1999 UNAM strike In January 1999, Francisco Barnés de Castro, then rector of the UNAM, announced his intention to raise tuition. Attempts to raise tuition since 1948 had failed twice before, most recently in the late 1980s under Rector Jorge Carpizo MacGregor. Barnés proposed a number of reforms, including a tuition raise from about 0.02 dollars to about 150 dollars per academic year. Barnés promised the additional 48 million dollars the university would receive from the tuition increase would be used to fund more research and increase the quality of its facilities; the proposal also included a plan for tuition remission for students
Xavier Cortés Rocha Xavier Cortés Rocha Xavier Cortés Rocha is a Mexican architect and urban planner. He was also rector of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) for a short time. He was born in Tampico. Cortés graduated in architecture and later in urban planning at the Escuela Nacional de Arquitectura of the UNAM. He continued his studies in Paris. After 1968 he taught at the UNAM. In 1999 he became Secretary General of the UNAM, and was interims UNAM president from 12 to 17 of November 1999. From 2001 to 2009 he was director of "Sitios y Monumentos del Patrimonio Cultural"