EBOOK
Rebel Mexico
Student Unrest and Authoritarian Political Culture During the Long Sixties
Jaime M. Pensado(0)
About
Winner of the 2014 Mexican Book Prize! In the middle of the twentieth century, a growing tide of student activism in Mexico reached a level that could not be ignored, culminating with the 1968 movement. This book traces the rise, growth, and consequences of Mexico's "student problem" during the long sixties (1956-1971). Historian Jaime M. Pensado closely analyzes student politics and youth culture during this period, as well as reactions to them on the part of competing actors. Examining student unrest and youthful militancy in the forms of sponsored student thuggery (porrismo), provocation, clientelism (charrismo estudiantil), and fun (relajo), Pensado offers insight into larger issues of state formation and resistance. He draws particular attention to the shifting notions of youth in Cold War Mexico and details the impact of the Cuban Revolution in Mexico's universities. In doing so, Pensado demonstrates the ways in which deviating authorities-inside and outside the government-responded differently to student unrest, and provides a compelling explanation for the longevity of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional.
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Reviews
"It is here that Jaime Pensado is at his best: in establishing the deep links between a political analysis of intermediation, power and authority, radicalization, factionalism, and a sophisticated study of cultural practices, manifestations and new languages of countercultural contestation. His is a multi-layered and nuanced analysis of a period that has long stood in the shadow of 1968."
European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies
"Jaime M. Pensado's meticulously researched study explored the development of mid-century Mexico's so-called 'youth problem', illuminating students' growing political activism as well as state and societal responses . . . Pensado's careful attention to student culture and its wider reception makes Rebel Mexico an important addition to the literature on Mexican history and Latin America's Cold War
The Latin Americanist
"Pensado has written a fundamentally revisionist work that throws into relief many of our basic assumptions about post-war Mexican political culture, while also revealing the deep history of the 1968 student movement and its aftermath. This work will quickly shoot up to the top of required reading on the Global Sixties as well as twentieth-century Mexico."
Stony Brook University