March 2000

Inside Mexico's student strike

The nine-month student strike which shut down Mexico's National Autonomous University, or UNAM, was broken up by the federal police Feb. 6. One of the leaders of the general strike council, Herendira Tellez, came to the U.S. to build support for those still in jail or in hiding, after spending two days in jail herself. Her mission brought Tellez, a student of classical literature, to the News & Letters office in Chicago. Translating was Jason Wallach of the Mexico Solidarity Network-Editor

What we are fighting against is the whole neo-liberal program at UNAM. We are fighting the whole media system, the curriculum, the structure of student participation at UNAM. We are fighting for what's best for the university, for the education of everybody and now for the political prisoners of conscience. All these things are happening at the same time.

On the 11th of February of last year, the president of UNAM put forth a proposal to raise the tuition at UNAM, so the students began to organize against this proposal, firstly because it was an illegal proposal. It violated the third article of the Mexican constitution which guarantees free education. We have seen that the laws of Mexico are systematically violated by the government. So school by school and department by department, the students began to act, but protests weren't effective, so each school started to work towards a strike.

The authorities never wanted to have a negotiated settlement. There was never any effort at dialogue. They just kept basically wearing the strikers down. Every time the students wanted to talk, the government rejected their efforts.

The students all this time were going out into the streets, talking to the people, asking for their support for the strike. To do this for 10 months wasn't easy. We had a whole lot of discipline and a whole lot of organization within our own ranks, and we got a lot of support from everyday people, from all aspects of the cultural sector, the other schools, the faculty.

The communities involved in the strike formed rather naturally. It was kind of natural the way everybody realized that they were fighting for the same things and it just happened that they started to work together. They had seen that after 70 years of PRI (Revolutionary Institutional Party) rule, they wanted change in whatever form they could get it.

On the 6th of February, the federal police raided the auditorium which we had renamed Che Guevara Auditorium. There are still some 270 odd people in jail, and there are a number of people out there wanted by the police. So we are having to reorganize the strike council based on who's in jail and who's not. Because we organized this strike from inside each school-UNAM is so huge that it's divided up by different schools-each school has its own strike council, and they are having to reorganize each school.

This Monday (Feb. 15) the school student assemblies met again, but most of the students didn't come to study. They talked to people about restructuring the strike. They have a lot of support from the teachers in this because they know that students are not going to enjoy the luxury of studying while other students are political prisoners. Because of this there have been almost no classes.

The labor unions are really helping out, and even sometimes the campesino unions which is really amazing because they are so poor. Last Wednesday (Feb. 9) there was a big protest to support the strikers. There were more than 200,000 people-workers, students, campesinos.

The parents of the students have been important supporters. The majority of those parents lived through '68 when they saw many students gunned down, many of them their comrades at the time. Nobody wants to repeat that. So they are willing to support their jailed kids in this fight.

In fact, this was only the second time police have entered the university since 1968 because in 1977 there was a strike of university workers for a wage increase. After two months the police crushed it. That strike was by STUNAM, the union of support workers, secretaries, building cleaners, and grounds keepers.

Because we are aware that the intent of the government is to repress, to crush any ideas, any movement of the students, we have been strong. We know the reality of the situation. We are doing this to show the government that we are willing to fight to defend our rights and human rights in general. That's also why the students are calling for support of other political prisoners throughout Mexico like at Cerro Hueco, not just for the rights of students.

SOLIDARITY WITH ZAPATISTAS, OTHERS

All of the cases of people who are fighting for freedom and justice interest us. On the 11th of December we had a march and part of that was for the freedom of Mumia Abu-Jamal. That was a big day for everybody in Mexico. On Dec. 11 we responded, 10 days after, to the Seattle events. The strikers went to the U.S. consulate. A big part of it was marching for Mumia Abu-Jamal, on behalf of him, and they were doing it in the spirit of Seattle, against the WTO.

Since '94 I have been involved with Zapatista solidarity and a lot the students in the high schools and junior high schools have supported the Zapatista movement. Before the strike started, we were always meeting, so we were some of the people that helped initiate the strike. We also helped to start the organization that eventually became the strike council.

To see the connection between the Zapatistas and UNAM, you have to look at the Mexican system of power. The government tried to avoid resolving problems both at UNAM and with the Zapatistas. In the same way they disregard the San Andres accords in Chiapas from Feb. 16, 1996, they disregard the agreements of Dec. 10 with the CGH, the strike council.

We have grown, and we have grown in ways more than if we had 10 months of classes. Now we know more about the political system in Mexico. We understand more about the other issues that are happening around Mexico, with the political prisoners, the repression against indigenous people and, of course, our own direct experience.

Our political perspective has changed a huge amount. We say that all the political parties are submerged in the political system, and that this whole system needs to be changed and these parties are not going to have an effect.

NEW KINDS OF ORGANIZING

Since the beginning, the strikers have been conscious of the ways that the Zapatistas have organized. So it has always been everybody's equal and everybody has equal voice in the movement. It's always been more of a horizontal leadership. It's not just one person leading the movement. It's the activity of all the people who are involved.

It's not that we're all going to talk to the president to negotiate, but we're all cooking the same food together for each other. We all have to share in both the intellectual and the manual work. To do this we have had to insist on democratic forms of decision making. We don't consider whether a proposal comes from a man or from a woman. We look at what are the best ideas. That's one of the best things about the strike.

It's true that in the past there has been a lot of division between men and women in different strikes, but in this strike, we broke with that tradition. The system is organized against having democratic structures being effective. We want to demonstrate that the types of repression that the government has and its types of structures aren't necessary, that we can create something that's different than the current system.

We are here to tell the truth about what is really happening with this strike. Of course, we want our companeros in jail to be freed-that is the real message because the international community has the ability to affect their freedom. We want to talk to everybody who believes in justice and democracy and to grab their ears to generate this pressure.