At least in this initial period of time, which is the most difficult and risky, there was a preference for dialogue and negotiation at UNAM [National Autonomous University of Mexico], so that the university avoided the absolutely undesirable option of a police attack to confront a problem that, with all its various sides, has both political and social origins and meaning.
The rector [president], José Narro made use of all forms of pressure at his disposal, including a request to the police to clear the Rectory Tower [administration building]... However, despite pressure from those who would push for a hard hand against the extreme dissidents (with its danger of clashes between those who had seized the tower and those who wanted its release, perhaps using methods that could be too violent), the rector sent to the occupants a proposal for dialogue through UNAM's general counsel, Luis Raúl González Pérez, ... which was the exit door in the short run.
... Most important is that Narro, i.e., UNAM, has contributed at this difficult, dark time--which is stained with vague violence and susceptible to different manipulators and objectives--a lesson that needs to be learned ("In this university, we have been accustomed to learn even from our problems," Narro said). In particular, one of the passages that the rector made in his statement yesterday stands out,
"There are ways different from the traditional to move conflicts forward and learn from those situations."The traditional way of dealing with conflict, according to political school developed by the PRI [Party of the Institutional Revolution, which ruled Mexico for 70 years] and to which the community has been inoculated, and which is, above all, in the institutional DNA, moves to the criminalization of problems that go beyond the framework of tolerance that the system has imposed.
A substantial part of the official political discourse in preparation for repression emphasizes the rule of law and the duty to punish such violations. "Nothing is above the law" is one of the favorite phrases of institutional hypocrisy, as well as going "to the ultimate consequences" in investigations, that they know will go into a dead file. From this viewpoint, they would have the society's automatic approval for the use of the police to subdue and punish those who performed criminal acts, including those who attempt to protect themselves behind social, political, partisan or ideological arguments.
But the political class cannot order outright repression against violators because they, themselves, consist of recurrent and unpunished offenders of legal and social norms, which happens with a highly significant frequency. The media campaigns seeking to discredit the dissidents who exceed legal limits, i.e., who commit acts defined as crimes (highway obstruction, damage to private and public property, to give obvious examples) also produce conflicting results. Such is the lack of political legitimacy of the occupants of the various positions of institutional power, that even when they face events that merit immediate and undeniable prosecution, they should refrain and try negotiated ways out, in order not to unleash bigger protests that are not necessarily generated out of support for the protesters but in rejection of the political predators of the nation.
The lesson that the Peña Nieto government should pay attention to is precisely that of finding ways "different from the traditional" to solve problems. The federal and state governments have the law on their side (that is, the formal letter of the law) to use the police to confront the teachers, students and activists from Guerrero, Oaxaca and Michoacán who, in a violent series of protests, have arguably committed acts constituting crimes. But only by applying "ways different from the traditional" may they have expectations of a true resolution.
The public protests and violence that occurred yesterday during Labor Day in different parts of the country are an expression of institutional decay, the exhaustion of the current political model and of the dissatisfaction produced by the present mechanisms for attention to social demands. Only with a different vision and approach will ways to solutions be found. ... Spanish original