Talking Back to’ 68: Gendered Narratives, Participatory Spaces, and Political Cultures

Abstract

In 2001, we attended a Mexico City conference on twentieth-century student activism, featuring four prominent leaders from the 1968 movement.¹ Student movements, they claimed, were central to Mexico’s push toward democracy, a centrality linked to the university as a particular kind of civic space and bringing together those who are—in their words—“informed,” “intelligent,” and trained to make decisions based on “reason”—all traits commonly associated with middle-class masculinity. We listened, struck by how different these men’s narratives were from the stories told to us by women participating in the movement, which we would present later at the same conference.