MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Students and faculty tore down a barricade at
                  Mexico's main university Wednesday to confront striking students who've
                  occupied the campus since April. Thousands of others, however, were
                  unable to get past strikers.

                  Some strikers, many wearing ski masks or bandanas on their faces, fortified
                  their barricades of debris and screamed down students trying to get in.

                  The dozens of people who managed to enter the campus spoke with other
                  strikers, urging them to end the standoff which has paralyzed Latin America's
                  largest university.

                  "This will end only if individual schools of students and faculty sit down
                  together and work things out," said Estella Sanchez, a chemistry professor
                  who spoke with striking students from her department. "Most of us on both
                  sides don't want the strike to continue, but we can't proceed without an
                  exchange of ideas."

                  But even those strikers who proved willing to listen maintained the walkout
                  at the National Autonomous University is far from over.

                  "No talk at just this department is going to make this thing end today," said
                  Alex, a chemistry student who declined to give his last name. "We can't end
                  the strike without a consensus, but what we can do is reopen the dialogue."

                  The standoff at the university popularly known as UNAM, its Spanish
                  acronym, began nine months ago to protest a plan to increase annual tuition
                  to 140 dollars U.S. from a token few cents. Administrators backed off the
                  fee increase, but strikers' demands grew to include sweeping policy changes
                  and a call for greater student control.

                  Wednesday's action comes one day after the university's rector, Juan Ramon
                  de la Fuente, went to the campus to deliver results of a referendum showing
                  overwhelming support for an end to the walkout. Strikers and a throng of
                  photographers, however, kept him from reaching the barricaded gates.

                  "Moderate" students who support the administration's proposal to end the
                  strike had urged their supporters in newspaper ads Wednesday to go to the
                  university to confront the hard-liners, known as the "ultras."

                  As police helicopters circled close overhead, tensions ran high. There were
                  scattered skirmishes but no reports of serious violence.

                  Some hard-line strikers from the university and its affiliated-high schools
                  screamed obscenities at those opposed to the strike, others simply regarded
                  them with cool indifference.

                  Javier Guzman, 29, circled the sprawling campus with fellow law students
                  trying, unsuccessfully, to find a way onto the campus.

                  "It's obvious this strike is no longer about the students because we are the
                  students and we are being held back," he said.

                  Sanchez said communication lines had been severed by "the Che Gueveras
                  near the entrances that are ruining it for the rest of us."

                  Adding to the confusion and chaos, many of those who managed to get onto
                  the campus found there was no way for them to get out.

                  With striker blocking all entrances, a large group of law and chemistry
                  students and professors had to ask strikers for permission to leave.

                  "So there's going to be class tomorrow?" one onlooker jokingly asked the
                  departing group.

                    Copyright 2000 The Associated Press.