Amid the posters decrying the war in Iraq and free-trade deals, students at the National Autonomous University of Mexico have blanketed the walls for their latest cause: a classmate lying in a hospital bed in Ecuador.
The curious case of Lucia Andrea Morett and her classmates has become a national flash point since she was wounded this month during a raid by Colombia on a camp operated in Ecuador by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a leftist insurgency known as FARC.
At least four Mexican university students were believed killed in the raid against the rebels, which the U.S. and Colombian governments consider terrorists. Family members and friends of several students say they were merely researching FARC, not following its violent path.
The shocking disclosures, however, have raised fears among Mexican and Colombian authorities that FARC is creating links with radical groups in Mexico. Even more troubling, Mexican Atty. Gen. Eduardo Medina-Mora this week reiterated concerns that FARC might be establishing ties with Mexican drug traffickers.
In an open-air walkway at the university’s School of Philosophy and Letters, where students sell used books on Marxist philosophers from card tables, Morett and FARC are cast in a starkly different light. Her photo hangs from the walls like that of a patron saint.
“Our only crime is having a conscience,” reads one banner.
At a protest Wednesday outside the Colombian Embassy in Mexico City, student leader Frida Espejel said the government’s “campaign to discredit” Morett is meant to chill political dissent on the left-wing campus.
Because UNAM is one of the world’s largest universities, many of its 300,000 students have been key players in protests by opponents of the government. But the FARC incident shows the blurry line that can develop between activism and insurrection.
On campus, the Zapatista rebel movement based in Chiapas state openly recruits students, appealing to campus sympathies for its call for indigenous rights while downplaying its past attempts to foment violent revolution. Likewise, university officials say a rebel movement from Guerrero — the Popular Revolutionary Army — has a visible presence, even though it has claimed responsibility for a series of small-scale bombings.
Rebels without borders
Far from the kidnappings and bombings in Colombia, even FARC is accepted as a relatively mainstream social movement among some segments in Latin America. The Labor Party in Mexico acknowledged this week that it has invited FARC leaders to official functions, although they have yet to accept.
As one of the few survivors, the 26-year-old Morett has become the focal point of FARC’s presence in Mexico.
Mexican media have identified her as FARC’s main student contact in Mexico. Many observers say it is unlikely she could have gained access to the FARC camp in Ecuador, where No. 2 man Raul Reyes was killed in the raid, without close ties.
One student has been confirmed dead and three others are reported missing and are believed to be among several bodies awaiting identification through DNA.
Morett’s parents and other students said she had traveled to Ecuador for sightseeing and to attend a congress of “Bolivarian” groups, a broad leftist political movement symbolically led by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Medina Mora confirmed that account Wednesday and rejected Colombian claims that the students were receiving military training, McClatchy Newspapers reported.
Family members told La Jornada newspaper that she made contact with FARC as part of research on Latin American social movements.
Morett had a theater degree from UNAM and was still pursuing research there.
In an open letter to the press, Morett’s parents said “our daughter has the social unease of any other university youth.” But they insisted that she never took up arms.
Because FARC and similar groups don’t exactly have membership lists, it is hard to say whether the students were sympathizers or members, said Xavier Aguirre, a 20-year-old classmate backing Morett.
“Just because I am in a library, it doesn’t mean I am a lover of books,” he said. “Just because I am in a camp, it doesn’t mean I am a guerrilla.”
The Morett case has been an awkward epilogue to the diplomatic crisis that erupted this month after Colombia’s cross-border raid stirred fears of a wider conflict when Venezuela and Ecuador mobilized thousands of troops and broke relations. The tensions eased after the three nations’ leaders shook hands at a regional summit last week.
Media reports from Colombia say that nation now wants to question Morett over her ties to FARC. In a radio address, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa said he was unsure what to do with the UNAM students, whether to “try them under Ecuadorean law, bring them to Colombia, grant them political asylum or a pardon.”
Investigators dispatched
Mexico also has had to juggle how to handle the matter of its citizens linked to an insurgency it too has condemned. The Foreign Ministry has stuck to bland expressions of support for the students while sending investigators to Ecuador to find out more.
German Martinez, the leader of President Felipe Calderon’s National Action Party, said government officials cannot look past the students’ ties. In an op-ed piece, he noted that Spain’s prime minister “would have hit the ceiling at detecting members of the terrorist group ETA in the Complutense University of Madrid.”
Further complicating the matter, U.S. and Mexican newspapers have reported that a Mexican of Cuban descent brought the students to Ecuador with the support of the Cuban government. Mexican officials have not publicly confirmed that they are looking into Cuba’s role in financing FARC’s activities in Mexico.
The university also has been caught between supporting its students and fighting off criticism that it allowed radical groups to fester on campus. Administrators released a statement this week rejecting violence but affirming that the diversity of ideologies on campus is a “historical virtue.”
Tatiana Sule, secretary general of the university’s School of Philosophy and Letters, denied any official link between her institution and FARC. But she said no campus can police the activities of individual students.
As students roamed the halls outside her office to publicize Wednesday’s rally, Sule seemed torn between viewing her students’ activities in Ecuador as a learning experience or as naive support for a violent organization.
“When you live far from the violence of a guerrilla war, it’s easy to have a romantic view of a movement like this,” she said.
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National Autonomous University of Mexico
Established: 1551 by Antonio de Mendoza, the first viceroy of New Spain
Catholic roots: Operated under the authority of the Roman Catholic Church until 1867, when the Mexican government established several independent schools
New campus: Moved in 1954 to its current Mexico City site
Grande: 300,000 students, the most in Latin America
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oavila@tribune.com
