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The aggression against Venezuela has created a very unfavorable balance of forces for Mexico and the rest of Latin America. If, despite the heroic resistance of the Cuban and Venezuelan guards, US forces were able to carry out an armed attack on the capital, capture the president of the republic and bring him before a US court, then much more of that becomes suddenly and threateningly possible.
More and more will be demanded of Mexico and it will be increasingly difficult and problematic to counter and resist. Hence, for our country, the mistakes of the past cannot be repeated, such as when Latin American unity was rejected in the 1980s and Mexico negotiated the debt alone. Not even when in the 90s he disdained the initiatives to link with labor and educational forces in the three countries and their proposals and warnings. These gaps meant high costs in education, although, it must be said that, despite being important, they do not erase or change history.
After more than 200 military incursions by the United States against Mexico (see García Cantú’s compilation), Mexicans cannot forget nor should we stop being radical in our demand for respect. Especially when there are already profound changes in global correlation and in capitalism that today critically affect the United States. Still in the 90s – with neoliberalism – Mexicans were considered “partners”; Now there is a new and difficult climate that dilutes those illusions. What remains, and is well rooted in education and the university, is the neoliberal transformation that was imposed on them as part of the country’s adaptation to the new trinational framework.
The previously current project of a democratic, open, critical university oriented to the broad knowledge needs of communities, organizations, regions and people, was replaced by the conception of the public university as a paid, vertical and authoritarian institution, with restricted access, internally segmented and, with the use of empty concepts, such as quality and innovation, oriented to the business, government and local and transnational elite needs. As this university turned out to be unable to respond to the demands for more space, low-cost public institutions with no participation and institutional democracy had to be created: technological, welfare and professional universities (such as Rosario Castellanos and Health).
The result has been inconsequential: neither in capacity nor in orientation, the universities and schools are close to the level of what a country and a region that lives under military threat needs from its education. An education with intense institutional, community and citizen participation is required; to train citizens with deep knowledge of the country’s history and the social objectives of the professions in defense and resistance. Also, with an intense connection of research and dissemination with local, regional and national liberation processes. Because from them arises the political, cultural and social force capable of sustaining for centuries the struggles for sovereignty, independence and the creation of power nuclei in Latin American nations and in the world. Nuclei that serve as a counterweight to the hegemonic powers. And it requires democratic processes, free access to free education, and replacing the current costly and conservative neoliberal bureaucracy, through the creation or strengthening of government formulas that contain greater and decisive student-academic participation.
This is urgent because the right that reigns in the institutions has generated a blindness to the reality of the country and a hurtful institutional inequality. The group of officials and super-academics at the UAM, for example, have incomes of up to 190 thousand pesos per month (Gómez Mena, C., The Day01/11/2026), while a majority of administrative and academic staff (assistants, associates, assistants, temporary staff) can earn less than 10 thousand pesos per month.
By creating and officially and comfortably experiencing this inequality – without criticizing it and, even less, eliminating it – the university contributes to justifying national inequality. Only the union (Situam) disagrees and with its wage demand and strike call for next February 1, it supports the implicit request for an equitable distribution of the available resource. So that those who now earn the most are not left in misery, but that there is stability and better income for the rest, hiring more teachers, admitting more students and, therefore, what is most necessary in this new era, a stronger and more active community, aware of its country and its now dangerous circumstance. Thus, at university, Donald Trump will have lost the most important battle.
* UAM-X
