The barricades thrown up around Mexico City's National University, UNAM, are sturdy affairs composed of barbed wire, classroom doors and blackboards. They are also largely symbolic, as a dozen determined police officers could force their way inside, facing a handful of bleary-eyed students wielding guitars and cups of strong coffee.
It is only when you walk around the University City, as it is called, that you grasp the sheer scale of the place. This is a community with 300,000 inhabitants by day, its own bus system, healthcare, shops and government - and it has been totally closed by a student strike since last April.
Student rebellion has a particular resonance in Mexico. The developed world recalls May 1968 in Paris as the defining moment of streetfighting scholars, but in Latin America the pro-democracy movement led by Mexican students in the same year had a deeper and broader impact.
When army troops massacred hundreds of unarmed students at Tlatelolco Square in October 1968, the relatively benevolent relationship between the long-ruling Institutional Revolution Party (PRI) and the people was seriously damaged.
The PRI still hangs on to power today, but it is likely to be defeated, for the first time in 70 years, in next year's elections. This gives the struggle between the student movement and the authorities an especially sharp significance.
The Mexican state has long had a remarkable policy of broad popular access to higher education, seen by critics as a strategy to neutralise potential radicals by drawing them into the system, a policy which collapsed violently in 1968.
In 1999, more than half of the 270,000 students are sons and daughters of domestic workers, the unemployed and retirees, a figure unrivalled in Latin America and perhaps the world. A further 10 per cent are the offspring of struggling self-employed parents. Two-thirds of student families survive on three to fifteen dollars per day.
Since April 22nd last, the university has been shut down by a student strike, called to block a proposed fee rise. The authorities decided to raise annual fees from 40 centavos (less than 3p) to about £100 a year, as a contribution to the annual £750 million budget.
Open revolt resulted. The General Strike Council (CGH) was established, with delegates elected in orderly fashion, calling in UNAM officials to witness the closure of each department.
"The university has been kidnapped" announced UNAM rector Francisco de Barnes. "A brutal aggression" said Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo. UNAM lecturers held improvised offcampus classes but the number of lecture halls required, about 3,200, forced them to abandon the idea.
The students held a referendum on the impending strike, winning 90 per cent support. They took the referendum outside the university, setting up polling booths throughout the city, where 650,000 people cast a vote, and more than 80 per cent voiced approval.
Improvised soup kitchens registered 4,500 meals a day during May, an indication of the sizeable activist base sustaining the strike. Mass protests have filled Mexico City's giant central square, but the absence of dialogue and the length of the strike have eaten into popular support.
A group of eight emeritus professors launched a proposal for dialogue, but their prior condition of ending the strike guaranteed student rejection. A separate group of academics has called for a referendum this month, which could bind both strikers and authorities to begin immediate talks.
THE UNAM has a world-class reputation for scientific research and noteworthy graduates, including all Mexican presidents up to (but excluding) Ernesto Zedilla. Significantly, the list also includes Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatista rebels in Chiapas.
The authorities have already conceded the original strike demand, accepting that fee payment would be voluntary, but fresh demands now challenge university reforms passed without consultation in 1997.
The working-class student majority takes an average of 10 years to finish courses, as they hold down jobs and frequently take time out for family reasons. The reforms will reduce the number of years each student can sit exams, putting an end to the working-class student majority.
Such reforms conform to World Bank and IMF policy, with universities required to seek private funding in return for more competitive courses involving technology and finance.
Mexico's political parties have united in their opposition to the strike, while the national TV and radio have poured vitriol on the campus rebels. The anti-strike consensus has been accompanied by divisions within the student movement, while strike fatigue has left only a core of activists carrying on the occupation.
"The government is prepared to sit it out and watch the university rot," said Miguel Hernandez, a 23year-old philosophy student. "It seems suspicious to me that the most hardline voices in the strike movement coincide perfectly with the government's aim of dismantling the institution," he added.
Zapatista rebels in south-east Mexico have openly backed the strike, with indigenous representatives arriving recently to celebrate "independence day" inside an urban "rebel territory".
Just over a fortnight ago, the student assembly voted to form a commission to seek talks with university authorities and censured "ultras" for adopting postures likely to provoke an assault on the campus. Rumours of weapons hidden in faculty offices have also heightened tensions.
The attitude of UNAM rector Barnes has hardened over the past five months, fuelling suspicion that the government is content to watch the university disappear altogether - making way for a new, decentralised university.
"We need to find a solution that protects the UNAM as an open, popular institution yet recognises the need to modernise and adapt to changing times," said one member of the student assembly, highlighting the difficult road ahead.
