A ‘Lost Generation,’ Both Now and to Come

Don’t get confused. There is no comparison between the Mexican student movement in 1968 and the 10-month strike at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) that ended last Sunday when the federal police recovered the campus. Sunday, the police operation was clean and left no victims. On Oct. 2, 1968, dozens were killed in Tlatelolco square.

In 1968, the order to send soldiers to end the students’ protest came from one person only--an authoritarian president named Gustavo Diaz Ordaz. Last week, the decision to send the police came from a judge acting within the law.

Thirty-two years ago, everybody knew who was leading the student movement and what they wanted. The leadership was openly demanding a dialogue on democracy with the president. This time, the students’ leadership changed virtually every time they assembled, and it was next to impossible to determine who was in charge to establish a meaningful dialogue.

In 1968, the entire university community from the president of UNAM to the humblest janitor who worked there were united in a confrontation with the government. This time, the confrontation was between the strikers and UNAM’s president; the strikers could not even gather the support of the majority of the students.

Back in 1968, the children of the middle class led a revolt against the government and had the support of the intellectuals and the working class; this time, the workers were not supportive of the strikers, and the middle class was split. Curiously, this time the vast majority of the intellectuals favored police intervention to end the strike.

Perhaps the most striking difference between the two student movements lies in the profiles of those involved. In 1968, the support for the student movement came, for the most part, from educated people. The leadership was composed of intellectuals and politically seasoned cadres from the Mexican Communist Party. This time, the base and the organizers came from the lowest socioeconomic strata.

It is hard to establish the influence of this marginalized sector of society on the movement. But we do know that in spite of the academic credentials of a very small number of leaders, the more radical leadership rose from the most depressed economic sectors of society.

It is not an accident that the most belligerent factions of the movement were young men and women studying in the humanities area: philosophy, literature, law. By the same token, the students who most strenuously opposed the strike were enrolled in the scientific and technical areas, engineering, architecture, medicine--careers for which there is a larger Mexican labor market.

Today’s student movement belongs to the first Mexican “lost generation.” Many university officials concede that a large number of UNAM students will not find jobs in their fields of study. Their futures will be that of lawyers who sell books door to door or philosophers who drive taxis for a living. The strikers had their 15 minutes of fame, and many of them got a chance to lead given the peculiar rotation leadership they had in place. Many exercized their moment of power with absolute authoritarianism. It was significant that the hard-liners were preparatory (upper high school) students. These preparatory schools are located in the most economically deprived zones in Mexico City--areas where the kids rejoice in anarchy. These are kids who bear no responsibility for the current state of affairs in Mexico. If anything, they are the victims of a society that every day seems to grow more polarized. The big problem in Mexico is not what is happening now but what is coming up.

The 1968 movement turned many young people into guerrillas. These were men and women who thought there was no possibility to change the country within the constitutional framework. In the 1970s, the government waged its dirty war and finished them. Others were co-opted.

This student movement at the turn of the new century will most likely produce some new cadres for a resurgent Mexican guerrilla force. The most radical sectors of the student movement may think they have to carry their movement to its final consequences.