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  • Plaza of Sacrifices: Gender, Power, and Terror in 1968 Mexico
  • Eric Zolov
Plaza of Sacrifices: Gender, Power, and Terror in 1968 Mexico. By Elaine Carey. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005. Pp. xvii, 254. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $22.95 paper.

In the capital of contemporary Mexico, protest marches that bring together tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of people at a time are routine. At any given moment throughout the year, the Zócalo, Mexico City's massive public central square and locus of presidential power, is occupied by a diverse range of petitioners from around the country seeking redress. There are proximate as well as historic explanations for this vibrant display of street-based democracy at work, but virtually every interpreter of modern Mexico will identify the massive student movement in 1968 as an essential point of origin for contemporary Mexican protest movements. The problem with this interpretation has been a tendency to reify the student movement itself, to view it as heroic and transformative—not only beyond reproach but outside of objective analysis altogether. Elaine Carey's new work on the Mexican student movement of 1968 advances the necessary historicizing process, but unfortunately falls short of the need to demystify the "heroics" of '68 and to explore the nuances, complexities and contradictions the student movement encompassed, and its legacies.

Carey brings an innovative conceptual framework to her discussion of the student movement. She positions her analysis in relationship to important transnational social, cultural and diplomatic forces—such as the cult of "Che" Guevara, Mexican intellectual currents, and U.S. concerns about Mexican political stability—that shaped the context of student protest and government response. Taking a gendered approach, she poses the argument that the student movement, in openly questioning presidential authority, breached a deeply ingrained set of discourses that imposed a subservience of women to men and youth to elders. Although the students established a "growing momentum of support" (p. 105), the threat to patriarchal authority embodied by their protests was ultimately too threatening for the political system to tolerate. In the end, "[y]oung Mexican middle-class, educated, urban males encountered a regime that was unwilling to share its power and authority with young men" (p. 6). The movement itself was crushed, but the experience of defying established norms stayed with the students who marched. These experiences laid the foundation for future personal/political struggles against the political regime, traditional family structures and in personal relationships. Carey concludes by examining the trajectory of Mexico's feminist movement in the early 1970s and linking it to the events of 1968. "Although this is difficult to document, women active in 1968 later challenged traditional gender roles by divorcing, taking lovers, and/or living alone at levels never seen before" (p. 188).

While Carey's methodological approach introduces a welcome addition to the historiography of the 1968 movement, there are shortcomings to her analysis that undermine the strength of her contribution. Foremost is her tendency to lionize the students as heroic youth doing battle against antiquated, reactionary systems of [End Page 161] thought and power. By doing so, Carey not only overlooks the messiness of the student movement—its polemical internal disputes, the recourse to destructive violence by certain elements—she also downplays public opposition. For Carey, the movement unequivocally had "broad based appeal" (p. 114); any opposition to the students was seemingly attributed to the "Mexican government's power to define who or what is Mexican" (p. 121), a position she sustains throughout the book. Although she astutely asserts that "[y]oung people clashed with their elders over responsibility for the violence and the ownership of rhetoric" (p. 119), she over-generalizes this topic. For all of her interviews (oddly, not listed in the bibliography), none are from a parent—neither in support nor opposition to their child's participation—nor from a worker or student who stood clear of the movement, and there were plenty. Thus Carey does little to advance our understanding of the oft-repeated assumption that the students had "popular support," other than to assert it was there in spite of government manipulation. Following the massacre at Tlatelolco, there were "no...

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