Filed at 12:34 p.m. EST By The Associated Press
TEPATEPEC, Mexico (AP) -- Students at a rural teachers college tie up 65 riot policemen, strip them to their pants and parade them through town. Students at Mexico City's largest university seize the campus and hold it for nearly 10 months.
Is Mexico on the cusp of a new student rebellion, a radical movement of the sort that broke out across the globe in the late 1960s? The government says no. The radical students and some experts say maybe.
``There is a real base for the protests and for the expansion of the movement,'' said Hugo Aboites, an education expert at the Autonomous Metropolitan University, one of Mexico's top public schools.
In colleges and universities across Mexico, students are striking, marching and taking over campuses to demand more money for public education.
Their demands have expanded to include greater democracy in Mexico, an end to the brutality and impunity of security forces that for decades have gone largely unchallenged, and even changes in the world economy.
The movement's biggest conflict, appropriately, has been at Latin America's biggest university, the National Autonomous University in Mexico City.
Radical students, initially striking over a tuition increase, quickly expanded their demands and took over the campus, holding it for nearly 10 months before police moved in to arrest the strikers early this month.
At the same time, students in a rural teachers college known as ``The Spider'' in the Otomi Indian language, occupied their campus in the town of Tepatepec, 100 miles north of Mexico City, to protest diminishing state aid and what they call misallocated money.
On Feb. 19, state police took back the campus, beating students and nearby residents. Outraged students and townspeople seized it again later in the day and took 65 officers hostage, stripping them to their pants -- in some cases to underpants -- tying them up and putting them on display in the town's central square.
After a few hours, they freed the officers in exchange for the release of most of the arrested students.
Experts say there is evidence the events are not isolated, that students in public higher education across the country are joining forces in an independent movement as radical as it is unbeholden to any established political force.
``We are united by the repression and by our defense of free public education,'' said Victor Soto Lugo, a graduate of ``The Spider'' who returned to his alma mater to support the protests.
The Mexican government denies there is a movement afoot and insists schools aren't being shortchanged.
President Ernesto Zedillo said Wednesday that education spending has increased by 24 percent during his five years in office and that there is no crisis in the higher education system.
``To those people who say that public universities are in a critical stage ... you have to remind them that there is not one, but 240 universities in our country,'' Zedillo said in a speech.
But Aboites, an independent researcher, said that higher education spending has been declining steadily -- 8 percent this year alone -- and that is fueling protests across the country.
Last week alone, students occupied colleges and universities in five states, universities were on strike in five other states, and students demonstrated in at least 15 states to protest brutality in Mexico City and at ``the Spider.''
At the heart of the radical movement is Mexico City's National Autonomous University and the 16 rural teachers colleges spread across the country. It is held together by an independent network of teachers who have a presence in almost all public colleges.
The radical students shun all political parties -- none of which have tried to embrace them, for that matter. The strike in Mexico City made almost all established political groups nervous.
The ruling party drew strong criticism because the strike went on so long. The leftist opposition initially supported the campus seizure but was rebuffed by the students, and was humiliated by its inability to stop the students' traffic-clogging marches in Mexico City, which it governs.
``History is repeating itself'' from the 1960s, Aboites said. ``These groups have strictly educational support bases that have nothing to do with political parties or political groups.''
Some experts warn that the student movement could become a training ground for new members of rebel groups operating in southern and western Mexico.
``These situations can lead, in the worst-case scenario, to students joining the ranks of the guerrilla,'' said Laura Bolanos, who had close contact with rebel groups when she was president of the Mexican League for the Defense of Human Rights.