The governor of Jalisco, Enrique Alfaro, through a video said that the property where the Puerta Guadalajara project is being built – now known as Iconia – was sold in 2008 by the government of Guadalajara with the endorsement of a Council of which the University of Guadalajara is part.
However, the decree approving the Puerta Guadalajara project does not show names or signatures of members or representatives of the University of Guadalajara.
Decree D 54/17/08, available in the municipal gazette of Guadalajara, establishes that those who approve the project are Alfonso Petersen Farah, then mayor of the municipality and Ignacio Alfonso Rejón, general secretary of the City Council.
The University of Guadalajara is only mentioned in point two of the transitory ones to detail that “the integration of an honorary body that monitors compliance with the decree and the agreements derived from it is approved.”
In the transitory it is clarified that the honorary council will be integrated by a representative of the different universities of the state such as Guadalajara (UdeG), Valle de Atemajac (Univa), Autónoma de Guadalajara (UAG), Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Occidente (ITESO) and Tecnológico de Monterrey. In addition to a representative of the city council, the general director of Public Works, the executive member of the Urban Planning Commission, the general director of economic promotion and the municipal comptroller.
The last agreement that modifies the project occurred in 2016 and was signed by the then municipal president and current governor, Enrique Alfaro.
In this agreement, it is established that the transitory of the original decree is modified to establish another honorary body that monitors the works and that is integrated by the different universities, a representative of the city council, the coordinator of Integral Management of the City, the coordinator of Economic Development, a member of the Municipal Council of Citizen Participation and the municipal comptroller.
In this regard, the university rector, Ricardo Villanueva Lomelí accepted that they were invited to the council, but denied that they were ever summoned to approve, discuss or monitor the actions of the project.
“It’s the truths they want to deceive with. What there is is all the universities we are in an agreement with which Iconia was made. That honorary committee has never been convened, just the other way around. It is one more breach of this trust is that the universities have never invited us. It’s not that we endorsed, they put us in an honorary committee where we were supposed to have a voice and they have never summoned us,” he replied in front of the media.
Villanueva added that the University of Guadalajara did not insist before the municipality to have any session because “they are committees that if they do not invite you because you do not go, the University is not obliged to follow up on a committee that they are the ones who are inviting you and they will notify you. I can’t walk, do you know how many committees we are invited to?, imagine that every day he is calling, hey are you going to invite me? … We don’t have a legal obligation.”
The governor’s statements come after three students were accused of violent dispossession, opposing the construction of the Iconia housing complex and demanding that it be returned as a municipal park. Although they were released, they were prosecuted for the case.
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