MEXICO CITY (AP) -- For generations, Mexico's National Autonomous
                  University gave sons and daughters of the working class an inexpensive
                  education, the chance to become doctors, lawyers, even the leaders of the
                  country. It was a great, generous dream.

                  But the university has struggled in recent years as government funding fell
                  and enrollment increased. And now a wearisome strike by radical students
                  has shuttered the largest school in Latin America, forcing its 260,000
                  students to delay or give up their own dreams.

                  With no end in sight, the strike passes the six-month mark Wednesday at the
                  school that helped educate four of Mexico's last five presidents and which
                  remains the nation's center of scientific research.

                  Adding to the uncertainty is the threat of a staff strike. A major union has
                  threatened to walk out Nov. 1 if pay demands are not met.

                  Many students at the university known by its Spanish initials, UNAM
                  (pronounced OO-nahm), have left for other schools or taken jobs.

                  Armando Moreno Sala, 26, abandoned his internship at UNAM's
                  Veterinary Hospital and shifted to a less-prestigious program at Toluca, 35
                  miles west of Mexico City.

                  "The strike has meant abandoning my dream, which was to be in that
                  hospital, which I consider to be the best in Latin America," he said.

                  The trouble started early this year, when UNAM President Francisco
                  Barnes pushed a tuition increase through the university's governing council.

                  Tuition in peso terms had been frozen for 50 years as inflation slowly eroded
                  it to the equivalent of a few cents. It was raised to about $140 annually --
                  roughly the dollar level of 1948.

                  Students struck on April 20, insisting that Mexico's constitutional guarantee
                  of free education should apply to universities as well as to grade schools,
                  though the nation's courts have rejected that argument.

                  "The movement is for all the people who come after us. If we surrender, they
                  will not have an education later," said Liliana Gonzalez, a 28-year-old
                  graduate student in arts who was passing a can for coins at a strike rally
                  Tuesday.

                  In June, administrators compromised, essentially making tuition voluntary.
                  But strikers demanded that tuition be fully eliminated.

                  They also insisted the university scrap other recent reforms: tighter limits on
                  the time allowed to achieve a degree and higher grades required to advance
                  from UNAM's prep schools to its undergraduate program -- a process long
                  known as the "automatic pass."

                  Students argued those measures hurt low-income students who also have to
                  work. Administrators said the rules as they were allowed unqualified or lazy
                  students to fill positions better used by others.

                  Barricades block most roads at the sprawling campus in southern Mexico
                  City and red-and-black strike banners ripple from many of its buildings.
                  Administrators have had to work out of other facilities.

                  On Monday, strikers forced the full or partial closure of many university
                  research centers, which carry out much of Mexico's top-level research. They
                  had earlier been allowed to operate as long as they held no classes.

                  Federal and city officials have been slow to intervene because the university
                  is legally autonomous -- a status meant to protect it from political
                  interference -- and because attacks on student protests in 1968 turned
                  officials of that era into villains of Mexican history.

                  Mexico City's leftist government finally clashed with the students last week
                  when a demonstration blocked the principal freeway and riot police were
                  called out to clear the road -- beating some protesters bloody.

                  UNAM officials and even some leftists have accused the strikers of holding
                  the university hostage in order to press fruitlessly for broad, socialist
                  changes. Many students seem puzzled as well.

                  "It makes me feel resentful," said Moreno, the veterinary student. "I don't
                  know what's behind the strike. There are hidden interests, things much
                  broader than the university."

                    Copyright 1999 The Associated Press.