JCG-6 Londres 190, Depto. 109 Colonia Juarez Mexico 6. DF
July 27, 1966
Mr. Goulden is a 1965 Alicia Patterson Fund fellowship award winner on leave from the Philadelphia Inquirer. Permission to publish this article may be sought from The Managing Editor, Philadelphia Inquirer.
Been from the Plaza de Armas in the center of the city of Durango, the Cerro de Mercado is a reddish-gray hill, its sides covered with mining machinery and symmetrical slashes through the scrub brush and the rock beneath it. At night dozens of campfires dot the side of the hill, like a cluster of’ giant fireflies on the horizon south of the city. Except for the mining activity and the fires, the Cerro is little different from any of thousands of similar hills scattered across the harsh, dry stretches of Durango State and the remainder of northern Mexico.
From Mexico City, however, the Cerro de Mercado is a foreboding symbol of unrest, a possible harbinger of the rebirth of direct revolutionary action in a nation grown increasingly conservative in its upper echelons in the past two decades. For in two months a band of student strikers, operating with broad popular support from every sector of Durango life, brought to their knees both the Federal government and one of Mexico’s most powerful industrial companies. The issue was exploitation of the Cerro’s ore resources by a steel firm in Monterrey, 384 miles distant in the neighboring state of Nuevo Leon, without benefit to the people of Durango.
Climaxing an occupation of the mine that began on June 2, the students and their advisers from the Durango business hierarchy wrested a promise from the government of construction of factories, which will utilize steel made from the Cerro’s ore. Additionally, the Cerro’s out-of-state owners will be assessed 34 cents for each ton of ore extracted, proceeds of which will pay for the factories and for Durango municipal and social services.
The Durango affair – a cause celebre in Mexico since it’s beginning – is significant because it marks a “revolutionary accomplishment” outside formal governmental and political channels. And for a time it cast both Federal and state authorities into the role of “oppositionists” to what was a popular uprising in the truest sense of the word. The Federal government’s political antennae were notably unattuned to what was happening in Durango. When Mexico City finally awoke the students were so firmly entrenched that they were able to conduct cabinet-level “negotiations” with the administration of President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz. The Durango governor, Enrique Dupre Ceniceros, suffered near-fatal political estrangement from his constituents, and his recovery is by no means complete. The nation’s dominant Partido Revolucionario Institucional – Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI – was left in the cold altogether, save for follow-the-student-leadership by its labor sector. Finally, the Cerro strike illustrates the heat that can be generated by a Mexican who feels he is being exploited – by his own countrymen, by Spaniards, by Frenchmen, by North Americans,
Cerro de Mercado means “Hill of Mercado,” the namesake being the i6th Century Spanish explorer Captain Gines Vasquez de Mercado. Earlier wanderers in northern Mexico thought the hill to be 60 percent silver, and dutifully brought their hopes back to Mexico City. Vasquez de Mercado, sent to investigate, reported that no silver was to be found – only concentrations of iron ore of up to 7b per cent, The high density led scientists –starting with the Baron de Humboldt, who explored Mexico in the 18th Century – to conclude that the Cerro was a metorite.
The Cerro was exploited ineffectively from the Colonial Era through the early 20th Century, with assorted concessionaires being unable to make a profit from iron and steel mills constructed at the site. The concession was hold at one point by an American firm, the Durango Iron Steel Co., of Des Moines, Iowa, ownership passed to the Durango State government during the revolutionary -years of 1910-17 and then to the Federal government. Finally, in 1920, the exploitation contract went to Compania Fundidora de Fierro y Acero deMonterry – the Iron and Steel Casting Company of Monterrey –which had been formed in 1900 by the Prieto family, wealthy Spanish immigrants.
For half a century Fundidora was Latin America’s largest “integrated” manufacturer of metals, from iron ore to finished steel products. And during those years the Cerro fed Monterrey’s blast furnaces, while Durango literally watched its mountain of ore disappear under the picks and shovels and heavy machinery of miners.
Because of Fundidora, and the Cerro’s ore supply, Monterrey is the “Pittsburgh of Mexico,” a throbbing steel city with a higher standard of living than even Mexico City. Durango, conversely, remains dependent upon cattle and agriculture, without a single significant industry within the entire state. The differences are reflected in the minimum wage scales for the two cities – 20.75 pesos daily ($1.66) for Monterrey, 13 pesos ($1.04) for Durango. Durango’s hard-core of unemployed stays near 44,000, whereas Monterrey suffers a chronic labor shortage. Much of the commercial and financial activity that exists in Durango is controlled by out-of-state hands; the dominant building on the Plaza de Armas, for example, is that of the Banco de Commercio, which displays prominently in its window a map showing 67 branches throughout Mexico. The resentment of Durango residents is a natural result. As a Durango lawyer said recently in outlining his town’s grievances, “The Cerro de Mercado constitutes one of the largest natural resource concessions in the world; thanks to it, all of Monterrey has been converted into an industrial empire. It is the pillar of the national metals industry. But in Durango there doesn’t exist a single steel factory, nor any other source of jobs.”
Mexican states are not permitted to levy an extractive tax; aid payments Fundidora makes for the Cerro concession go to the Federal governments to be shared among all 29 states. Because of mechanization, the Cerro employs only slightly more than 100 workers, for an average daily wage of 15 pesos ($l.20).
Claiming injustice, Durango residents regularly petitioned Fundidora to build a steel mill near the Cerro so as to expand the job market. They cite an abundant supply of water and electricity; adequate highways, and direct connections by rail to Mexico City, Juarez, Matamoros, and the Pacific port city of Mazatlan. One study by the Durango Institute of Technology concluded that by eliminating the costs of transporting ore to Monterrey, Fundidora could produce a ton of steel for $40.16, compared to its present claimed cost of $43.24. Fundidora does not agree, stating that another mill would be a costly and needless duplication of facilities. So Durango, three years ago, brought in another group of experts: A team of Czech technicians, supplied by the Czech Embassy in Mexico City. After several months work the Czechs said a mill indeed would be economically feasible at the Cerro, and offered to supply the equipment to go into it. Again, a no from Fundidora, and mounting irritation in Durango.
. Matters began coming to a head early this year when Fundidora announced plans for a major expansion of its Monterrey mills, to an annual capacity of 700,000 tons by 1967 and one million tons by 1970. Durango bridled and made yet another plea to the present Fundidora president, Carlos Frieto, Spanish-born but a naturalized Mexican citizen. Frieto gave them a cold shoulder.
The next move was up to Durango, and here a word of historical background is in order. For a century and a half Durango has been in the forefront of Mexican revolutionary movements. Guadalupe Victoria, first president of Mexico after the ousting of the Spanish and the deposing of the native-born self-proclaimed Emperor Iturbide, was from Durango. The Reform of 1856, which diminished church power, had its wellsprings in Durango and other northern states. Lastly# Durango has as a native son Francisco (Pancho) Villa, a revolutionary hero to the duranguenses, a ruthless cutthroat to Mexico City and much of the remainder of the country. The duranguenses’ pride in their state is comparable to that of Texans, and their distrust and suspicion of the rest of Mexico is comparable to that with which the average Mexican elsewhere displays for the rest of the world. One senses an isolation and loneliness in the vastness of the northern Mexican plains, and a separation from the rest of the nation that is spiritual as well as physical. Here survival is perhaps more difficult than in any other sector of Mexico, and self-reliance and direct action are a part of life.
And the direct action at the Cerro de Mercado came from the students of Durango – the sons of the cattlemen, small businessman, lawyers, campesinos and government employees who attend the University of Juarez and the Durango Institute of Technology. There are indications, but no admissions, that the students worked as agents of the Durango business community. At any rate, after nightfall on May 9, 14 youths from the two universities walked the half-mile from downtown to the Cerro, entered the unlocked gate, and told the startled watchman they were taking possession. The ploy was dramatic but futile. The next morning a detachment of Federal soldiers marched to the mine. The commander told the students they were violating private property, and that the Fundidora management wanted them off. The confrontation was a peaceful one: The students asked for an hour for discussion among themselves, which was granted, and they decided to leave. The soldiers took them to the office of the general who commands the 10th Military Zone (not as prisoners; the students say “invitees” is a more accurate term). According to the students the general expressed sympathy and added, “Your big mistake is that you went about this the wrong way.”
In retrospect the students had to agree. “We didn’t have enough people,” said Edmundo Nuncio, a technological student. “The army and Fundidora thought this was a student stunt, and that no one really cared about the Cerro. We thought that students and other people would join us voluntarily. There was not enough planning,” So the students went about generating mass support, holding regular meetings of leaders from the universities and the Durango preparatoria (high) schools. On May 30, at the downtown Bienavides Restaurant, which occupies the second floor of a modernistic chrome and glass building on the Plaza de Armas, the students decided on a mass occupation of the Cerro. The strategy was relayed to all Durango schools the next day. On June 2 the technological students walked out of their classes and paraded through the streets of Durango, proclaiming a strike and inviting other youths to join them. The advance planning made the turnout virtually 100 percent. (The strike later spread to all schools, elementary, high and college, in both Durango city and Durango State) By noon, when the column turned down the dusty, unpaved road to the Cerro de Mercado, marching past a monument to the “insurgentes” of Durango who had fought past revolutionary battles, the ranks numbered perhaps 10,000. The students swarmed through the gates and over the Cerro like ants. Workers dropped their tools and joined them. The Fundidora managers fled to the safety of’ Monterrey.
To block access to the mine, the students posted armed guards at the gates and denied admission to anyone who couldn’t prove support of the strike. The two National Railways of Mexico lines into the Cerro were blocked – one by a car derailed on a pile of’ large rocks, the other by mountains of ore released from hoppers of the six lead cars on a train.
The demand at this time was for cancellation of Fundidora’s concession when it comes up for renewal in November, and for construction of a steel-making complex near the Cerro. (As will be detailed later, the demands shifted often in succeeding weeks.)
Governor Enrique Ceniceros, after several days, went to the Cerro to attempt to persuade the strikers to surrender the mine while negotiations were conducted with Fundidora about a satisfactory settlement. Carlos Prieto indicated a willingness of Fundidora to help develop a chain of small metalworking factories near the Cerro, and to work out a financial plan which would give Durango residents control of them. Although it has other ore deposits the states of Colima, Michoacan and Chihuahua, Fundidora for all practical purposes is dependent upon the Cerro, and even a short strike could leave its furnaces hungry for ore. But the students saw no point in surrendering the mine and their bargaining power. Stones showered the governor as he talked, and he left in a hurry. A few nights later Federal troops arrived with the apparent intention of evicting the occupiers. But students sounded an alarm in Durango, and an estimated 15,000 adult residents hurried to the hill as a sort of unarmed moral militia. The army didn’t move.
The students weren’t always gentle with their opponents. In the early days of the strike El Sol de Durango, morning paper that is a member of the conservative national El Sol chain, sharply criticized the students, calling the strike “anarchy”, and demanding that the army put an end to it. Where upon students invaded El Sol’s office and broke up the furniture. El Sol continued its opposition, but in a politer tone.
The strike took on temporary international overtones when the students invited the Czech technicians back to update their feasibility study on building a steel mill at the Cerro. This brought down the wrath of Senator Alfonso Guerra, of Nayarit State, who accused the Czech commercial attaché, Emil Hradecky, of “acts of provocation” and of meddling in internal Mexican political affairs, Guerra was mad at the same time about Czech purchases of tobacco in his home state at prices higher than those paid by the dominant local company, and he could not excite any indignation in the Federal government. Secretary of the Interior Luis Echeverria said his office made routine inquiries in Durango, as it did in all major strikes, but was convinced that the Czechs played no part in masterminding the strike or guiding it once it began. Diplomatic sources, however, say the Mexico government did advise the Czechs to stay out of Durango until the strike was resolved.
My first direct contact with the strikers came the evening of July 18 when I was washing away the grime of a 25-hour train ride from Mexico City in the Casablanca Hotel in Durango. A strident, amplified voice suddenly rattled the mirror above the washbasin. “Pueblo de Durango” – people of Durango – it began, and I looked out the window and saw some 7,000 persons assembled in the main plaza one and one-half blocks away, listening to the beginning of the rally held nightly since June 2. I wandered down a bit later and listened to the speech-making, standing amidst an apparent cross-section of the Durango population: Gray-haired women, men in business suits, campesinos and ranch workers, squatting on the pavement and eating oranges bought from vendors; housewives, young men in open-necked sports shirts.
The students’ forum was a cement canopy outside*the Benavides Restaurant, where the strike had been planned. They took turns at the microphone, their speeches a mixture of indignation and flag-waving, voices shifting from the sorrowful to the outraged as they related, with frequent and wild swings of the arms, the injustices being inflicted upon “los pueblos de Durango.” Behind them was a painting of two hands clutching at a hill – the Cerro – while a man, woman and child cowered in fear, The speakers used the audience-participation technique so popular with Latin American orators: “Do you want us to surrender the Cerro de Mercado to the imperialists of Monterrey, who grow fat and rich from the proceeds of something that belongs to the people of Durango?” “No, no.” “Do you want us to continue our struggle for justice for the people of Durango?” “Yes, yes.” “We want nothing for ourselves…for you, the people of Durango, we have devoted ourselves during these trying weeks. Do you stand with us and support us?” “YES, YES, YES.” The chorus of “si’s” was a shrill whistle.
The rally ended at 10:40 P. M. with a studied affirmation that the students had no intention of tinkering with the Mexican Revolution, or the Mexican political system – that their sole grievance was the Cerro de Mercado issue. Criticism in Mexico of the president is an unspeakable sin, and when one questions the progress of the Revolution he must be cautious not to cast aspersions on its accomplishments or question the revolutionary sincerity of its present leaders. Aside from these ground rules dissident Mexicans are free to raise any quantity of hoopla desired about specific grievances. The students followed the rules, and thus the closing cheers went: “Viva el pueblo de Durango!” (twice); “Viva el presidente!” (twice); and “Viva Mexico” (three times). The strike leaders climbed down a ladder into a crowd of squealing girl supporters who had formed a cheering claque throughout the rally. One particularly popular chap hesitated in mock shyness, dropped his fatique cap into the waiting smiles, and got about halfway down; a buxom brunette scampered up to meet him with a buss, and he rode away on four or five pretty teenaged shoulders, The Cerro strike, I decided, was spawning some local heroes.
The onlookers, despite the hour, seemed almost reluctant to leave. The students boarded buses commandeered for the duration of the strike, Many Yore rubber miners’ boots and hard hats, the latter painted, “Todos con el Cerro” – All with the Cerro.
The next morning I went out to the armed city that is the Cerro de Mercado. A crew of student carpenters busied themselves outside the gate with construction of a rough-plank blockhouse. “We felt the gate wasn’t secure enough,” a student told me casually. “This blockhouse will have a good field of fire.” Many of the youths wore pistols stuffed under their shirts.
The occupation forces are guided from a crude hut lean to built onto the side of the mine’s main office building. It was labeled “Oficina, C. de C.” – Office, Commission of the Cerro – and it was here that I was to spend the next two nights as the guest of the strikers. The corrugated tin roof was supported by old whitewashed porch columns; the floor is steel mesh over dirt. At one end was a two-burner stove, with teenaged girls fussing over a pot of beans and some frying eggs. At the other end, behind a screen of cardboard, were triple-decker bunks.
My escort the first day was Edmundo Nuncio, engineering student at the Durango Institute of Technology. He is a chubby chap, cheeks pink beneath a red-painted hard hat, a miner’s belt and hook around his waist, his feet dragging in heavy miner’s boots. Nuncio looked perpetually tired, and with reason. He is commandant of the Cerro occupation forces, the man charged with housekeeping details and security for a restless, spirited army that numbers 5,000 during the daytime, 3,000 at night, some as young as seven years. I never saw Nuncio in bad during the two days I was in the Cerro, although he insisted he sneaked afternoon naps.
The Cerro, under student directorship, has better municipal government than many Mexican towns of comparable area and population. The force is split into eighty encampments; each assigned an area of the hill and the mine buildings for security. Each group has its own wooden hut, spaced within hailing distance of each other. One encampment is off-limits to all but the strike leaders and security guards: It guards the mine’s cache of dynamite, which the strikers have threatened to use to blow up the entire Cerro if the army tries to evict the students. But signs on the huts show there is levity beneath the grimness of what the students are doing: “Mariner IV;” “Gran Hotel Hilton Cerro;” “007; “ ‘and “Los Cheyennes.”
Durango businessmen and other strike supporters supply an estimated 5,000 pesos ($400) daily to buy food for the occupiers. There are two main kitchens, staffed by girl students, which feed persons around the clock. Trucks (borrowed” from Fundidora for the duration) take hot food up the hill to the encampments. Nursing students are in charge of distributing the potable water supply brought in each day by the Durango fire department. Sanitary facilities are limited and primitive on the hill, and the danger of epidemic is a constant worry for the leadership. Two hospitals, one headed by a volunteer physician, take care of the cuts, bruises and sniffles one would expect to find in such a city; there is also a fleet of Red Cross and Green Cross ambulances. Only one death has resulted directly from the strike. Late one night a supposedly unloaded pistol discharged, killing a 14-year-old high school student. The only other major casualties were five strike leaders injured when their car overturned enroute to Mexico City for negotiations with the government.
Finally, the Cerro de Mercado has its own jail and police force. Faced with a drinking problem early in the strike the leaders met it forthrightly by having drunks thrown into the Cerro’s version of a “’tank” for 24 hours. There were no repeaters, and, while bottles of mescal and tequila still find their way to the encampments, moderation is enforced. Overall, the Cerro looks like a cross between a scraggly Boy Scout encampment and a battalion area just behind a combat zone.
The students at first treated me with restraint and caution, for they said no U. reporter had been to the Cerro since the strike began. They were polite when I asked permission to stay overnight, and warned me (truthfully, it proved) that the Cerro was wind-swept and chilly at night, when I didn’t waver they agreed, and assigned me one of the bunks in the main office. Their reserve melted entirely in the first five minutes when I ate for supper, and with authentic gusto, a torta de frijoles, a hard roll stuffed with hot fried beans, and contributed five pesos (40 cents) to the mescal fund.
In their conversations the students proved a cross-section of the intellects one might encounter on any U.S. campus – the naive, the loud, the misguided, the serious, the cautious, the firebrands, the dogmatists, the pragmatists, the ideological wanderers. But one trait was common to all: They were Mexicans, and they felt fervently that they were acting in the interests of all Mexicans (with the possible exception of the Fundidora shareholders) and of the Mexican Revolution. They also asserted it is time for the Mexican Revolution to began giving responsibility to its younger generation, and that infusions of new, energetic blood would chase away the middle-aged tiredness so often encountered In the Mexican government. The students’ makeup also reaffirmed the utter indefinability of the word, “Mexican,” for under that roof were, among others: (a) Rafael, son of the proprietor of a prosperous photography shop in Durango, a second-year medical student who noted wistfully that he might never be able to recoup the academic time cost him by the strike; (b) “Mary Francis,” an effeminate chap I never heard called by any other name, butt of many jokes, but indispensable as office coordinator, and a determined veteran who had not set foot outside the Cerro since June 2; (c) Pancho, husky, bearded rancher’s son in the denim clothes of a present-generation Durango cattleman, the student credited with blocking the railroad tracks the day of the occupation; and (d) Francisco, 16 years old, high school guitarist given a place in the command force because his contemporaries thought they deserved high-level representation. Two of these students – Rafael and Pancho – were from what would be middle-class families even by U.S. standards. Yet here they were, challenging Mexico on behalf of Mexico. Why?
“We are going to live in this state the rest of our lives,” explained Pancho. The people here aren’t getting a fair share of Mexico’s development, and someone must supply the leadership in obtaining it for them. On my part, I want to do what I can to correct the imbalance, rather than wait and have someone who doesn’t love Mexico and Durango as I do take the initiative.”
The talk eventually got around to Communism, and what the students had done to counteract Communist attempts to worm their way into the strike leadership. Soon after the strike began the Partido CommunistaMexicana (Mexican Communist Party, or PCM) dispatched to Durango one Rafael Aguilar Talamantes, president of the National Conference of Democratic Students, a PCM affiliate. Aguilar Talamantes registered at a Durango hotel under a false named, along with two unidentified traveling companions; appeared at the nightly downtown rallies, and managed to sit in on a meeting of the Consejo Estudiante Gobierno – The Student Government Council – which was directing the strike. All this caused considerable alarm among the Durango businessmen who didn’t want to see the Communists gain control of something they had helped the students nourish. There was some internal opposition to disavowment of Aguilar Talamantes, one faction arguing that anyone who wanted to help the student cause should be welcomed, regardless of political affiliation, As one youth told me, “PRI didn’t think enough of us to send out an adviser; why should we reject this man simply because he is a Communist? We can use this man and discard him when we want to.” Others, however, realized that “discarding” a professional Communist agitator isn’t done as simply as the saying, and insisted that Aguilar Talamantes must go. He did, and the business community responded with a full-page ad in Durango and Mexico City newspapers affirming its allegiance to the “true leaders” of the strikes the Consejo. The Mexico City newspapers, excitable for the most part, continuously billed the strike as somewhat of a re-enactment of the October Revolution, and made dire unexplained references to the “Communist leadership.” Resultantly, I was somewhat startled when I got to Durango and found as collaborationists such groups as the local chamber of commerce, the medical society, the hotel owners association, assorted small business organizations, and those well-known Bolshevik front groups the Lions Club and Rotary International.
Soon after the strike began the student leadership realized the practical drawbacks to cancellation of the Fundidora concession. For one things who would put up the money to build a new steel mill to utilize the ore? Fundidora management, aware of the political danger to its operations shrewdly countered with a proposal that a series of small fabricating plants, using steel made from Fundidora ore, would benefit the duranguenses as much as a full-fledged mill. A student delegation got an audience with the Secretary of National Patrimony and did hard bargaining over a period of weeks; ultimately, the government agreed to assess Fundidora four pesos 25 centavos (34 cents) for each ton of ore taken from the Cerro. Of this amount 31,2 cents would go towards construction of the fabricating plants by the government (to manufacture such items as wire mesh, nails, corrugated tin, buckets and bottle caps). The remaining 2.8 cents would be allocated to the Durango government for municipal services. The cost of the fabricating plants was put at 233 million pesos ($18,240,000). Additionally, Fundidora agreed to build at the Cerro a processing plant for ore to supplement one at its Monterrey mill, for a cost of 100 million pesos ($8 million). Finally, the government agreed to a new feasibility study on the old question of whether a steel mill could be operated profitably at the Cerro. If the answer proves affirmative, the government would bear two-thirds of the construction costs.
Once this deal was made (during the week I was in Durango) the students faced the task of selling it to their constituents.” There was heated opposition, with die-hards saying that cancellation of the concession was the only just solution, that Durango would not be happy until the “foreign” Fundidora was expelled from its boundaries. The meeting that night resounded with angry cries from citizens who thought the students had compromised them. But, in the end, the rally gave a resounding vote of confidence to the Consejo and authorized the negotiators to return to Mexico City to finalize the deal. It was at this point that Aguilar Talamantes, the Communist youth leader, made his major attempt to gain a voice in the strike leadership. Lest the situation drift out of hand, the Consejo called an end to the nightly rallies, saying that “ideological extremists” and “persons who seek political ends” would not be permitted a forum at the expense of a just settlement.
As of this writing the students are still in possession of the mine, and a five-day fiesta celebrating the Cerro victory is underway in Durango, courtesy of the business community. The state government declared June 2 a state holiday to commemorate the day the occupation began. Fundidora has been permitted to send work forces and supervisors back into the Cerro to prepare for a resumption of operations. The students say they won’t yield their toehold in the mine until firm contracts for the new factories are signed, and some possibly will stay on until construction actually begins, simply as a reminder of what will happen if Fundidora and/or the government attempts to renege on the settlement. “We’ll be here until fall,” one student said, “and we’ll be happy to stay longer if necessary.” They while away their time playing baseball and soccer; the only thing their municipality lacks, unfortunately, is a school. Barring a last minute change of heart by the Federal government the students have won – but they are saving euphoria for later.
The most important thing for the students, however, is already accomplished. The strike affored them a lesson in direct action – perhaps even in revolution – and the lesson is one that will not be “unlearned” easily. Their success is being studied closely by students in states which have similar economic problems – the illegally large estates of Sonora and Chihuahua; the plight of the quasi-slaves on the henequen plantations of Yucatan; the wobbly price structure that besets the tobacco farmers of Nayarit because of controlled purchases; the cotton dominance of the U.S.-owned Anderson Clayton Co. in Sonora and Sonora and Baja California.
The Durango strike also proved that students, when they have a proper cause, can be political prime movers in Mexico. The grievances however, must be a solid one; otherwise the movements degenerate into anarchy. A good example of the latter was the student strike which closed the National University of Mexico for more than two months this spring, The students ultimately got what they wanted – the resignation of the university rector, Dr. Ignacio Chavez. But they did so by holding the rector, an internationally-famed cardiologist, captive in his office for six hours, and giving him a resign-or-else ultimatum – the “else” being mob justice for Dr. Chavez at the hands of a clamoring horde of students outside the office. In this instance, the students’ excesses, and lack of significant justification for the strike, meant an almost total lack of public support. Campesino groups went so far as to pass resolutions calling upon President Diaz Ordaz to close the university and allocate its funds the agrarian projects.
At Durango President Diaz Ordaz convinced the students he was sincerely interested in solving the state’s problems, and thus the strikers did not put him in their gun sights. But under different circumstances, with a differently inclined president, Mexico well might have heard a rebirth of revolutionary rallying cries in one of its major states.
Received in New York August 4,1966.
©1966 Joseph C. Goulden, Jr.
Mr. Goulden is a 1965 Alicia Patterson Fund fellowship winner on leave from The Philadelphia Inquirer.Permission to publish this article may be sought from The Managing Editor, Philadelphia Inquirer.
