1999 UNAM strike 1999 UNAM strike The 1999-2000 strike and shutdown of the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico, the largest university in Latin America) had its origins in the January 1999 announcement by its latest rector that tuition would increase significantly and graduation requirements would become more restrictive. In response, a large group of students declared a strike and blockaded the main campus to the point of institutional paralysis. The blockades intensified and eventually led to the university's closure, during which there were violent encounters between opposition groups, students, guards and faculty. The crisis led to the eventual resignation of the university's
School of Chemistry, UNAM and textile manufacturing and some pharmaceutical industries. However, the harsh national and international context, derived from the mexican revolution movement and the World War I affected the availability of highly skilled personnel. Therefore, in January 1913, Juan Salvador Agraz presented an initiative to the mexican president Francisco I. Madero to create the School of Chemistry. On September 23, 1916, the mexican president Venustiano Carranza promulgated by government-decree the foundation of the National School of Industrial Chemistry (Escuela Nacional de Química Industrial, and later Escuela Nacional de Ciencias Químicas or National School of Chemical Sciences) in the town of Tacuba (north-west