In this meticulously researched study, Jaime Pensado traces the rise of student disaffection in mid-twentieth-century Mexico through two relatively unexploited perspectives: the introduction and consolidation of porrismo (student thuggery/provocation) and charrismo estudiantil (student clientelism). In doing so he reveals important methods by which competing external influences (school authorities, government officials, political power brokers, print media) sought to direct Mexican student politics and culture from the 1940s onwards.
A fundamental argument of Pensado's book is that the 1968 Student Movement was much more complicated than previously portrayed in the historiography. Specifically, he questions the dominant narrative of the intellectual classes that tends to overstate public support for the Movement and inflates the singular significance of the Movement's bloody climax on 2 October 1968 for the development of Mexican democracy.
The opening page of the book directly quotes from a letter written by an ‘appreciative citizen’ who congratulated President Díaz Ordaz for taking appropriate measures to counter Machiavellian manoeuvres by foreign elements bent on undermining the nation's stability and corrupting its youth. As other studies have noted, such letters of support were not the isolated utterances of right-wing fanatics, but represented a fundamental concern within Mexico's population regarding perceived attacks on hierarchical structures within the home and society.
Pensado argues that such views were not confined to the late 1960s but represented a pattern that had begun in previous decades; one in which outrageous, often public, displays of youth non-conformity contributed to an underlying alienation of student culture and behaviour from mainstream society. He suggests that the 1956 strike at the Instituto Politécnico Nacional (National Polytechnic Institution, IPN) and the strike at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (National Autonomous University of Mexico, UNAM) in 1958 were key moments in changing the official perception of student activism. Prior to this, student non-conformity was more likely to have been benignly tolerated, by diverse authorities, as boisterous pranks. Afterwards, student unrest was viewed as subversive and a potential threat to national stability. Importantly, Pensado identifies the UNAM strike of 1958 as the birth of a ‘modern’ New Left form of student opposition in Mexico that would see students making links with labour unions, trying to breach previous socio-economic gaps between themselves and others, and uniting with their counterparts at the IPN in a shared struggle against state oppression. This, he judges, was crucial in setting a pattern of allegiances that would continue throughout the 1960s, culminating in the 1968 Student Movement and its brutal suppression.
The innovative aspect of such findings, however, is Pensado's analysis of the extent to which non-student interests often sponsored public displays of student excess as part of a process of clientelism. The awarding of false degrees, sponsorship of lavish parties and even enjoying access to national presidents were just some of the ways in which student leaders (charros) were able to gain and maintain the admiration of their peers. As such, they became intermediaries through whom campus politics could be manipulated towards the objectives of their sponsors. The other aspect of student manipulation was the role that agents provocateurs (porros) played within campus politics. The hiring and planting of youthful thugs within university campuses was a tactic often deployed to cause confusion, unrest and disunity within student ranks. Exacerbating divisions that naturally occurred among campaigners over how to conduct disputes, such tactics added an element of violence into student politics that provided the excuse for authoritarian intervention. Importantly, Pensado shows that this was not a phenomenon that suddenly arose in 1968, but was one that had been used from the 1940s onwards.
Similarly, the official explanation that student unrest was the result of foreign ideological corruption of the vulnerable did not begin during the Cold War, when the threat of communist infiltration reached its zenith. Pensado's analysis reveals that during the 1940s, fascism had been similarly blamed for student non-conformity and was used as an excuse for intervention. The authorities' continued insistence that student disaffection was the result of foreign manipulation fuelled concerns within Mexican society of a perceived assault on Mexican values. This contributed to the extent and nature of the support expressed for Díaz Ordaz by numerous correspondents.
In recent years there have been several attempts to revisit historiographical treatment of the Tlatelolco massacre. Eric Zolov's work places the 1968 Student Movement within the context of a youth counterculture that had originated many years earlier. From an entirely different cultural perspective, Claire Brewster's and my own work on 1968 attempts to reposition the Olympic Games within the debate; to see the Games as the context within which the Student Movement took place rather than the other way round. More recently, National Security Archive Briefing Notes suggest that the approximate figure of around 300 deaths at Tlatelolco is an exaggeration. It is within this recent trend that Jaime Pensado's book should be located. In tracing the long trajectory of student activism and the multiple, increasingly violent means of repressing it, Tlatelolco becomes the latest scene in a tragic play.
Yet Pensado's analytical perspective ensures that his study is important not only to those interested in the Mexican Student Movement. His detailed examination of the way in which charrismo was played out within student campuses directly relates to recent findings on the survival of caciquismo into the twentieth century and its transfer from rural to urban environments. The ability of state officials to establish such networks of intimidation and accommodation contributes to our broader understanding of twentieth-century Mexican politics and the PRI's ability to remain in power for so long.
While Pensado's portrayal of student politics during the long 1960s is important, he is correct to point out that much remains to be done. His emphasis on how easy it was for patrons to find willing participants to undermine student unity demonstrates that it would be wrong to see the 1968 Student Movement simply as a generational conflict. I echo Pensado's call for research to analyse the experiences of the majority of students who refused to take part in the Movement. Indeed, one might go further in seeking to understand the experiences of youths beyond the student cohort. As Pensado suggests, the young Mexicans filling the ranks of the riot police (granaderos) who were charged with the task of suppressing the Movement would offer a unique perspective. Similarly, there must have been many young Mexicans for whom the ‘swinging sixties’ were anything but swinging; rather, they may have felt just as threatened and alienated by the political and cultural activism of students as their parents' generation. True, such analysis is not without formidable challenges, but the results could further develop our understanding of the complexity of Mexican political history so skilfully revealed in Pensado's fine book.
