Hispanic American Historical Review

Frazier, Lessie Jo, 1966-
Cohen, Deborah.
Mexico '68: Defining the Space of the Movement, Heroic Masculinity in the Prison, and "Women" in the Streets
Hispanic American Historical Review - 83:4, November 2003, pp. 617-660

Duke University Press

Lessie Jo Frazier and Deborah Cohen - Mexico '68: Defining the Space of the Movement, Heroic Masculinity in the Prison, and "Women" in the Streets - Hispanic American Historical Review 83:4 Hispanic American Historical Review 83.4 (2003) 617-660 Defining the Space of Mexico '68: Heroic Masculinity in the Prison and "Women" in the Streets Lessie Jo Frazier and Deborah Cohen [Errata] Defining the Space of the Movement In 2001 we attended a Mexico City conference on twentieth-century student activism featuring a plenary session with four prominent leaders from Mexico's 1968 student movement. We were struck by how different these men's narratives were from those told to us by women who had participated in Mexican radical student organizations. We wondered how these men had come to dominate public discourse about '68, almost as spokesmen of a generation. In this article we explore this public discourse by looking at the complex convergences and divergences between men's and women's accounts of the movement to reveal the gendered underpinnings of Mexican political culture. Narratives centered on the leaders' accounts have too narrowly defined the space of the movement; consequently, juxtaposing the accounts of male leaders and female participants breaks open these definitions and expands our understanding of historical agency and the possibilities for political subjectivity in this movement. These '68 leaders claimed that student movements were central to...