Victory for the student movement IN OCTOBER 1968, just before the opening of the Olympic Games, the army opened fire on students occupying the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Mexico City. Hundreds were killed. The student unrest that shook Mexico, like many other countries, ended here in tragedy. The ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) ensured that there would be a long period of quiet in the universities.
Last November, the biggest student mobilizations since 1968 broke out. This time the students were victorious, and the government was forced to give in. Edgardo Sanchez, a leader of the Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT), the Mexican section of the Fourth International, explains the background to the students' struggle and
MEXICO
Another, far from minor factor, is the divisions in the PRI: the conflicts with the union bureaucracy.
Most of the Mexican workers' movement is directly controlled by the government via a powerful union bureaucracy that feeds on corruption and on the repression of all independent expressions of the movement. But five years of Miguel de la Madrid's government has left the union bureaucracy in a delicate situation, and it has been forced to take its distance somewhat from the PRI government.
For example, at the end of 1968, the Labour Council - the highest body including all the unions controlled by the PRI - reelected its chair. Traditionally in years dominated by forthcoming elections it is a veteran trade-union leader, Fidel Velasquez, who takes this position and proposes the PRI's candidate. However, for the first time in many years another member of the union bureaucracy was elected chair — the general secretary or the chair - the general secretary of the telephone workers' union. He is not a member of the PRI, a precedent in itself, and while being part of the bureaucracy he represents a union sector that came out of a big struggle fifteen years ago, and which has a history of struggles and mobilizations. Implications for the future of the mass movement
From a certain standpoint, this new leadership of the Labour Council reflects the pressure and the blackmail that the union bureaucracy intends to apply on the government to orient in this or that way in relation to the nomination of the next president of the republic.
All these elements have very important implications for the future development of the mass movement, and it is in this context that the student movement sprang up.
The student mobilization was very similar to the various mobilizations of youth that developed in other parts of the world in the last few months. But the Mexican student movement, in distinction from the movements in France or Spain for example, is not a national movement. (1) Only the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) was affected, but it is the biggest in the country. student strikes, see 'International View- 1. On the French and Spanish point' No. 1l1, December 22, 1986 and No. 114, February 23, 1987.
5 the significance of their victory. EDGARDO SANCHEZ
In the words of President Miguel de la Madrid, 1987 is a "political" year. It is in this context that we have to look at the DecemberJanuary student movement's recent victory. Leaving aside the journalistic fulsomness of the president's definition, there is little doubt that the coming year will be extremely important politically. It will be a year of electoral campaigning in preparation for the presidential elections in 1988. The candidates for this election will be nominated this year, and in particular we will find out who the PRI are putting up.
The fighting inside the state apparatus and the PRI has already begun over which faction of the bureaucracy will win out in the nomination of the presidential candidate.
Everything happening at the moment in Mexico is strongly marked by this internal struggle of the bourgeoisie, even though it is nearly certain that it will be the incumbent president who will tip the scales in the selection of the candidate.
The five years of Miguel de la Madrid's government have been very hard ones for the workers and the masses. But the current situation is favourable for putting demands. To improve its position for the coming elections, the government may soften its policies towards the workers' movement, most notably on wages.
For a large part of the population, the electoral fraud - which has taken on incredible proportions in recent years, particularly at expense of the rightist National Action Party (PAN) - has put into question the very legitimacy of the government. This is a new factor. The government coming out of the next elections is in danger of looking illegitimate right from the start. That has never happened before.
For example, in 1982, when the PRT presented Rosario Ibarra as its presidential candidate, we said that there was fraud against the left. But it is one thing to say that there is fraud, and another to say that the PRI's victory was illigitimate, because in spite of this fraud helping the PRI, it was indisputable that they had well and truly won the elections.
However, at present the danger for the ruling party is that large parts of the population consider that the next government will be illegitimate because of the accumulated electoral fraud over the last two years in the local elections. Because of this, there are many in the state apparatus who are ready to make economic concessions. For the same reason, the situation is less favourable for the PRI to directly confront the mass movement with repression. A massive, open repression appears very difficult, and the unfolding of the student movement and the victory it achieved confirms this analysis.
International Viewpoint 6 April 1987
There are 400,000 people there: 320,000 students, 35,000 teachers and 30,000 administrators organized in unions. UNAM comprises 40 teaching centres and more than a thousand buildings all over Mexico City. The student movement is organized in the various areas of the city, so that nowhere has been left untouched by the activity of the students. Although the movement itself was not nationally organized, it had repercussions on public opinion throughout the country.
As in other countries, the student movement was fighting to defend an open university for the people. Two aspects of the UNAM rector's reforms sparked off the movement: their content and the way they were presented.
The reforms were basically an attack on the right to free education which more or less exists in Mexico on the university level. At the moment, a student pays 200 pesos (0.20 US dollars) in registration fees per year, and all the other university services are extremely cheap. The proposed university reform would have increased fees for registration, exams and degrees. These reforms would also have put an end to the automatic right to go on from the last year of highschool to the first year of university. The purpose of the reforms was clear: to restrict access to the university for the poorest people.
Another similarity with other youth movements was the presence of tens of thousands of highschool youth. The involvement of the school students with the movement in the universities was made easier because the highschools are statutorily part of the UNAM. The attempt to introduce entrance examinations for the university seemed The University Students' Council (DR)
totally ridiculous to the students, because it is the university itself which sets highschool courses and curricula. This is what made the movement so explosive.
In line with the austerity policy of the de la Madrid goverment, the aim was to reduce public spending on education, by making university entrance more selective.
UNAM was a trial run for the government. It wanted to push through its reforms in the biggest and most important university in the country, and then extend them nationwide. The victory of the UNAM movement was thus a victory for all the students of Mexico.
Another factor in sparking off the movement was the way in which the reforms were decided. Besides the rector of the university, there is a legal institution which is, properly speaking, the governing body of UNAM. As in many other Latin American countries, UNAM is considered to be an autonomous university, self-governing without direct intervention from the state. Of course, there are many ways in which the state can exercise control over the university, but this question of autonomy is important to understand the growth of the student movement now and in 1968. This autonomy is the basis for the demand that the state should not interfere in the university. Majority of students not consulted
The governing body of the university is the University Council, which comprises the directors of the different schools and faculties, with a minority student representation. But the majority of students were not consulted about the reforms. Only two or three student representatives in the University Council opposed the reform when it was slipped through in an allnight session. This made the reforms even more unacceptable to the students. One of the student representatives was a PRT member, so the PRT played an important role from the beginning of the movement.
The movement took a lot of people by surprise because, unlike 1968, there were no signs beforehand of anything happening. In fact, there has hardly been any student activity since the 1968 defeat - there were no mass independent student unions, nor any youth organizations linked to the political parties. Some years ago, the PRT tried to form a youth organization at the university, but this failed, owing to the post-1968 decline. Consequently, only a very small number of students belonged to left political organizations.
So this student explosion came as a real surprise, and the astonishment grew as the movement grew.
The first big meeting at the university brought together 30,000 students on November 6. The first big demonstration of 60,000 took place on November 25. Just before the vacation, on December 11, 100,000 students demonstrated. After the holidays, on January 21, before the strike began, 280,000 students demonstrated for the first time outside the National Palace. Two or three days before the end of the strike, on February 9, the last demonstration was organized, with 350,000 people. We saw a continuous and impressive growth of this student movement.
For everyone - the press, political organizations, the government -the constant and obligatory reference was to the 1968 movement hepause was to the 1968 movement because of the combativity and size of this mobilization. Everyone spoke of demonstrations "such as have never been seen since 1968". In . In some respects, this reference itself was traumatic given the tragic end of the 1968 struggle.
Parallel to this growing mobilization, the movement was organized through the University Students' Council (CEU), a body which grew out of the struggle, and which included representatives from UNAM's 40 teaching centres. They were all recallable, and divided into various commissions. This democratic body gave the mass movement a profoundly democratic character, which recaptured much of the experience of the Student Council created in 1968. International Viewpoint 6 April 1987
But there were differences with the 1968 movement. First, there were no distinctive political demands. In 1968, it was exactly the reverse -there was not a single demand relating to the universities. Students then demanded the release of political prisoners, the repeal of antidemocratic laws and so on. It was a direct confrontation with the government. Here, on the contrary, the movement started strictly from demands around the university. This does not mean that the movement was less radical than in 1968 -far from it.
In many respects the generation of students who participated in this movement is much more radical, and has a greater knowledge of politics than the generation of 1968. It is true that there was not the same reference to certain political values as there was in 1968, such as the reference to Che Guevara or the Vietnamese revolution, but in some ways the rejection of society is wider and more profound than it was at the start of the 1968 movement.
The second element was the massive participation of the highschool students - of the generation which we call the "crisis generation". These school students, who were the most active, come from much more proletarian backgrounds than those of 1968. Even the layers who are affected most directly by the crisis — not only the children of workers, but also of the unemployed - were present in this mobilization. And of course, this was reflected in the slogans of the demonstrations. For example, one of the slogans which was taken up most widely was: "Education must first of all serve the children of the workers, and only after that those of the bourgeoisie." This slogan was chanted very consciously by thousands of students.
Even if it was less immediately apparent than in 1968, the student movement had a clear internationalist consciousness. This is, no doubt, one of the differences with the youth movement that shook Europe. The proximity of the Nicaraguan revolution is, of course, the cause.
The following incident illustrates graphically the extent of this internationalist consciousness. In December, when the confrontation with the authorities was at its height and all discussion was centred on the reform, Antonio Santos, one of the leaders of the student movement and a member of the PRT, proposed at a meeting in the city university a minute's silence for Malik Oussekine who had just been killed in Paris. It is important to under-
International Viewpoint 6 April 1987
The December-January movement was the biggest since 1968 (DR)
stand that the students never miss a chance to express their disagreement with proposals through boos and hisses. But in this case the thousands of students present rallied completely behind Antonio Santos' proposal, and a few days later a new slogan was added to those that had been chanted until then: "If the law has been repealed in France, why not in Mexico?" In other words, if they have won in France why shouldn't it be possible in Mexico? Public debate between students and authorities
The third extremely important element - since it both contributed to the victory of the movement and also will certainly be taken up in other struggles - was the use of public dialogue. The student movement. in 1968 had directly political demands, but for five months it developed without ever having anyone to negotiate with. Remember that at the time, the left did not have representatives or people in parliament who could express the students' demands. The movement was alone, isolated, and without official spokespeople it was ignored. The movement publicly demanded talks with the government, and the PRI replied by sending emissaries to have secret discussions with some student leaders. But this was never public, as the students would have liked.
This demand has been taken up by the mobilization this year. What was astounding was that they got such a public debate. In UNAM's main auditorium, named after Che Guevara since 1968, there were two opposing panels. One one side were seated representatives of the University Students' Council, and on the other representatives of the university authorities, and they discussed the validity of the proposed reforms. Not only did the authorities agree to a discussion in front of the assembled students, who had no hesitation in booing this or that argument, but they also had to accept that the debate be transmitted live over the university radio and later on the television. This meant that thousands and thousands of people participated in these discussions, not only the students.
It is easy to imagine the enormous impact of this public debate. It contributed a great deal to the confidence of the students, to the democratic organization of the movement and to spreading the arguments against the reforms. The movement's credibility grew enormously within a few days, while the authorities came out of the affair more or less humiliated.
In the second phase of the movement, the idea took hold not only that the reforms should be repealed but that, in addition, a university congress should be held, with all sectors of the university represented proportionally - thus giving a majority to the students. At such a congress, everyone concerned could discuss what reforms were needed in the university. The administration of the university tried to put the students on the defensive by arguing that they did not have any constructive proposals to put forward, that they were simply "anti-establishment" and opposed to everything. Very adroitly, the movement replied that it did have proposals to make, but that it did not intend to discuss them until the reforms proposed by the university were withdrawn, and that new reforms should be discussed
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by those concerned.
The fourth element, which I have already mentioned, was the democratic forms of organization the students adopted. This had very big repercussions. This left the government, which was always looking for "manipulators" to back up its conspiracy theory, rather at a loss.
At every stage of the struggle, the student movement leadership knew how to identify its enemies and put forward the appropriate slogans. It avoided falling into the trap proposed by certain leftist groups of immediately directing the struggle against the government. It understood how to use the autonomy of the university to demand that the dispute be settled within the university itself without any state intervention, in order to have a better relationship of forces.
One of the important aspects of the student movement was that it had a far-reaching impact on the political situation in the country. It managed to break with the parliamentarist and electoralist logic that the left has been caught in over the last five years. Although the situation is different in the countryside because there struggles have continued, the urban masses -except for the earthquake victims -and the trade unions have fallen back on their sectoral struggles. All the actions against government austerity and industrial reconversion have been partial struggles which have, in general, been defeated.
As a consequence of these defeats, there has been a growing fear in the masses of direct struggles and strikes, and the discontent that provoked the government's measures was funneled into the electoral and parliamentary channels. And yet from last year this diversion of struggles toward the electoral arena showed its limits with the permanent fraud surrounding the elections. Being unable to express their discontent either by struggle, or through the ballot box, the masses were at an impasse.
In some parts of the Mexican left, notably among the reformists, there gradually emerged an extremely pessimistic view of the situation of the left. These organizations maintained that the situation was very bad since the left as a whole was incapable of moving forward electorally, while the right - the PAN -was making notable advances, capitalizing on the opposition to the government. They explained that this absence of electoral headway for the left was due to its division, and that the only real remedy was to unify all the left organizations into one party and so on. A victory all along the line
The students put struggle back on the agenda, in the same way - but even more powerfully - as the movement of the earthquake victims had.
The victory of the student movement, which even overcame the trauma of the 1968 tragedy, showed that the left was capable of winning and not only of bringing about heroic defeats. Some parts of the left were so caught up in their pessimism that when the victory came, even that did not change them. The authorities met, agreed to suspend the reforms and to call a university congress. This congress was to be discussed and organized by a commission that they proposed, which would include representatives from the CEU, and which must be held in the coming months. It was, therefore, a victory all along the line!
For two or three days there was a very strange situation. Some of the highschools and the university were celebrating the victory, and some other highschools were still on strike because certain leftists could not believe that they had won.
The student movement had an immediate impact because it was the first movement in five years that had succeeded in partially defeating the government's austerity plan. No other movement or trade union had managed to do this. The only people who had won some demands were the earthquake victims, but this was very exceptional, a reflection of their particular moral authority as victims of a catastrophe.
This victory coincided with the shake up in the trade-union movement mentioned previously. The Labour Council, in its blackmailing policy towards the government, had demanded a wage rise for all the sectors organized by the Labour Council. Every six months the minimum wage is revised and increased, but this time the Labour Council demanded that this rise be extended to all wage-earners, whether or not they were on the minimum wage, instead of workplace by workplace negotiations, as is usually the case. It went so far as to threaten the government with a general strike - something it had never done before.
But horrified by its own audacity, the Labour Council kept postponing its proposed strike as the date came nearer. One trade union took it at its word though - the electrical workers' union. This union controls the energy supply for the whole of Mexico City. Just to underline what a big step this was, it should be noted that since the beginning of the century this union has only struck twice. One hour before the strike was due to start, the policie intervened in the power stations to prevent any power cuts.
The CEU solidarized with the striking electricians. It was PRT comrade Antonio Santos who went to assure the electrical workers' union that the students would be present at the workers' demonstration on March 3. This demonstration was a big success. It is the first time in recent years that there has been a joint demonstration between an independent student movement led by the left and an important trade-union leadership.
The student movement has brought into being a new political generation which holds out a big promise for the future. International Viewpoint 6 April 1987
Face to face - students and university authorities (DR)