Defining the Space of Mexico’68: Heroic Masculinity in the Prison and “Women” in the Streets

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.1 We were struck by how different these men’sBoth authors shared equally in the research and writing of this piece, which—as anyone who has collaborated will tell you—is in some ways a lot more work than going it alone, but also certainly more rewarding. Partial funding came from the University of Chicago and the University of South Carolina. We thank Mary Kay Vaughan and the two HAHR readers for their extraordinarily provocative comments and suggestions. We benefited from John French’s invitation to present this work at Duke University’s Latin American Labor History seminar in April 2002, where we especially gained from comments by Susan Gauss, Jeffrey Gould, Mark Alan Healy, Daniel James, Jocelyn Olcott, and Myrna Ivonne Wallace Fuentes. We also thank the participants of the other seminars and conferences where we have presented portions of this work: the Five Colleges Mexican Studies Workshop (2002), especially Pamela Voekel, Kristin Pesola, and Velma García; the Seminario Nacional Movimientos Estudiantiles Mexicanos en el Siglo XX (UNAM, Mexico, D.F., 2001), especially Silvia Díaz Escoto; the 2001 LASA meetings, in particular, Ann Blum, Elizabeth Maier, Edward McCaughan, Barry Carr, and Eric Zolov; Eileen Boris, the commentator on at the 2001 History and the History We thank for for for research and John and for and research in by and in Mexico we from and of we thank for a of and the with we in Mexico their to their we have were from to by who in Mexican student We how these to of a In this we this by at the and and of the to the of Mexican on the have the of the the of leaders and participants these and of and the for in this leaders student were to Mexico’s to the in the a of who their and to on with of a student 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