The CIDE marches in the absence of leadership

Mexican journalist specialized in international affairs

There has never been a conflict in the CIDE like the one you are currently facing. After 47 years of existence, this institution that claims to be “a research and higher education center specialized in social sciences, guided by international quality standards and financed with public resources”, is in crisis due to various interests that the fourteenth century seeks to impose. director of Conacyt, María Elena Álvarez-Buylla Roces.

However, Dr. Álvarez-Buylla is lost in her own labyrinth. Day by day he distances himself from the community of students and teachers, who add national and international support, and bifurcates between the political interests of the 4T and those of his particular group.

He still does not realize that, in a State such as Mexico, the well-amalgamated universities and research centers have more convictions and capacity for mobilization than any politician, including the president. He plays with fire by commanding measures, his own and imposed, that go against the academic spirit in a democracy in progress.

The student force is capable of facing any threat that navigates against its autonomy, gratuity and freedom of teaching and expression. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador made it clear, at least in his speech, on Monday morning, by saying that he is not involved in that conflict and that he does not even know the imposed director, José Antonio Romero Tellaeche.

The most he has managed to lead was an inefficient virtual dialogue on December 8. According to the institutional statement, they met with “dozens of students” through several “staggered videoconferences.” At the same time, that same day the intellectuals and academics Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, 2008 Nobel Prize Winner for Literature, James Heckman, 2000 Nobel Prize winner for Economics, and other prominent foreign researchers made public a letter, referring to the unreasonableness of the directors of the Conacyt, where they reflect that governments cannot control educational institutions for political purposes, and call for dialogue tables to be opened so that the academic community is heard.

Álvarez-Buylla, without understandable reasons, rather with generalities that show fear or impotence, has rejected dialogue with students and teachers, systematically breaking up the meetings with phrases such as “due to the unacceptable conditions that some members of the community are trying to impose.” Of course, he never makes it clear what conditions he refers to; on the contrary, it seems that it only seeks to sit with a community in a way, without means and in the dark.

Cornered in its arrogance with arguments of artifice, such as supposing that the academic community tried to impose a “table that seemed to have media purposes”, these only demonstrate its dishonesty.

The students do want the media present, but they also want to return to classes, to mediate it is normal, what is not, is their reluctance to dialogue face-to-face and transparently … blessed social networks, which elucidate the background of issues of public interest.

In addition, now it seeks to politicize the conflict with assumptions, without grounds or evidence, about the participation of “prominent members of associations such as Mexicans against Corruption” within the student movement. Another self-sabotage that will bring you adverse results if you do not turn to the acceptance of the demands demanded by the academic community and change the strategy consisting of opening your ears wide and choosing a good chair.

The unanimity on the part of the dissatisfied, which grows more and more with the endorsements of teachers and students from other academic institutions such as the UNAM, the UAM, the Tec de Monterrey, the UDLA of Puebla or the Columbia University in the United States, has been intensified and they are already asking as an essential part to regain balance, the removal of José Antonio Romero Tellaeche. Without this substantial acceptance of the claim, it will be difficult to redress the conflict.

Time becomes a primary actor in solutions, although the longer it passes, the negotiating tables will transmute into marches where the leaders will ask to negotiate no longer with Dr. Álvarez-Buylla, but with their superiors.