Mexico Students Steadfast in Strike Fri, 4 Feb 2000 08:11:53 -0500 Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Mexico Students Steadfast in Strike By Mark Stevenson Associated Press Writer Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2000; 1:35 p.m. EST MEXICO CITY Wading into a sea of protesters, the head of Latin America's largest university confronted hard-line strike leaders Tuesday and told them he won't negotiate until they reopen the barricaded campus. Juan Ramon de la Fuente, the rector of the National Autonomous University, had planned to march onto campus to present the striking students with the results of a university-wide vote. In the vote last week, other students, professors and workers overwhelmingly approved initiatives to end the strike, which has paralyzed the 280,000-student university for nine months. But the strikers wrapped the main gate with wire and barricaded it Tuesday with windows torn from university buildings. A crowd of about 1,000 pro-strike students and onlookers crowded around the gate, and a representative of the strikers met the rector outside. "Open the university and with great pleasure we will restart the dialogue," de la Fuente told a strike representative during the brief confrontation. Strikers reiterated that they would welcome dialogue but not on campus. "The rector will not be allowed to enter the university because it is under the custody of the strike council," said a strike leader, Alfredo Velarde. Velarde said strike supporters consider de la Fuente a government puppet. He accused the rector of provoking the strikers by trying to enter the campus. The university, long Mexico's premier academic institution, has been held since April by a small and increasingly radical group which no longer has the support of the majority of the 280,000 students. During his brief talk with an unidentified strike leader, de la Fuente delivered the referendum results: Nearly 90 percent of students and teachers supported his proposal to end the strike. Strike leaders call the vote an irrelevant fraud. "We do not pretend to represent the majority of students. We represent the politically active and conscious fringe," said Velarde, who described himself as an anarchist-communist. The strike began as a protest against plans by de la Fuente's predecessor to raise annual tuition from a token few cents to $140. Though administrators have dropped the fee increase, the strikers' demands have grown to include a call for greater student control of the university and sweeping policy changes. De la Fuente, President Ernesto Zedillo's former health minister, was appointed university rector in November. He pledged to reopen the university, popularly known by its Spanish acronym, UNAM. Zedillo has declared that the strike should be resolved through dialogue, not force. Mexicans still remember 1968 protests which ended with soldiers massacring students shortly before Mexico City played host to the Olympics. Copyright 2000 The Associated Press ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytcamer-02.04.00-08:11:51-29189