Student leaders declare ‘indefinite strike’ at Bogotá’s sprawling Universidad Nacional as controversial rector reappointed.
In another twist in the saga of who runs the ‘Nacho’, Colombia’s largest public university, controversial candidate Ismael Peña was formally inducted as rector last week ending a two-year legal wrangle.
Peña was sworn in during a small private ceremony on Thursday just days after a Bogotá tribunal ordered his reinstatement in the job. This followed the resignation last November of another rector whose possession was ruled illegitimate by Colombia’s state council.
Read more: Court Ruling Expected to Spark Trouble at the National University.
The initial controversy was sparked in 2024 in the highly politicized campus when a popular candidate, Leopoldo Múnera, lost out to Peña in the last voting round by the university council.
The ensuing strikes and protests galvanized the university for four months setting back the academic agenda and creating an exhausting three-term year in 2025, from which students and professors are only just recovering.
Protests and vandalism spilled over onto major nearby transport routes around the Bogotá campus. In Bogotá, the Nacho sits in the corner of the busy Avenida NQS and Avenida El Dorado, two of the most vital throughfares for both public and private transport.
Return of Torres
Even as news of Peña’s legal victory and imminent reinstatement was announced last week, students and supporters quickly blocked the Avenida El Dorado forcing Transmilenio buses to suspend operations and thousands of commuters to make their way on foot.
Student assemblies at the university’s two main campuses, Bogotá and Medellin, called for “indefinite strikes” to protest Peña reinstatement.
To add to the confusion, the Bogotá campus was also invaded by a large group of campesinos from Cauca whose later protests detained workers in government buildings, part of a plan to draw attention to conflict-related problems in their department.
On Friday, when The Bogotá Post visited the university, most of the faculties were closed but the campus was filled with students busy painting fresh murals to celebrate the return of the remains to the campus of Camilo Torres, a revolutionary priest and founder of the university Sociology Department, who joined the ELN guerrillas and was killed in action against the army in 1966.
See also: Remains of Rebel Priest Set to Return to Bogotá.
Many students gave their views on the return of Peña but declined to be fully identified.
Roberto, a sociology student selling food in the campus, said he supported the strike to “preserve the autonomy of the university”. Peña was seen as an unpopular candidate “linked to private interests that will privatize the curriculum and syphon off profits”, he said.
Corporate spinoffs
Similar sentiments were expressed across the campus: that Peña was being parachuted in with the backing of the Centro Democratic party to advance both a right-wing agenda and disburse lucrative contracts to a select group of private companies.
According to an investigation by magazine La Raya last year, Peña was the continuity candidate for “a parallel administration system” embedded in a company called Rotorr that dished out deals on behalf of the university, but bypassed internal auditing procedures leaving an opaque tangle of beneficiaries.
During his rectorship Múnera described these corporate spinoffs as engaging in “crimes against the university” and flagged them to the judicial authorities, but so far with no clear resolution.
Despite these controversies, Peña’s return was boosted by support from the Consejo Superior Universitario, the highest decision-making body of public universities in Colombia, that unanimously agreed to respect the tribunal ruling, clearing any final legal hurdles.
Strike Down
In another unexpected outcome, an online poll of students revealed that a majority were against the suspension of classes.
The initial strike call came after a hastily convened student assembly on the Bogotá campus where some student representatives later complained that their voices were not heard.
“There was one classmate, he raised his hand and they wouldn’t let him speak. So, the next day we decided to conduct a survey to ask the students if they agreed with the strike,” student representative Kevin Arriguí told City TV.
The results, based on a total of 5,438 respondents, showed that 56 per cent (3,060 students) disagreed with the strike, while only 36 per cent (2,141 students) supported it. There were 237 undecideds.
Tellingly, the online strike survey had a higher participation among students than last year’s vote to install a Constituyente Universitaria – a people’s body – that is now in place.
Some students consulted on the campus by The Bogotá Post last week were mindful of the outcome of the 2024 strike which lasted several months and created hardships, particularly for poor students from rural areas who had spent money to travel to the capital to study, only to face severe interruptions to their curriculums and the risk of having to study another year to gain their degrees.
“We don’t want Peña. People are angry. But we don’t want to stop the term either,” said Carla, a student outside the newly constructed 70,000-million-peso arts faculty building.
Fragile mobility
Finding a compromise could be problematic. Activists on the campus were pressuring undergraduates to not attend classes and most lessons were abandoned. Some professors offered their classes on-line.
The student assembly planned this week at the Bogotá site could reverse the strike plans, though this seems unlikely. The general mood among students on the campus was that they would “block Peña, whatever it takes”.
Such talk is common at a university that is a petri dish for the national condition and at times – literally – a battleground for political divisions, particularly in a city nominated as the country’s “protest capital”.
This was revealed by data published in an El Espectador op-ed this week which showed Bogotá had 1,678 mass mobilization recorded during 2025, roughly 32 per week, and an increase of 17 per cent on the previous year.
While celebrating this increase as a “symptom of democracy”, it also pointed out that these protests “affected public order and the fragile mobility of millions of Bogotanos”.
That included two million people using the Transmilenio each day, with a majority of these on lines passing close to the Universidad Nacional. Easy targets for agitators based on the campus.
Which is why trouble at the Nacho generally means headaches for the whole city.