Bolivian President calls for anti-imperialist university on autonomy anniversary

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – President Luis Arce delivered a message on the 91st anniversary of universities’ autonomy and in his address called for an ideologized university, saying that when forging this achievement university students envisioned a higher education institution at the service of the people.

“Public universities must continue to be beacons of knowledge, areas of decolonizing and depatriarchalizing, liberating and anti-imperialist political debate; above all they must be spaces for the construction of the permanent utopia of the people, a country with no racism, no discrimination, no exclusions nor excluded, no oppressors nor oppressed, no poverty, with education and health for all Bolivians,” the head of state said.

The MAS party’s ideological principles are decolonization, depatriarchalization and anti-imperialism, according to the words of its president Evo Morales. The political party’s statute indicates that its principles are aligned with Morales.

President Arce recalled that in the 10th University Congress in Sucre in August 1952, it was decided that imperialism would be eradicated “and subsequently it played a leading role in the agrarian reform, the nationalization of mines, the defense of natural resources, the struggle for democratic freedoms, unionization, educational reform and universal suffrage,” he said.

University autonomy was established on July 25, 1930 and its advocates claim that it was thanks to Daniel Sánchez Bustamante, whom they recall as a key intellectual and mentor in its achievement and implementation in the public university system.

Arce stressed the university system’s contribution to the government of Evo Morales (2006-2019) and excluded from this task the Jeanine Áñez administration saying that during that time “the colonial republic and the failed neoliberal economic model” were reinstated.

The President called for “strengthening” the links between universities and social organizations, with civil society, in a clear reference to the MAS groups which support the government. “It is not enough to be a good professional, but a professional committed to the interests of the Bolivian people,” he said in his address.

Source: El Deber