Contesting the state from the Ivory Tower: student power, Dirty War, and the urban guerrilla experience in Mexico, 1965-1982.

Abstract

This is a study of the rise of urban guerrilla movements in the context of the Mexican Dirty War. It narrates how students used the political and social conditions of their country, state-sponsored violence, as well as the turbulent ambiance in the universities as the justification for embracing the armed struggle. It argues that while historical narratives on urban guerrilla movements in Mexico and Latin America have largely focused on the armed struggle aspect of each movement and followed a generalized view that revolutionaries were adventurist, lacked a political consciousness, and were agents of an international conspiracy, this dissertation proposed a different approach. By looking at the context in which these students-turned-revolutionaries formed their armed struggle against the Mexican government, how they broaden their notion of class struggle to include students, and re-thought their positionality, makes Mexico a unique study to understanding militancy in the 1970s. This project argues that students urban guerrillas were convinced the the armed struggle was the only available option left to change the government, but also stressed they were engaging in an intellectual war against the state in which they had to become the dominate voice in the universities, a space they considered produced adherents of the state, before a revolution could be carried out.