Saint Joseph. – the Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, opened the front of the conflict with Central University of Venezuela (UCV), the main and most famous higher education institution in that country. He accused the university’s leaders of “abandoning it” and compared the situation of that educational center to that of a hidden prison in Caracas.

The UCV University Council criticized Maduro for making, without prior notice, an early visit to the campus last October 21 and identifying Venezuelan Jacqueline Faria as the university’s “protector”. Freya accompanied him on the way.

The conflict between Maduro, the heir to the socialist or leftist regime installed in 1999 in VenezuelaAnd the university’s hierarchy intensified in August of this year, when the president created a presidential commission to restore UCV spaces that stepped in nine faculties.

The clash was similar to the confrontation that the Mexican president said, Andres Manuel Lopez ObradorAnd I started this month with the National Autonomous University of Mexico (One), accusing it of “turning to the right” and losing its essence when defending neoliberal projects.

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Founded on December 22, 1721 and near its 300th anniversary, in the second half of the twentieth century, UCV became a haven for student hotspots associated with the left-wing militants who rocked Venezuela in the 1960s and into at least 1970. Supporting the communist revolution in Cuba and its greatest and late leader Fidel Castro (1926-2016).

After the failed coup, the then lieutenant colonel Hugo Chavez (1954-2013) started in February 1992 against the President of Venezuela, Carlos Andres Pérez, and many Venezuelan politicians and intellectuals associated with the UCV joined the “chavismo”. With Chávez’s rise to power in 1999 by electoral means, the Venezuelan regime was provided with figures from the UCV.

However, the university later became a point of constant questioning against the Venezuelan regime, in a process fueled by the deep social, economic, political and institutional crisis that has worsened since 2014 in Venezuela.

Maduro’s attack on UCV

Maduro, unknown as president since January 2019 by more than fifty governments that argued he was re-elected in 2018 in an illegal election, announced on October 28: “On the small scale, I approved $40 million. The UCV redemption began.”

On a tour of the university this month, Maduro attacked the leaders of the student center: asserting they had been “destroyed and deserted” and compared the state of the facilities with Retén de Catia, a functioning prison in Caracas. From 1966 until it was demolished in 1997 due to human overcrowding.

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In response to the President, the Council deplored his “untimed and nightly visit to our headquarters” in Caracas and explained that because of his rank and inauguration and because the WCC was an independent and democratic institution, Maduro had to coordinate with the authorities.University to formalize your visit and tour.

In the same way, the supposed appointment of a “protector of the UCV Act” is contrary to constitutional and statutory principles. The institution has authorities elected by the university community, responsible for administrative and academic operations, infrastructure maintenance, and highly qualified personnel who manage maintenance and repair tasks.

He said UCV’s comparisons to the disappeared Retén de Catia prison were “unacceptable”.

Leading the “third centenary” of UCLA, Venezuelan universities have gone through “three centuries of difficult struggles in classrooms, laboratories, and libraries, shaping alternate generations,” he said.

He stressed that “it is fair to think about defending and protecting it, because it determined the path of scientific, social, cultural and political progress of the nation.”

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By rejecting any measure or policy that constitutes an attack on the university’s autonomy, the council argued that “a nation would be wise and virtuous if its education were based on respect for the fundamental principles and values ​​of man.”

Letters directed against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro appear in various locations of the Central University of Venezuela. Photo: El Nacional/GDA

Central University Funding

Regarding Maduro’s announcement of his approval of $40 million for UCV to repair its physical factory, the council warned that the presidential commission should coordinate with the university authorities, but noted that the study center had successfully resisted for 22 years in the face of financial difficulties. The institutions imposed by the government that took power in 1999 with its late president, Hugo Chavez, as the supreme leader.

He noted that “reduced and redirected budgets, abolition of expenditure items for academic, administrative, and proper maintenance”, use of programs not provided for by law, and salary forfeiture, among other things, were anomalies.

“They are not sending any kind of money to universities in violation of the National Executive Act for these purposes,” he said.

jabf / rcr