In the precincts of Coyoacán near to where Leon Trotsky caught the business end of an ice pick sprawls a monument to Big Government and the delirium of National Greatness if not to any certifiable species of conservatism. This is the "Behemoth U." of Russell Kirk's nightmares, an endless vulgar-Marxist bull session 200,000 voices strong in a jumble of boxy buildings consecrated by and to "The Big Three" -- not Detroit carmakers but extravagant muralists of high-church Stalinism and neo-pagan chic -- Siqueiros, Rivera, Orozco. Here Lillian Hellman's heart could have been at home. Certainly not the City College of New York, this is UNAM, Universidad Autónoma Nacional de México.
Depending on the audience, UNAM's publicity machine presents alternative founding dates. For those (especially those with fat checkbooks) who might cherish the Permanent Things, UNAM says it is the second-oldest university in the Western Hemisphere, founded in 1551 -- when Madrid sent over the charter for the Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico. For those who consider the Spanish and Catholic heritage a yoke of oppression, the university traces its origin to 1910 and the ignition of the Mexican Revolution. The latter account is more accurate, since President Benito Juárez and his anti-clerical Reforma in 1867 had shuttered forever the old Pontifical National University. The true UNAM opened in 1910 during the dying light of the Díaz dictatorship's "positivism" and the dawning rays of Mexican-style Marxism, anarcho-syndicalism, and other radical intellectual fads hanging onto the tumbrels of the Revolution.
Behemoth universities allow, like exotic hothouse plants, occasional exceptions to radical and socialist conformity. Milton Friedman and Saul Bellow were tolerated for a while at Wisconsin-Madison, while California-Berkeley permitted the conservative scholar George Lenczowski to thrive. William F. Buckley, Jr., and Octavio Paz studied at UNAM but did not graduate. In more characteristic fashion, José López Portillo and a succession of other big-government Mexican presidents and party bosses graduated and launched their careers from the UNAM law school.
In UNAM's center for juridical research toils a youthful, gentle, but animated scholar of classical and Spanish literature, philology, economics, and Roman law, Juan Javier del Granado. He is circumspect about his work. "If they" -- the university establishment -- "knew what I was up to, they might hang me from a lamppost."
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