The head of government of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum, said that conservative movements that were previously against the UNAM, now defend the university, in the face of criticism that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has launched.
Accusing them of being “hypocrites,” the president said these same groups sought to “privatize” the National Autonomous University of Mexico “during neoliberalism.”
Read more | ‘It seems that the human was alien to them’: AMLO says that the UNAM must be reformed
“At the time there were conservative movements within the university itself, which have always existed, because the university is plural, but those who today come to the defense of the public university are those who have opposed that the university is free; they are the ones who have opposed that there is research within the National University, and those are the ones who now – the truth, from my point of view – very hypocritically come to their defense,” he said at a press conference on Wednesday.
Sheinbaum said that in the face of attempts to “privatize and elitize” UNAM, it was the student and university movements themselves who prevented it.
“I was part of a student movement that opposed the reforms that, then, the then rector Carpizo wanted to impose, which consisted of raising the quotas; that is, to pay for education. Today, the UNAM, you really pay pennies,” he insisted.
#EnVivo ▶️ Press conference, with the #JefaDeGobierno, @GasBienestar_MX, @CDMX_SIBISO and @Pemex. https://t.co/P1ydja0QvV
— CDMX Government (@GobCDMX) October 27, 2021
The head of government pointed out that the “conservative parties” previously sought to raise the price of quotas or the automatic pass of high school students.
“Even when there is autonomy, it seems to me that it is important to discuss the distribution of the university budget, how the university bureaucracy has grown, I believe that these are issues that university students have to discuss and have to be raised, and it is not bad that this discussion is opened within the university and outside the university,” Said.
President López Obrador has criticized the National University in the last week, saying that it was subjected to the “neoliberalist” regime, that it “became right-wing,” and that its faculties “were filled with conservatives” and became “individualist.”
Just yesterday, the president called on those who are offended by his statements to demonstrate, saying they are “gentrifying.”
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