ABSTRACT
In 1992 Brazil witnessed a massive wave of student demonstrations, the like of which it had not seen since the 1964 protests against the military. Except for sporadic minor attacks aimed at tuition hikes or the military regime, Brazil's student political scene had been relatively uneventful after the overwhelmingly brutal police suppression of students in the late 1960s, which included mass arrests, imprisonments, and torture. Following the fall of Brazil's dictatorship in 1985, radical students tried to revive the once intense interest in political activism on the country's campuses, but the students of the 1980s were not receptive; individual concerns and careerism held the day. All that changed in the summer of 1992, however, as Brazil's newspapers revealed the extent and depth of government corruption tainting President Fernando Collor de Mello and his colleagues.
