Authorities Rout Strikers From Mexico Campus

More than 2,000 federal police swarmed into Latin America’s largest university at dawn Sunday, dislodging hundreds of strikers who had occupied the sprawling Mexico City campus for nine months in what had grown into a national political crisis.

No injuries were reported as police, armed only with truncheons and riot shields, rounded up 632 students and professors at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and loaded them onto buses to be sent to judicial offices, then jails. The strikers faced charges of plundering federal property.

The arrests marked a dramatic finish to a strike that began over a tuition increase but ballooned into a rallying point for Mexico’s radical left--including several guerrilla groups--and a test of the country’s young democracy.

President Ernesto Zedillo had vowed not to use force in the university standoff, recognizing Mexicans’ painful memories of an army massacre of students in 1968. But after bloody clashes last week, with strikers battling other students as well as security personnel, the Mexican Justice Ministry obtained a judge’s order to detain the strikers.

“The situation was very unfair for an institution that has given so much to Mexico,” Zedillo said in a nationally televised address Sunday evening. He said he ordered the police takeover because “the efforts to reach a [negotiated] solution between members of the university community had reached their limit.”

With 271,000 students, the national university, known as UNAM, is the largest in the Western Hemisphere. It holds a hallowed place in Mexican culture as a prestigious institution that has turned out presidents and prize-winning scientists while also offering upward mobility to penniless youths.

But for months, the only occupants of the university have been a dwindling band of radicals who balked at negotiating an end to the standoff. Many students have lost the academic year, and public pressure had mounted for a solution.

About 6 a.m. Sunday, 2,260 members of Mexico’s new federal police, wearing gray jumpsuits and black bulletproof vests, moved in to end the strike. They surrounded the 3-square-mile “university city” main campus, then smashed through tin and wood barricades and closed in on the occupied buildings, according to officials, witnesses and TV footage.

Students outside the “Che Guevara” auditorium, where strikers had held an overnight meeting, spotted the police and ran to warn their colleagues, radio reporters said. The strikers surrendered defiantly but peacefully.

“The movement will not give up!” shouted Alejandro Echeverria, a bushy-haired student leader known as “El Mosh,” as he was led away by police.

In a sign of the political sensitivity of the raid, Zedillo ordered that the police be accompanied by notaries and federal human rights officials. In Latin America, universities generally are off limits to government security forces, in recognition of the institutions’ role as bastions of free expression, even under dictatorships.

As word of the police takeover spread throughout Mexico City, strikers at UNAM-affiliated high schools peacefully abandoned the buildings. Meanwhile, parents of arrested students held noisy demonstrations outside the university and judicial offices.

“I’m going to get my kids back, whatever it takes,” said the mother of two arrested strikers, who identified herself only as Rebeca, her eyes welling with tears. “I’m going to get together with the other fathers and mothers. And when we mothers unite, we’re tough.”

The university rector, Juan Ramon de la Fuente, expressed his disappointment Sunday with the resolution of the strike.

“I profoundly lament” the police takeover, De la Fuente said in a speech. He blamed radical political groups from outside the university for frustrating negotiations.

He said the university would drop any charges it had pressed against strikers, and he urged “benevolence and justice” for those who will face prosecution.

There was no word on when classes would resume.

The university now faces post-strike difficulties. The buildings are littered with garbage, laboratory animals have died, and strikers allegedly stole computers and other equipment. In response to a demand by strikers, De la Fuente has promised to hold a university convention to redesign the institution and give more voice to students.

Some predicted further turbulence on campus. Hugo Aboites, an education professor and advisor to the strikers, said students at UNAM and other universities will protest the detention of their colleagues and the police takeover.

In addition to the strikers rounded up Sunday, about 250 students were jailed last week for their role in a skirmish at a university-affiliated high school, and charges have been filed against all of them.

But most analysts said a crucial period is over. Political analyst Jose Antonio Crespo predicted that the police takeover would win public approval.

“Most people were fed up,” he said. “The legitimacy that the student movement had at the beginning . . . went over to the university rector’s side.”

Strikers seized control of university facilities in April after school authorities raised annual tuition from 2 cents to about $145 as part of what they called a reform program to invigorate UNAM’s flagging academic standards.

In the face of protests, the university quickly backed down on the increase. But the strikers then insisted on the rollback of other reforms, billing their campaign as a fight against Mexico’s free-market policies.

Public support ebbed as the strikers clogged the capital with frequent demonstrations and appeared unwilling to negotiate, even after many of their demands were met.

Friday, a 12-hour negotiating session between strikers and the university produced no results. The strikers earlier rejected a recent plebiscite organized by university officials that showed a majority of students wanted to resume classes.

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Researcher Jose Diaz Briseno of The Times’ Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.