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Act of Courage. Until last March, an avowed Communist, Eli de Gotari, 41, was rector of the university. In an act of courage, Michoacan's anti-Communist Governor, Agustin Arriaga Rivera, dismissed De Gotari, after 40 days of student riots that ended only when a student was killed and the federal government sent troops to surround the school and jets to buzz the city. Last month an audit of the university's books showed that during his 17 months in office, De Gotari had doled out $51,600 in university funds to anti-U.S. or pro-Communist organizations and publications. Even so, there are still ten confirmed Communists on the faculty. Their teaching echoes across the campus—in a law student who says, "Half of Mexico is owned by the U.S.," or in others who say, with the ease of lessons well learned, that "capitalism is dying."
U.S.-style capitalism might already be dead, to judge by the absence of any official U.S. presence in the state. "We're not too much up to date in Michoacán," admits U.S. Ambassador Thomas C. Mann, who has yet to set foot there after nearly two years in Mexico. The burned-out American Institute has been rebuilt, but it is classified as "B Grade" by the U.S. embassy. The U.S. attitude seems to be that greater emphasis would only serve to provide a larger target for Morelia's Communists to throw rocks at. This may be practical wisdom, but the result has been to ignore a fief the size of West Virginia, and to have little effect on a university that calls itself the second oldest* in the New World.
* The University of Santo Domingo, founded in 1538, is the oldest. Michoacán was founded in 1540.