Noticias

Update.

I just got back from a student convocation deciding what to do about the administration's date for resuming classes. I heard about the meeting ten minutes after it started and biked over. By the time I got there, there were about 500 students crammed into the largest lecture hall in the school, which is supposed to hold about 200. I managed to jam myself into a corner of the entranceway to hear what was going on. They were voting on whether or not to come back to classes to finish up the exams from last semester. As far as I could tell, ending the paro (strike) for the current semester wasn't even on the table. When I arrived, they had just gotten themselves organized and had begun to do a roll call vote, yea nea or abstain, of the representatives from each carrera (major). They ended up voting to finish up the past semester by a vote of 17 to 15 with 5 abstentions.

The next item on the table was to construct a set of guarantees concerning when the makeup exams would take place. We never got to this item, however, because several students began to complain that the options presented in this meeting were not the same as the options they were told to vote on in their meetings by carrera. In the smaller meetings they had the additional option of voting for a toma (take over), a toma de los pabellones (taking over strategic buildings) or for the outright resumption of classes. This devolved into a three hour session of trying to maintain some semblance of order and figure out exactly what each carrera had agreed upon within these sub-options. (Nobody except for me seemed to notice that all of the additional sub-options are within the proposition that lost the vote. The only exception was the sub-option of outright resumption of classes, and all of the people who want this will certainly want to finish the last semester too.)

They finally compiled a list of what each carrera wanted, and quickly formed a committee to review, summarize and present the findings, and then they called for a 30 minute recess. I'm not sure if I am going to go back. It's all very interesting, but my claustrophobia was acting up in the meeting room.

I also listened to a very moving personal anecdote about the military coup today, but I'll have to wait till later to write it down.

EDIT: formatting and grammar