Global Exchange
February 9, 2000
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New York Times and Washington Post Fail To Do Homework on UNAM Crisis
Police Retake Mexican Campus; University Radicals Are Ousted After Nine-Month Standoff
College Protests Spread in Mexico
The People Will Defend Their Own
The Ultras Par Excelence
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The following is an analysis by Global Exchange of the gaps and omissions in recent reporting by the New York Times and Washington Post in relation to the violent dismantling of the student strike at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) by Mexican Federal Police. Both newspapers published articles on 7 February 2000 that described the forceful reoccupation of the university campus and the arbitrary detention of over 600 students.
Neither article questions the legality or the constitutionality of the police action, major topics covered by the Mexican press the next day. According to Mexican law, no-one can be arrested unless he or she is caught in the act of committing a crime, or a judge has issued a detention order that founds and motivates their arrest. Thus, as Carlos Monsivais points out in La Jornada, 7 February, over 600 students were arrested for the mere fact of being physically present on the university campus.
Article 3, Fraction VII of the Mexican Constitution guarantees the autonomous status of the university (hence the inclusion of the word in its title). The directors of several leading human rights organizations made reference to the violation of the constitution by the Federal Police incursion the next day. On the 8th and 9th of February, the National Association of Democratic Lawyers also published letters in La Jornada condemning the illegality of the police action, as well as outlining further arguments about why the President's reforms that provoked the strike in the first place were also unconstitutional. It is also worth clarifying, since neither the Washington Post nor the New York Times have done so, that the PRD government of the Federal District steadfastly refused to intervene in the conflict precisely because of the autonomy issue.
Neither article mentioned the serious mistrust that existed between the Mexican Government and the strikers throughout the negotiations, based on their experience of broken agreements from previous university conflicts. Mexican political and historical scholar, Dr. Adolfo Gilly, for example, has claimed that the government's absolute refusal to negotiate throughout the dialogues was the "unshakeable point of departure" from which we can understand the history of the UNAM strike and the student movement (see La Jornada, 7 February).
The New York Times mentioned the police's discovery of fire bombs and marijuana plants while failing, along with the Washington Post, to mention the tens of cases of torture inflicted on imprisoned students by the police on 1 February (see La Jornada, 4 February). Miguel Angel Pichardo, a specialist in attention to victims for the Miguel Agustín Pro Human Rights Center, who was granted entrance to the facility where the students are detained, has confirmed the students' testimonies in interview with Global Exchange.
The reporting in the New York Times minimized the scale and force of the police incursion by reporting that "hundreds of federal police officers" were involved, whereas Mexico's national newspaper, Reforma, claimed that "2,662 federal police carried out the operation" and "1000 police officers from the Federal District (Mexico City) laced the streets."
The Washington Post article contains four quotes, all of which cite government officials; in the New York Times the ratio is eight to two. Neither the Washington Post nor the New York Times directly quotes critics of the military-police operation on 6 February. The only dissident opinion mentioned in the New York Times was an electronic mail sent out by the "strikers' steering committee" in which the students argue "that the authorities hoped all along to 'use violence' to end the strike."
Unfortunately, the Washington Post and New York Times correspondents did not have the opportunity to read La Jornada on the following day, which published over 30 pages of articles and editorials of varying opinions concerning said operation, before writing their articles.
We mention La Jornada due to its impressive coverage of the conflict, however, Reforma, Mexico's other leading independent newspaper, also ran extensive coverage. The front-page headlines of the Culture section reads, "Intellectuals demand the liberation of students." On the same page, seven different intellectuals are quoted at length criticizing the Government's operation. The reports portrayed groups connected with the strike as "small" or "radical", and student actions were described as "disturbances and crimes" which pertain to "old, leftist Mexico", without mentioning that the actions of the Federal Government were also illegal.
Another important omission in the newspaper reports is that students are being charged with terrorism, accusations that could result in prison sentences of up to 40 years. The charges are also unsubstantiated, according to Mexican human rights lawyer Federico Anaya. "It is true that there were infractions to the law on the part of the students," he claimed in interview with Global Exchange, "but they were a legal political movement: to attack the political nature of the movement - to accuse them of terrorism - brings the State to a dead-end; that is, the accusations of terrorism are unsubstantiated. It is stupid to accuse them of terrorism. They were not terrorists." Another matter not mentioned in the news reports is the fact that the General Strike Committee (CGH) was legally recognized by the university rector, De la Fuente, on 10 December 1999, as an official interlocutor in the negotiations.
The issues surrounding the nine-month-long conflict at the UNAM are extremely complex. Global Exchange is concerned that none of this complexity was mentioned in the Post and the New York Times articles. The language and factual content described in this analysis indicate a strong bias in favor of the government's handling of the conflict, without mentioning the constitutional controversy that surrounds both the origination and violent termination of the strike.