The change of rector will promote cheerleading at UNAM: academic

Fernando Camacho Servin

Newspaper La Jornada
Saturday, October 15, 2022, p. 8

Far from weakening, the phenomenon of cheerleading at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) has grown stronger and there are no signs that it will disappear anytime soon, as these shock groups continue to be functional to the political groups that promote and finance them.

Hugo Sánchez Gudiño, professor-researcher at the faculties of Political Science and Higher Studies of Aragón, pointed out that the current student effervescence in several schools and the situation of the change of rector next year may cause a resurgence of the joint activity.

In interview with the daythe academic recalled that the porril bands have been in existence for 100 years, since it was in 1922 when Alfonso Pruneda, rector of the then National University of Mexico, formed a group that was known by students as The Gorillasso it can be said that this phenomenon it is inherent to the history of the highest house of studies.

He stressed that the periods of activity of the shock groups are cyclical and are largely linked to the political situations of both the highest house of studies and the country. An example of this, he said, is the attack they committed on September 3, 2018 on the Rectory esplanade, which had great media coverage.

The balance is that these groups, far from disappearing, have become stronger, because both their structure and their financing are very solid, they have never been touched. The most that the authorities have come to is to expel them, but it is a paradox, because many of the joints are not even enrolled as students.he indicated.

After highlighting that at UNAM there is still no comprehensive protocols against cheerleading, Sánchez Gudiño announced that these groups could intensify their activity to intimidate the most politicized groups of students and influence the process of changing the rector in 2023.

There is a dispute over the Rectory, and that allows conditions for groups linked to cheerleading to reappear and generate a negative environment, which in itself is already toxic and fearful in various schools that have made strikes and have as one of their claims main the disappearance of these groupings.

He said that there are at least 52 porril groups, whose financing has historically come from the federal government, the parties -especially the Institutional Revolutionary- and sometimes of the Rectory and directors of schools and faculties.

Cheerleading has been very useful and functional to the Mexican political system to violate the most critical student body. If there was a certain political will of the university authorities and the government in turn, the phenomenon would have already disappeared, but as long as there is not, the phenomenon will continue to be therehe pointed out.