinging
to Marxist ideologies and trampling on the rights of a silent majority
opposed to the strike. The students haven't helped their image by blocking
traffic on busy streets and spraying graffiti on buildings.
Yet officials have been powerless to end the strike. Capitulating on the
tuition increase - the university agreed to make the payment optional -
wasn't enough. Students said stopping the increase was only one of their six
demands. The others were to reverse reforms of recent years.
Negotiations have gone nowhere. The first face-to-face meeting was supposed
to have been held Tuesday. It was canceled over a dispute about how many
student delegates could attend.
It is unlikely strikers would be forcibly dislodged. That would be too
reminiscent of one of the darkest moments in recent Mexican history, when
soldiers fired on anti-government student protesters in 1968, killing an
estimated 300 people.
For university officials, there seems to be little to do but beg strikers to
give them back their buildings.
``I urge those whhave university premises in their power to join the
collective effort to build a new university that we can bequeath to future
generations, not to destroy the extraordinary institution that we have,''
Francisco Barnes Castro, the university's president, said at an anti-strike
rally last week.
UNAM has roots dating back to the 16th century Spanish colony. Its modern
identity was formed this century in the decades after the Mexican revolution.
In keeping with the revolution's populism, it offered students an opportunity
for a college education and social advancement regardless of how much money
they had. It also helped Mexico build an educated middle-class, which was
needed to convert the country into an industrialized nation.
While UNAM's science departments remain unrivaled, its social departments
developed a reputation for poor academic quality. Many employers shun its
graduates - sometimes even specifying in job ads that UNAM graduates need not
apply.
In recent years, the university tried boosting standards by tightening the
near-automatic admission given to students from the university's preparatory
school system and limiting the number of years a student could work on a
degree.
Reversing these moves are among the striking students' demands. They want to
create a new congress to govern the university, giving students more power.
Barnes has rejected those demands. ``We're not going to take a step
backward,'' he said.
Even if the strikers accomplish most of their goals, some people don't
believe that will amount to much of a victory.
The strike leadership ``can kidnap UNAM and force it to kneel before its
demands,'' political analyst Sergio Sarmiento wrote in the newspaper Reforma.
``But it can't force the labor market to accept the graduates of the
institution.''
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