ABSTRACT
Can the Mexican student movement of 1968 offer any guidance to those who are now looking critically at their society, either in Latin American or in U.S. campuses? Journals, newspapers, pamphlets, and books published in Mexico between 1968 and 2000 reveal that successive generations of Mexicans have learned various lessons from the student movement, reinterpreting it in accordance to their specific needs at a given moment. A revision of the last thirty years of public debate shows how actors and ways of talking of these events have changed over time, slowly reaching beyond the narrow circles of former leaders and activists to center the attention of wider sectors of the citizenry. If anything, this revision indicates that, as long as there are social actors willing to root their aspirations for social and political change in history, the achievements and effects of the student movement will remain open to further interpretation.
