ABSTRACT
One aspect of the 1987 movement that set it apart from the 1983 mobilization was that it involved more and larger public demonstrations. The campaign to deny boycott organizers the use of state-controlled spaces and infrastructures was in effect a rejection of the presumption that these individuals and organizations were simply generic citizens, anonymous constituents of the ''general public'' and as such entitled to use public facilities. Many local officials, judges and police forces were not satisfied merely to assert control over spaces and public infrastructure in order to smother the boycott movement as a public phenomenon. The focus on women pointed out that state-related use of public space was not entirely safe even in the absence of a deliberate violent campaign against the census. Bombings targeted official centers of calculation and thus the centrally organized system of territorial control, and attacks on enumerators challenged the right of citizens to traverse public space as gatherers of knowledge for the state.
