Mexican university
protest facts
Number of persons detained on
Feb. 1 and Feb. 6 during the inter
vention of the Federal Preventa
tive Police (a militarized national
police force) on the cam puses of
the National Autonomous Univer
sity of Mexico: 998
Number of persons freed since:
656
Number of students arrested for
“flagrant crimes”: 227
Number of students and profes
sors arrested under outstanding
warrants: 37
Number of students and prof es
sors facing criminal charges: 264
Total number of political prison
ers from the UNAM: 342
Students with outstanding war
rants for their arrest, who could
be detained at any moment: 395
SOURCE: Menton Attorney General's Off ice
UNAM protest
continued from page 1
ty Survival Center showed sup
port Friday by posing with duct
tape over their mouths in the
EMU courtyard.
“We’re doing this as an act of
solidarity with the student strikers
* in Mexico who were arrested this
week,” Survival Center member
Willie Thompson said. “Before the
strike, tuition was virtually free. A
$150-a-year tuition hike would
limit access to higher education for
a large number of students.”
Higher education in Mexico is
currently free to all and is seen as
a constitutional right, not a privi
lege. UNAM is the largest univer
sity in North America with nearly
250.000 students. Of the roughly
1.000 student protesters? 632 were
arrested and face charges of dam
aging federal property.
Thompson, a junior history
_ and sociology major, said he sees
student debt and corporate influ
ence at the University as similar
to the problems at UNAM.
“Corporate influence, however
subtle, changes the focus of high
er education from purely educa
tional to more business oriented,”
Thompson said. “Also, student
debt is ridiculously high if it takes
almost 20 years to pay off.”
survival Center members
, blame the strike not just on the
proposed tuition raise, but on the
external forces of world-wide fi
nancial organizations like the In
ternational Monetary Fund and
the World Bank.
“The IMF and World Bank-im
posed regulations are out of
reach,” Survival Center member
Laura Close said. “It’s so hard to
access the mechanism of change.”
The student strikers claim the
IMF and the World Bank are in
fluencing the Mexican govern
ment to convert from a socialist
country to having a more free
market system with fewer govern
ment subsidies.
Mexican officials maintained
the mass-arrest was necessary to re
store order on the campus, which
was shut down for more than 9
months as a result of the strike.
“A democratic society cannot
allow the kidnapping of the na
tional university,” Mexican Inte
rior Secretary Diodoro Carrasoco
said in a statement released to the
international press following the
arrest. “The university campus is
not alien to the rule of law, nor is
it acceptable to turn it into a terri
tory of impunity.”
Students who wish to help the
movement can sign statements of
support at the Survivak Center of
fice in Suite 3 of the EMU.
of first yeor UO students
does
report that
drinking alcohol
N0T btoUAH,,
make them feel
B&OO
Office of Student Life
Data taken from the 1998 CORE Survey