Abstract
This chapter focuses on Luis González de Alba’s Los días y los años (1971), written entirely behind the walls of Lecumberri, following the student massacre in Tlatelolco. In it, González de Alba narrates his life behind bars. He describes in detail the continuation of the student movement in prison. He also gives an account of the events leading to the student massacre from an insider’s perspective. This work acts as a history of a movement that will be discarded by the dominant discourse. As such, it acts as a preserved history, one that fills the void left by the official PRI discourse and acts as a metahistory of the PRI’s articulation of the nation as it bears witness to the mechanisms that were responsible for the unarticulation of Tlatelolco in the PRI’s construction of nation in the decades following 1968.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
While the debate will undoubtedly continue, it seems clear that it will never be satisfactorily decided in a manner that appeases all sides. Still, the debate does bring to light the fluidity of the genre itself and the manner in which, not only this particular work, but testimonios in general challenge preconceived notions of the division between literature and history, and between fact and fiction. But regardless of the more stylized or literary language found in parts of the work, the narrative remains true to a single goal: to narrate the events leading up to and following the Tlatelolco massacre through a singular yet representative experience.
- 2.
For a complete explanation of these strategies, see Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (1973).
- 3.
El apando was turned into a film directed by Felipe Cazals in 1975.
- 4.
Not surprisingly, FBI, CIA, and NSA documents all had different conclusions concerning the possible influence of foreign agencies in the 1968 student movement that Raúl Jardón well documents in El espionaje contra el movimiento estudiantil. (The Espionage Against the Student Movement 2003)
- 5.
I am referring here to the interrogations in which only the damning portions of the students’ confessions are recorded. These will be dealt with later in this study.
- 6.
The Batallón Olimpia was a secret military unit that infiltrated the Student movement during the Tlatelolco demonstration. According to numerous accounts, when a circling helicopter dropped flares over the demonstrators, men wearing a white glove on one hand attacked from within the demonstration at the same time that government troops opened fire. The Halcones were a paramilitary police force that was most visible during a repression of protesters in 1971.
- 7.
This is not surprising since there are never political prisoners, as far as ruling regimes are concerned. Mexico has never admitted to having had political prisoners during or after the 1968 student movement.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Rojo, J.J. (2016). Testimonio as Metahistory in González de Alba’s Los días y los años . In: Revisiting the Mexican Student Movement of 1968. Literatures of the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55611-0_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55611-0_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-55987-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-55611-0
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)