TWO DECADES AGO, MEXICO'S HUGE UNIVERSITY STRIKE DEFENDED FREE TUITION AND ACCESS
Historic photographs of Mexico's huge protest over the arrest of students and the invasion of its premier university
By David Bacon
The Stansbury Forum, 3/16/20
https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2020/03/two-decades-ago-mexicos-huge-university.html
https://stansburyforum.com/
The student contingent from the Economics Faculty, one of the main centers of the strike.
Twenty years ago Mexico's Federal government moved to end the huge student strike at the National Autonomous University (UNAM). The strike, which began in 1999, reverberated far beyond Mexico. Like the WTO protest in Seattle, which took place at the same time, it became a global symbol of resistance to pressure by international financial institutions for austerity policies and the privatization of public services.
Social protests erupting throughout that period adopted radical tactics of taking over public spaces and impeding business as usual. The UNAM strike, however, was not just a brief confrontation in the streets. It lasted almost a year, during which students occupied the campus and shut down the operation of one of the world's largest universities.
The strike was organized to defend the historic principle of free tuition at Mexico's premier institution of higher education - with 270,000 students one of the largest and most respected in Latin America. Their key demand was repeal of a newly-instituted tuition in an institution that had always been free. The International Monetary Fund was demanding economic reforms, including ending government subsidies for public services. The government claimed it intended to charge only a symbolic amount - 800 pesos a semester ($85).
But students and university unions feared layoffs and other cost-cutting measures. Even 800 pesos was hardly a symbolic amount for many in Mexico. According to Alejandro Alvarez Bejar, economist and dean of UNAM's economics faculty, the average 5-member family at the time had an income of 5-6000 pesos (then $625-$750) a month, based on three of the five family members working full time. Millions of families earned less.
Students also charged that tuition and other reforms were part of a larger project to begin privatizing education. And in fact, over the next two decades Mexico's national government did try to impose corporate education reforms modeled after those in the U.S., much as the students predicted.
In the twenty years following the strike, a virtual war was fought by teachers against the national government, not just over tuition, but to reverse the neoliberal direction of Mexico's education policies. These battles culminated in the shooting of nine people at Nochixtlan, Oaxaca during a teachers' strike, and the disappearance of 43 students at the teacher training school in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero. Finally, the conflicts helped fuel the election of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, eighteen years after the UNAM uprising.
On taking office Lopez Obrador echoed the criticisms and demands of that seminal student strike. "Neoliberal economic policy has been a disaster, a calamity for the public life of the country," he told the Mexican Congress. "We will put aside the neoliberal hypocrisy. Those born poor will not be condemned to die poor." And speaking to tens of thousands of people afterwards in Mexico City's zocalo, he promised that "the so-called educational reform will be canceled, and the right to free education will be established [as mandated by] Article 3 of the Constitution at all levels of schooling."
The UNAM strike of 2000, therefore, was a class battle, but also one played out in the arena of electoral politics. In the year of the strike, Mexico's national government was still controlled by its old ruling party, the Party of the Institutionalized Revolution (PRI). The PRI sought to use the uproar over the conflict to prevent a rising leftwing political tide from winning that year's presidential election.
In two previous national elections the leftwing Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) almost succeeded in taking power. In 1988 only massive fraud prevented its candidate, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, from becoming president. In 1994, the ruling PRI campaigned successfully to elect Ernesto Zedillo by identifying Cardenas, who was again the PRD candidate, with the armed Zapatista rising in Chiapas. A vote for the PRI was portrayed as a vote for social stability, against armed conflict and social unrest.
In 2000 the PRI nominated Francisco Labastida, and Cardenas was the PRD presidential candidate for a third time. Labastida called for arresting the students as a response to what he called growing social chaos, much as Zedillo had used the suppression of the Zapatistas. In 1998, however, the mayor of Mexico City, one of the world's largest urban centers, became an elected position for the first time. The PRD's Cardenas was voted into this crucial office. After a year he resigned, however, in order to run for president once again. Rosario Robles, a PRD leader, then became mayor - the most powerful woman elected to office in Mexico.
By then the strike had started, and the students had broad public support, especially from the union for the university's workers (STUNAM - Sindicato de Trabajadores de UNAM). Nevertheless, Mexico's national PRI government never tried to negotiate with either students or teachers. Instead, it tried to order Robles to use the city police to occupy the campus and arrest students. She refused, saying it would violate the Mexican constitution. Cooperation would also have been viewed by PRD members as a political betrayal.
Instead, after the strike had gone on for nine months, the PRI itself intervened to occupy the campus, using its new anti-drug strike force, as well as army troops in police uniforms. Armed Federal agents arrested and jailed the leaders of the General Strike Committee (CGM - Consejo General de la Huelga), which students had created to organize demonstrations and the occupation of the campus.
After the arrests, Labastida criticized Robles, but in Mexico City the massive repression backfired. People were shocked when the military and police stormed onto the campus, a reminder of the violent and bloody massacre of students in 1968. Mexico, like most Latin American countries, has a tradition of university autonomy, which prohibits presence of government armed forces on the grounds of UNAM. In response over a hundred thousand people marched through the city to protest on February 9, 2000, an event documented in these photographs. During the march, large labor union contingents were interspersed among the students, in an effort to make difficult the arrest of those the government still sought.
The move by the PRI to end the strike killed its chances of winning Mexico City for Labastida. The most popular chant in the huge march was "Not one vote for the PRI!" But the Mexican countryside outside of Mexico City is more conservative, and the government's message wasn't intended for chilangos (Mexico City residents) anyway. In small towns and villages, the message of maintaining social stability was intended to keep the continued loyalty of a small, wealthy elite and the votes they controlled.
[. . .]
"The Criminalization of Migration: A Socialist Perspective" with David Bacon and Rafael Pizarro.
http://ouleft.org/wp-content/uploads/David-Bacon-The-Criminalization-of-migration.mp4
The exhibitions in th list were scheduled before the current COVID-19 crisis. Public gatherings are not now taking place and these exhibitions have now been postponed or rescheduled.
Stay healthy!
DOCUMENTING RESISTANCE -
Community Organizing Beyond the Farmworkers' Movement
Photographs by David Bacon
February 18 - March 27
Powell Library Rotunda, UCLA
Los Angeles, CA
IN WASHINGTON’S FIELDS: Photographs by David Bacon
February 1-May 10, 2020
Washington State History Museum
1911 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA
Exhibition Schedule
Exhibitions of photographs are scheduled for the following venues and dates:
In the Fields of the North / En los campos del norte
Scheduled exhibitions:
http://ouleft.org/wp-content/uploads/David-Bacon-The-Criminalization-of-migration.mp4
The exhibitions in th list were scheduled before the current COVID-19 crisis. Public gatherings are not now taking place and these exhibitions have now been postponed or rescheduled.
Stay healthy!
DOCUMENTING RESISTANCE -
Community Organizing Beyond the Farmworkers' Movement
Photographs by David Bacon
February 18 - March 27
Powell Library Rotunda, UCLA
Los Angeles, CA
IN WASHINGTON’S FIELDS: Photographs by David Bacon
February 1-May 10, 2020
Washington State History Museum
1911 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA
Exhibition Schedule
Exhibitions of photographs are scheduled for the following venues and dates:
In the Fields of the North / En los campos del norte
Scheduled exhibitions:
March 15, 2020 - June 21, 2020
Los Altos History Museum, Los Altos
March 21, 2021 - May 23, 2021
Carnegie Arts Center, Turlock
More Than a Wall - The Social Movements of the Border
Scheduled exhibition:
August 29,, 2020 - November 29,, 2020
San Francisco Public Library
Deportations
Scheduled exhibition:
April 10, 2020 - May 1, 2020
Uri-Eichen Gallery, Chicago IL
In the Fields of the North / En los Campos del Norte
Photographs and text by David Bacon
University of California Press / Colegio de la Frontera Norte
302 photographs, 450pp, 9”x9”
paperback, $34.95 (in the U.S.)
order the book on the UC Press website:
ucpress.edu/9780520296077
use source code 16M4197 at checkout, receive a 30% discount
En Mexico se puede pedir el libro en el sitio de COLEF:
https://www.colef.mx
Los Angeles Times reviews In the Fields of the North / En los Campos del Norte - click here
En los campos del Norte documenta la vida de trabajadores agrícolas en Estados Unidos -
Entrevista con el Instituto Nacional de la Antropologia y Historia
http://www.inah.gob.mx/es/boletines/6863-en-los-campos-del-norte-documenta-la-vida-de-trabajadores-agricolas-en-estados-unidos
Entrevista en la television de UNAM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdSaBKZ_k0o
David Bacon comparte su mirada del trabajo agrícola de migrantes mexicanos en el Museo Archivo de la Fotografia
http://www.cultura.cdmx.gob.mx/comunicacion/nota/0038-18
Trabajo agrícola, migración y resistencia cultural: el mosaico de los “Campos del Norte”
Entrevista de David Bacon por Iván Gutiérrez / A los 4 Vientos
http://www.4vientos.net/2017/10/04/trabajo-agricola-migracion-y-resistencia-cultural-el-mosaico-de-los-campos-del-norte/
"Los fotógrafos tomamos partido"
Entrevista por Melina Balcázar Moreno - Milenio.com Laberinto
http://www.milenio.com/cultura/laberinto/david_baconm-fotografia-melina_balcazar-laberinto-milenio_0_959904035.htmlDie Apfel-Pflücker aus dem Yakima-Tal
http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=23990
EN LOS CAMPOS DEL NORTE: Farm worker photographs on the U.S./Mexico border wall
http://us7.campaign-archive2.com/?u=fc67a76dbb9c31aaee896aff7&id=0644c65ae5&e=dde0321ee7
Entrevista sobre la exhibicion con Alfonso Caraveo (Español)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJeE1NO4c_M&feature=youtu.be
THE REALITY CHECK - David Bacon blog
http://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com
Books by David Bacon
The Right to Stay Home: How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration (Beacon Press, 2013)
http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2328
Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008)
Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008
http://www.beacon.org/Illegal-People-P780.aspx
Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006)
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100558350
The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004)
http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520244726
En Español:
EL DERECHO A QUEDARSE EN CASA (Critica - Planeta de Libros)
http://www.planetadelibros.com.mx/el-derecho-a-quedarse-en-casa-libro-205607.html
HIJOS DE LIBRE COMERCIA (El Viejo Topo)
http://www.tienda.elviejotopo.com/prestashop/capitalismo/1080-hijos-del-libre-comercio-deslocalizaciones-y-precariedad-9788496356368.html?search_query=david+bacon&results=1
For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org and http://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com
and https://www.flickr.com/photos/56646659@N05/albums
Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008
http://www.beacon.org/Illegal-People-P780.aspx
Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006)
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100558350
The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004)
http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520244726
En Español:
EL DERECHO A QUEDARSE EN CASA (Critica - Planeta de Libros)
http://www.planetadelibros.com.mx/el-derecho-a-quedarse-en-casa-libro-205607.html
HIJOS DE LIBRE COMERCIA (El Viejo Topo)
http://www.tienda.elviejotopo.com/prestashop/capitalismo/1080-hijos-del-libre-comercio-deslocalizaciones-y-precariedad-9788496356368.html?search_query=david+bacon&results=1
For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org and http://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com
and https://www.flickr.com/photos/56646659@N05/albums
