A student march in Asunción on September 20, 2016, drew thousands of students and supporters to the streets. Photo: La Chispa. All rights reserved.
University students are making history in Paraguay in what is being dubbed La Primavera Estudiantil, or Student Spring. Over the last weeks, students and their allies mobilized one of the largest protest movements in the country’s history, demanding democratic reforms to the governance statutes of Paraguay’s largest public university, the National University of Asunción (UNA). Should they succeed, it would arguably mark the first time in the country’s modern history that major national reforms result from social movement pressure. Student protesters’ success in mobilizing mass support and sympathy both reveals important changes in Paraguayan politics and has potential to transform the country further still.
Beginning in late August, protests attracted thousands of students and unified the university’s 12 schools, or faculties, in a student strike and a sit-in that paralyzed the campus. Students pledged to lift the strikes only when university leaders accept four basic reforms to university governance: the elimination of the absolute majority currently held by professors in the university governing assembly, which is composed of elected representatives of the professors, students, and alumni from each school; term limits for elected university leadership positions; a ban on the “personal appointees” (“cargos de confianza”) of university leaders running for and occupying elected office in university governing bodies; and the creation of an independent electoral commission to regulate university elections.
