Uruguay, 1968: Student Activism from Global Counterculture to Molotov Cocktails

by Vania Markarian, Eric Zolov (Foreword by), Laura Pérez Carrara (Translator)

Overview

The tumultuous 1960s saw a generation of Latin American youth enter into political life in unprecedented numbers. Though some have argued that these young-radical movements were inspired by the culture and politics of social movements burgeoning in Europe and the United States, youth activism developed its own distinct form in Latin America. In this book, Vania Markarian explores how the Uruguayan student movement of 1968 shaped leftist politics in the country for decades to come. She considers how students invented their own new culture of radicalism to achieve revolutionary change in Uruguay and in Latin America as a whole. By exploring the intersection of activism, political violence, and youth culture, Uruguay, 1968 offers new insights about such subjects as the “New Left” and “Revolutionary Left” that are central to our historical understanding of the 1960s across the globe.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520290013
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	11/15/2016
Series:	Violence in Latin American History , #1
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Vania Markarian is Associate Professor at Universidad de la República in Montevideo, Uruguay, and is the author of Left in Transformation: Uruguayan Exiles and the Latin American Human Rights Networks, 1967–1984.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations

INTRODUCTION

1. MOBILIZATIONS
Students Take to the Streets
Coordinates of a Cycle of Protest
On Violence

2. DISCUSSIONS
The Unions and the Movement
The Lefts and the Students
Paths and Paradoxes of Revolutionary Action


3. CULTURAL EXPRESSIONS
Militant Mystiques
Youth Cultures
More Nuances

CONCLUSION. 1968 AND THE EMERGENCE OF A “NEW LEFT”

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Creatively researched, offers some intriguing interpretations that respond to the perspective of hindsight after collective trauma, and brings to the fore a group of young political actors who clearly were connected to the wider social landscape at that moment: the funeral of their first martyr, shot in the street, drew nearly two hundred thousand residents."

American Historical Review

"Markarian makes sense of the complex and often conflicted interaction of three phenomena: the youth’s rapid conversion to violent repertoires of political contention, their massive incorporation into leftist organizations, and their appropriation of cultural ideas and practices emanating from their contemporaries in Europe and the United States... a significant contribution."

International Sociology

"Uruguay, 1968 deftly brings to light the local experiences of a global revolt."

Contemporanea

"Significant... [the book] influences historians' understanding of student movements, youth mobilization and itsrelationship to the Left, and what motivates protests at politically precarious moments."

Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies