The Mexican University and the State: Student Conflicts, 1910-1971.

Abstract

For decades, the National Autonomous University of Mexicon (UNAM) has made headlines when its students demonstrated or staged strikes and when the Mexican government responded with force. Few observers, though, have recognized these events as scenes in a larger drama of university-state conflict, described for the first time in this volume. Since the beginning of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, the Mexican state has successfully gained control of virtually every major national institution, giving rise to claims that Mexico is a corporatist state that penetrates all of public life. UNAM, the nation's premier cultural and educational organ, has belied this claim by escaping the tutelage of the state. Since 1929 the university's autonomy has been maintained and expanded, principally by UNAM students. Yet there are two great ironies in the conflict between UNAM and the national government. First, the students themselves have seldom recognized their role in determining the university's ability to limit the government's power. Contrary to popular mythology, the conflicts have arisen over many small parochial issues, usually limited to student-oriented concerns such as class attendance or examination systems. The second, perhaps grater, irony is that most of Mexico's political elite have received their training from UNAM--training in more than academic subjects. The student movements have given political experience and exposure to many who would later become important state or national politicians. Thus, student struggles against the state have often been struggles within the revolutionary family. Donald Mabry has drawn upon previously untapped archives and memoirs as well as extensive biographical data and other sources to piece together and interpret over sixty years of student politics and their role in the university-state conflict. The result is a myth-dispelling, comprehensive analysis important not only for those interested in Mexican history by also for those concerned with student politics, with relations between the state and its institutions, and with the role of the university in society.