Breathe
By Sonia Serrano
Last December 8, Governor Enrique Alfaro Ramírez presented an initiative before the State Congress to modify the local Constitution and establish that each year the University of Guadalajara must be given a budget equivalent to 5 percent of the state's total expenditure.
For the most optimistic, this gesture represents the end of a long history of encounters and disagreements between Enrique Alfaro and the political group of the University of Guadalajara. For others, especially some members of this udegeist group, it is just another political move by the governor.
The differences between Enrique Alfaro and the UdeG group have had two interpretations. There are those who dig into the past and claim that it is a follow-up to the political breakup between his father, former rector Enrique Alfaro Anguiano, and his successor, Raul Padilla Lopez.
But that reading is diluted with the meetings between the now governor and the UdeG group, since it was hand in hand with the latter that Enrique Alfaro won the local deputation with the shirt of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), in 2007. His alliance with Padilla López's group was also decisive in his triumph as municipal president of Tlajomulco de Zúñiga, nominated by the PRD and the Partido del Trabajo.
It was during his term as mayor that he again broke with the UdeG group, arguing that they were demanding positions in the municipal government, so he declared Tlajomulco de Zúñiga "Raúl Padilla's free territory" and fired all public officials who were part of that group.
From then on, the distance passed without too many surprises, except for the normal disqualifications in Enrique Alfaro's campaign for Guadalajara's mayoralty.
But they met again in 2018, when Alfaro Ramírez sought the governorship and incorporated members of the Universidad de Guadalajara group in some positions. At the beginning of his government, they remained close, until a sector of university students created a new local political party: Hagamos.
The differences reached their highest point. The governor's questioning of the University's political group became more and more heated, to the point of asserting that there was "a group of rogues" headed by Raúl Padilla López that was holding the University of Guadalajara "hostage".
Then came the cut of 140 million pesos in the budget that had already been allocated to the Museum of Environmental Sciences, which is part of the University Cultural Center, the great project of Raul Padilla, to close with the boycott of the International Book Fair in 2022, in a protest in which the emecistas carried images of Raul Padilla and the rector Ricardo Villanueva dressed as thieves. It was also a response to the marches that the university students held every day outside Casa Jalisco to demand the return of the museum's resources.
After Raul Padilla's suicide, the conflict stopped and tenuous approaches began, until the governor's announcement arrived, one day before delivering the constitutional budget initiative, stating that "a new cycle begins between the UdeG and the government of Jalisco, with the conditions to transcend with will, respect for its autonomy and a budget without political ties".
On that day the university remained silent. Some university students said it was better to wait to know the text of the proposal and, above all, to know if something would be asked in exchange. Among the speculations was the possible request that Ricardo Villanueva not seek a candidacy for the 2024 election with the Morena shirt, which has been speculated for several months.
What is certain is that the presentation of the initiative does not guarantee its approval, so the time that elapses before it is put to a vote will determine whether it is a gesture of support for the university of which the governor's father was rector or just another move in the political arena.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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