Mexico City.- Considering it “undemocratic and exclusive”, more than 2,000 members of the scientific, academic and cultural community ask to stop the most recent proposal to replace the current Science and Technology Law.
Specifically, they warn about the General Law initiative on Humanities, Sciences, Technologies and Innovation, prepared by Conacyt and presented by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador before the Chamber of Deputies on December 13.
“This is a proposal that restricts the academic freedom of researchers; it imposes a hierarchical and bureaucratic structure that relegates the opinion of scientists, collegiate bodies, universities and academic associations,” read the statement released this Wednesday.
“It does not respect the federal pact and eliminates the commitment of the Mexican State to a stable budget for research, all of which implies a setback in the progress made in the last 50 years,” the document notes, which includes a brief list of the various affectations that this new legislation would entail.
Among them is, above all, the establishment of a National Agenda, which threatens research in some scientific lines that could receive less support because they are not considered strategic or priority (Reform 01/01/2023). As well as the elimination of the current mandate that national spending for the sector cannot be less than 1 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Also the loss of autonomy in the Public Research Centers (CPI), whose workers would also be reclassified as public officials, which would violate their job stability and freedom of investigation. More discrimination against researchers from private entities, and a distribution of scholarships always subject to “budgetary availability.”
“The distribution of resources cannot become a tool to attack institutions and academic groups, nor to threaten critical thinking,” the signatories reproach, referring to the Inter-American Principles on Academic Freedom and University Autonomy (OAS, 2021).
Throughout 34 pages, the display adds 2,391 signatures -some of them repeated- from professionals, both independent and affiliated with the most important bodies in the country, such as UNAM, Cinvestav, INAH, ANUIES or the different CPIs. .
Among them stand out the biologist Antonio Lazcano; the physicist Alejandro Frank; the virologist Susana López Charretón; the biomedical doctor Gloria Soberón Chávez; biotechnologist Beatriz Xoconostle; biochemist Francisco Bolívar Zapata; historian Catherine Andrews; the mathematician Luz de Teresa Oteyza, and the geographer and historian Jean Meyer.
Likewise, figures from the cultural union, such as the archaeologists Eduardo Matos Moctezuma and Leonardo López Luján; the writer Mercedes de la Garza; art historian Graciela de la Torre; the writer Néstor García Canclini; the anthropologist Bolfy Cottom, and the creators Fernando Aceves Humana and Pablo Ortiz Monasterio.
Together with all of them, various critical voices of the current scientific policy, such as the former heads of the Scientific and Technological Consultative Forum (FCCyT) AC Gabriela Dutrénit, José Franco and Julia Tagüeña; the doctor in basic biomedical research Brenda Valderrama, and the doctor of sciences Andreu Comas García.
A plural group that asks the legislature to stop the aforementioned initiative and open real spaces for participation in which the other proposals that have been presented before are included for discussion.
“We want to contribute to jointly building a science, technology and innovation law that favors true critical thinking, up to the country’s social, technological and environmental challenges, and that incorporates successful experiences and scientific and humanistic advances to advance towards a modern, equitable and sustainable Mexico.
“The academic community has a lot to say to achieve this. Let’s open the dialogue,” they conclude.
