The final chapter in the checkered 66-year history of the Federacion de Estudiantes de Guadalajara (FEG) was written last week as the discredited student union’s iconic headquarters was reduced to a pile of concrete rubble.
The Soviet-style building constructed in 1971 with backing from President Luis Echeverria was a “gift” for the support the FEG gave the Mexican government during the October 1968 student movement that ended in bloodshed as soldiers massacred hundreds in Mexico City’s Tlatelolco district.
In the fall of 1968, students from several University of Guadalajara (UdG) faculties were ready to stand in solidarity with their companions and replicate the demonstrations and sit-ins gripping campuses in the capital.
With funds and weapons channeled from federal sources through the Jalisco state government, FEG’s leaders made sure the student movement never took hold in Guadalajara. While demands for change grew ever more uninhibited in the capital, armed FEG representatives stood guard at UdG buildings. When student “brigadistas” arrived from Mexico City to rally support at the university, they were beaten ruthlessly by FEG thugs.
In the aftermath of Tlatelolco, the more militant UdG students went underground, some of them joining the Frente Estudiantil Revolucionario (FER), which waged guerrilla-style operations in the 1970s that included the kidnappings of U.S. and British diplomats in Guadalajara. Meanwhile, the FEG returned to its, left-wing roots – perhaps more from expedience than conviction – and became embroiled in violent conflicts with counter currents and the conservative Tecos from the University Autonoma de Guadalajara (UAG). Gun battles between rival groups were not uncommon on the streets of Guadalajara at that time and the FEG’s forbidding headquarters became to be seen as a symbol of repression – “a place where dissidents were taken to be tortured, where bounties of ‘revolutionary taxes’ were counted and people were murdered and buried,” noted Agustin del Castillo, who this week reflected on this challenging period of Guadalajara history in a piece in Spanish-language daily Milenio.
The early 1990s saw Rector Raul Padilla, a former FEG president, break ranks with the organization that had propelled him to power and promote the creation of a new student union body: the Federacion de Estudiantes Universitarios (FEU). This move gave Padilla and his supporters the opportunity to consolidate their control of the university. Well schooled by his canny FEG masters, Padilla has since overseen the imposition of a succession of his relatives to the UdG rector’s position, earning him the dubious title as the university’s “godfather.” While he ostensibly presides over the UdG’s many business interests – including the International Book Fair and International Film Festival – little happens behind the scenes that does not have Paddila’s authorization.
Following the creation of the FEU, the FEG survived into the new century with the lukewarm backing of the university hierarchy, continuing to pull some influence at the city’s UdG-run high schools (preparatorias). The final nail in the organization’s coffin came in 2011 when the bodies of five high school students were found buried in the grounds of FEG’s headquarters. Investigations revealed that the students were killed over a disagreement about payments to the FEG for food stall spaces outside a high school campus. Police arrested a caretaker who implicated the FEG President David Castoreña Peña in the murders. He subsequently disappeared and has been on the run ever since.
The FEG building was closed and eventually handed over to the state government. Last week’s demolition finally erased the FEG from the map. Once the rubble has been cleared, the site will be transformed into a park, authorities say.