It became one of the most important cultural venues of the University City and from the country, but currently, 20 years after the Federal Police entered the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), the Justo Sierra auditorium is taken by four groups that call themselves “self-managed, anarchists and punks”.
Taken since September 2000, a few months after the end of the longest strike in the history of the institution, it has become a dormitory, house and business for its squatters – members of the Okupa Che collective – a space that university students can only access in a limited way.
Historically, the Justo Sierra auditorium It was one of the most important places on the stage of student rebellion. There the assemblies of the General Strike Council (CGH) were held in 1968 and the movements of 1986 and 1999.
The students took the property to turn it into a autonomous, self-managed space and open, where the alternative sectors of the community were expressed, was the last stronghold of the movement. Two decades later it is a vegetarian inn.
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Students cannot make free use of the facilities, tour all areas, take photographs or videos or ask too many questions to squatters.
The Justo Sierra auditorium was taken since 2000, but now it works as a bedroom, home and business.
“I think the community should take rights over this space. I don’t judge it, because I agree that there is a self-managed space, but why in a university and not in other spaces that are isolated? In the beginning, the take had its relevance, but today those who are there do not have very democratic attitudes. They are airtight and do not lend much to dialogue, ”says Andrey Palma Márquez, a student of Dramatic Literature and Theater at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters (FFyL).
Modifications in the property
El Justo Sierra, named in honor of the founder of the UNAMHe had his glory times: when he received Charles de Gaulle, the philosopher Umberto Eco and figures such as Julio Cortázar, Mario Benedetti, Octavio Paz and Pablo Neruda. In addition, there rehearsed and presented the Philharmonic Orchestra of the University, Directed by Eduardo Mata.
Today, the administrators of the auditorium consider it an “autonomous self-managed work space”, according to their social networks and their blog. In a tour that EL UNIVERSAL did it was observed that the space is abandoned and access to students is limited.
The upper floor is forbidden to the public. In that area a tattoo and piercing studio was installed that can only be passed when professionals go to do business. You can enter the kitchen and the old concert hall where documentaries are occasionally screened.
The concert hall, which used to be as beautiful as the Nezahualcóyotl, today looks stripped even of its seats. From its former splendor, the walls covered with wood and the acoustics of its concave roof, fractured after the earthquakes of 2017, are preserved.
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The property is taken by four groups that call themselves “self-managed, anarchists and punks.”
In the bathrooms, a cubicle has no door, one of the white sinks of yesteryear was removed and replaced by another similar to those that are placed in the houses and instead of keys has a blue hose, in an attempt to give them some kind of esthetic. All were embedded with cement, shiny stones and snails. The marine decoration contrasts with the insults and the signatures written with down on the mirrors.
The toilets are incomplete and the tartar accumulated for years has formed a yellowish circle around the drain. The place smells like urine and stool. The door of one of the cubicles reads: “Revolution. Intellectual. Ideal”.
Unlike most of the faculties in Ciudad Universitaria, the bathrooms of the Che Guevara – as it was renowned – they have toilet paper. All the inner walls and outer walls of the auditorium are graffiti and intervened with paintings and images of anarchism and in favor of social leaders and activists.
The presentations of artists, such as Amparo Ochoa or the director Eduardo Mata, have been displaced by a vegetarian inn and two speakers at the main entrance, which loudly repeat punk and ska music with which they claim to identify the squatters. For many students, noise breaks the tranquility and hours of study.
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Last Thursday, 20 years of the Federal Police entrance to University City. There were no more than 30 people attending the cultural celebration that the squatters summoned. It was also a vegetarian buffet day at the inn. When finished eating, people should pick up their plate and wash it. Now, Justo Sierra has a kitchen: a gas stove and a stone stove were adapted, as well as a hood and a sink. It also has a roof garden, a bedroom area, a silkscreen workshop and a tattoo shop.
In the bathrooms, the marine decoration contrasts with the messages with down on the mirrors. Photo: TERESA MORENO. THE UNIVERSAL
“There are four groups living, it is a kind of very rare communist polygamic commune … There are even children born here,” says one student.
The squatters know that the risk of being evicted is permanent and that is why they have devised a contingency plan. On the roof, hidden from view by the urban garden installed by the anarchists, there are fire extinguishers, tolerances and shields like those used by the grenadiers.
Carolina Sánchez studies French Literature at the FFyL. He likes that there is a space to organize, but he disagrees that the auditorium is not used freely: “Symbolically it works, but in practice it attracts many problems, because you do not know who is and is very insecure.”
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