The Wayward Busnappers

In the history of gall, some 2,000 so-called students at the National University of Mexico posted a mark that is likely to stand for years. In as terrifying a week as Mexico City has seen in years, they burned or destroyed 10 buses, worth $120,000. immobilized the national capital and its 4,500,000 inhabitants, lobbed Molotov cocktails as casually as softballs, and defied Mexico's federal government. What's more, they got away with it.

The students did not even have a grievance. The trouble all started fortnight ago when the municipal government announced a 1/2-c- bus-fare increase to help pay for bus drivers' wage increases and for 1,400 new buses. University students were specifically exempted from the fare hike, but that was immaterial. Proclaiming themselves as "defenders of the working class," they seized half a dozen buses and proceeded to the Zocalo, Mexico City's central square, currently being repaved. There the students demonstrated their proletarian solidarity: they played dodge-'em, bump-'em, hot-rodding the buses back and forth through wet cement, hooting, hollering, colliding.

Cocktails for Control. Such sport was this that next day began with a mob of 1,500 burning and looting a bus terminal, beating up drivers and running off with another 30 buses. When the police did not interfere, they stormed other terminals with Molotov cocktails. Mexico City transport was in chaos. People jammed the old streetcars, riding atop the roofs, crowded into trucks at 1-c- per ride. In vain Mexico City's bus drivers appealed to the students to stop. Finally, the 13 transport unions took full-page ads saying what all knew: "These young delinquents have proclaimed themselves defenders of the people. They don't care about the 15,000 modest workers."

The riots only increased. Mexico City's Teachers College and Polytechnic Institute were caught up in the juvenile madness. On the campuses, students of law, medicine, history, philosophy stood guard over 300 stolen buses, breaking windows, looting cashboxes. Not a policeman showed his badge. Mexico's college campuses are sanctuaries, closed to police.

Lead & Solidarity. The all-out terror lasted two days. The government seemed to abdicate. No administration wants to appear anti-working class. Finally, a platoon of troops and cops ordered by Governor Ernesto P. Uruchurtu drove the marauders back to their campuses.

At midweek the capitulation came. It was from the presidential palace: a promise by Ruiz Cortines to revoke the fare hikes and appoint a committee including rioting students "to consider all aspects of this complex problem." Even that failed to pacify the students. They sallied out, joined a leftist faction in a street battle for control of the labor union at Pemex, the national petroleum monopoly. The students helped attack Pemex headquarters, retreated when hard-pressed police fired on the mob.

At week's end troops still ringed the inviolable campuses. Inside, students danced round blazing buses as white-clad medical students set up first-aid stations, home-economics coeds perspired prettily over soup kettles, and chemistry aspirants continued to make Molotov cocktails. The bus drivers? They got no raises, and precious little work.

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