Breathe
By Alma Maldonado, researcher at the Department of Educational Research at CINVESTAV. Editor of the Nexos education blog "Distancia por tiempos".
How can we explain to Mexican society the effects that the federal executive's draft General Science Law would have on the country's development if it is approved as it stands?
Those of us who are actively participating in public spaces have faced this question time and again so that this law does not impose a single vision and is approved by consensus. How can we raise awareness on a subject that seems too technical and far removed from the reality of people's lives?
Here is an attempt. I was just at the International Book Fair at the Palacio de Minería, I passed by the shelves of the public research centers (CPI): the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS), the Instituto Mora and the Colegio de la Frontera Norte (COLEF), among others. By the way, there was no CIDE stand. This does not seem coincidental. Well, the CPIs that are exhibiting their publications offer multiple specialized books on very diverse topics, violence of all kinds: State, political, police, narco, gender; subcultures: urban, rural, cross-border; inequality in Mexico and Latin America at different scales and levels; social movements; history books: of Mexico, of other countries, of very specific periods, of characters, of institutions. Achieving a vast offer of research lines requires a lot of effort and work, among other elements: long-term hiring; decent and competitive salaries; training of graduate students; hiring of research assistants; sabbatical and post-doctoral stays; repatriation of people who were trained abroad; resources to develop research projects; international, inter-institutional and governmental collaborations; money for meetings with peers, attendance to congresses and development of networks; resources for dissemination and editorial production; infrastructure. Aspects that those outside the academic world need not be aware of, but without which academic development is impossible.
As I walked along its shelves, I wondered if the new law that Conacyt wants to impose is approved, will we continue to see publications like this? The problem is that the new Conacyt law states that a "research agenda" will be established, which it says will be democratically defined (Chapter I, Article 9, numeral II) and whose application will be more rigorous in public centers such as those mentioned above because they lack full autonomy, just as other public universities such as UNAM and UAM or the Colegio de México have. First, it must be said that the law does not provide any mechanism for, in effect, a "democratic" decision on the research agenda. On the contrary, all of Conacyt's decision-making bodies exclude representatives of the sectors (including the academic community), only incorporating 13 Ministries with voting rights, and there are 6 guests from the academic, social and private sectors with only the right to speak. Second, in the case of the 26 public centers, they will have to adjust to this agenda in order to better navigate their relationship with the Conacyt, which is the body that, in the aforementioned project, exercises control over the CPIs to the extent that the bill states that the CPIs may cease to be considered as such "by determination of the Governing Board of the National Council" (which is basically controlled by the head of the Conacyt) (Article 79).
There is not enough space to develop each of the issues of concern in the law, but the future of the 26 public research centers and the work and effort are at stake.The future of the 26 public research centers and the work and effort are in between.
What happened at the CIDE seems to have been an experiment on how to dynamite an institution that, without being perfect -no institution is- becomes a shadow of what it once was.
In short, the draft Conacyt Law seeks to orient Mexican science towards the government's priorities. And when we don't like that government? And when we don't agree with its decisions? The law does not protect intellectual and research freedom, which are essential for scientific work. This model of science goes against the models that the most successful countries in the production of knowledge have promoted. This law, as it stands, is going to set us back years, perhaps irreversibly. That is to say, perhaps this should matter to all of us.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of Opinion 51.
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