5º STATEMENT TO THE NATION
I. To three months, the Consejo General de Huelga declares:
1. The government has tried EVERYTHING against our movement, and they have not
been able to stop to us. The "patriarcales" voices request the brute force
against our strike; directors of universities and cameras add themselves to the
repressive voices and until the high clergy threatens our fight and he requests
the aggression to our strike. The university authorities, the government and
the cupolas of powerof different sectors do not stop their millionaire attacks
against the students wasting the university budget. Threats, physical
aggressions, calumnies, harassment, psychological war; the recent cut of light
and water in the preparatory three and two CCH'S, etc. EVERYTHING against the
students and HAS NOT BEEN ABLE TO DOUBLE to US. All this force raised against
us makes evident that what there is behind the imposed reforms is the same
neoliberal project that in other headings too much damage has done to our
country.
2. They cannot with the Strike, for two fundamental reasons: one, that our
decision to defend the right of all to study, we took with firmness and
conviction. Our fight is legitimate to defend the principle of the gratuitous
education, to make reality the right to the education, is something that does
not have price, reason why it is fought and it gains, and we are arranged to
win.
The second reason is that the people is with us, not only because we are its
children and we fought for its children; it is with us because they know that
we fought against the same policy that squashes to all us, against the
neoliberal mandates that dictate to the wage tops, the privatizations of
companies and hospitals, and all those measures that until today have sunk to
more than 50 million of Mexican in the poverty, at the same time that has made
a few millionaires richer who take control of the wealth produced by million
workers. People are with us because it knows that our fight is because all
those resource return to the population, part of it in education, and that the
government lets give them to the richest. They are with us, because are not
either arranged to allow that the education pass to be from right to a service
by which there is to pay.
3. The people is with us and thus they make us feel. Strike has been maintained
with base in the received support. From the storings of the children of the
street, departments and popular colonies; the primary and secondary children
who distribute our papers in ticket form; the workers who search deep in their
pockets to throw a coin to our cans; and thousand samples more of affection
and support that we have no space to enlist them. The prolonged applause and
heavy cans that gather our brigades in Assemblies of Barzonistas, the SME,
workers of Pascual, ejidatarios and comuneros of the Valley of Mexico and many
more; until the breath voices that arrive to us from Chiapas of the Zapatistas,
of our companions of the universities of province and the foreigner, etc. The
endorsement of the workers of the SITUAM with its unemployment and its tons of
storing; of the workers of the SITRAJOR with its credits and reductions for the
publication of unfolded. The presence in marches and guards of Strike of the
working electricians and the STUNAM; of the teachers of Michoacan and the D.F.;
of the people of the FPFV, the CUT, the BOS, Assembly of Districts and many
other organizations more. The support and unconditional endorsement of the
professors of the University Academic Assembly and parents of family.
4. To all of them we say: thanks. We know, like you, that on the outcome of our
movement, will depend much in the correlation of forces that is dominated
national level for the fights against the privatization of the electrical
energy and the hospitals, the fights of the students of the public
universities, the colonos and farmers and of all the contingents that resist to
the neoliberal policy of the government. While we have you, the threats that
come and aggressions that come, have by insurance that we are not going away to
double.
5. To maintain strike during 3 months has not been easy. There is physical, but
nonmoral fatigue; and of the physical fatigue we recovered with energy of the
support and endorsement of the population, and of the joy of the marches, last
the past the 9 of July, to 82 days of strike, the mobilization greater than we
have made. The government and his civil employees in the UNAM were mistaken
when thinking that extending the conflict they would defeat to us. They were
mistaken when thinking that all the force unfolded against our strike would be
sufficient to make us waver. They continue caressing the possibilities of the
repression. We say to them: Misters Zedillo, Barnés and Labastida, nor try it,
you will return to be mistaken. All their threats do not scare to us, the
movement will not stop, and they would not solve anything, would only aggravate
the situation, only would give us more reasons to maintain us until the
triumph.
II. The " Encounter " with the university authorities: a farce
The position of the Commission of Encounter (EC) of the Rectoría of the UNAM,
during 4 days of encounter, was one: to demand the surrender of the CGH in
exchange for a pardon, and nothing else.
1. The fundamental causes that they originated the conflict, are not reduced to
the imposition of the regulation of payments of 15 of March passed, as they
said the authorities. Strike exploded in all the schools by 6 points: i)
Gratuitous education, that it implies the abrogation of the regulation of
payments and the elimination of all the illegal collections by proceedings,
services, equipment and materials. II) Derogation of the reforms that
eliminated passes, the respect to the selection of race automatic and that
prevent that many students conclude their studies in UNAM. III) Respect to the
university autonomy in terms of which is the UNAM that selects and evaluates
their students, with the consequent cancellation of all bond with Democratic
and Decisive the CENEVAL. iv) University congress; v) Dismantling of the police
apparatus mounted by the Director to watch and to control to the college
students and the act cancellation and sanctions against the students, academic
and working participants in the movement. vi) Extension of the scholastic
calendar so many days as the inverted ones in the movement.
2. The regulation of payments imposed the 7 of June does not solve, nor
partially the first point of our petitionary sheet, on the contrary. On the one
hand, the establishment of semester quotas with fixed amount and " voluntary "
character, is the threat of which at any time, when it lowers the mobilization,
the quotas they become obligatory, for which the authorities would only have to
reunite to its University Advice and to change a word of the regulation. On the
other hand, the new imposed regulation establishes that the illegal collections
(by proceedings, services, equipment and materials) are legalized, extends the
list of things to receive and all the schools and faculties extend to,
collections that in sum would represent a greater amount to pay than the one of
"the voluntary" quotas.
3. Respond to our demands does not violate any order, is enough that Director
reunites to its University Advice and solves, the only thing that needs is
will. Refuse to do it, using the argument of which "the institutional order is
violated", it is not more than a pretext.
4. We want to discuss and to decide with all the college students the global
transformation that requires the UNAM, for that reason demanded a Democratic
and Decisive Congress. But this discussion cannot occur on the base of the
reforms neoliberal imposed in our university, reforms that are transforming it
now into the direction dictated by the World Bank and the OECD taking it to the
service of the market; reforms that either is sending to study "technician in
refrigeration " to students of low resources" that wishes to have a university
degree, that or they are bordering the desertion to students who commanded
to majors that did not choose, that from year 2003 they will expel to most of
the students from the UNAM not finishing in the imposed limits (and these are
more than the two third parts of the students, according to data of the own
UNAM). The authorities must give reverse gear in those reforms, and over that
base we will pass all to discuss the course that must follow the University
National. If in this discussion it gains the neoliberal project, ahead; but the
authorities know that they would lose and for that reason they refuse to open
this decisive space.
5. We are not requesting pardon by anything. They are the university government
and his civil employees those that would have to request pardon by the damage
that has done to the UNAM and the whole Nation when trying to privatize the
superior education.
6. The refusal of the authorities to annul to the activities extrawalls, is a
sample more of than the interest by the academic excellence that they announce
is not more than demagoguery. The extrawalls developed during strike are the
greater academic fraud than never the National University has lived: students
and professors who attend under threats, trim of the agendas, gift of
qualifications, give of the questions of examinations before the day of the
examination, etc. The CGH demands the cancellation of this great fraud.
7. The rise of strike is not subject to any pardon, but to the exact solution
of the 6 points of the petitionary sheet.
8. The authorities refused to develop the discussion on our demands in a public
dialogue. The CGH raised that they discussed and that, product of that
discussion, rectoria evaluated the answer that they would give us. But
beforehand they established that its answer to the substantial points that
originated strike is NO; that is to say, beforehand they refuse to listen to
us, although they let speak to us. That is not to have will to solve the
conflict. The CGH maintains their exigency of public, opened and decisive
dialogue. The Director has the word.
III. We invited to all to strike
To the social organizations, union and of colonos, to the housewifes, the
parents of family, the teachers and the students of all the levels to turn
upside down to strike, and to give life him in all the city, all the country.
THE RIGHTS DO NOT NEGOTIATE, ARE DEFENDED. WE ARE GOING ALL TOGETHER
TO DEFEND THE RIGHT TO THE EDUCATION
NOR A STEP BACK!
we will win!
CONSEJO GENERAL DE HUELGA
Julio 20, 1999