Between Repression and Heroism: Young People's Politics in Mexico City After 1968 DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillmen
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Between Repression and Heroism: Young People’s Politics in Mexico City After 1968 DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Nicholas Jon Crane Graduate Program in Geography The Ohio State University 2014 Dissertation Committee: Mathew Coleman, Advisor Stephanie Smith Mary Thomas Copyrighted by Nicholas Jon Crane 2014 Abstract During the last four decades, diverse spokespeople for a post-1968 student left in Mexico City have developed an organized memory of 1968. Their commemorative reactivations of the year represent the state’s repression of the 1968 student movement on October 2, 1968 – in the shorthand, ‘Tlatelolco’ – as the point of departure for an antagonism that continues to run through young people’s politics today. This dissertation draws from eight rounds of ethnographic and historical fieldwork, and an engagement with theories of space, politics, and aesthetics (of Doreen Massey, Jacques Rancière, Michel Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari), to examine how and to what effect these spokespeople for Mexico City’s post-1968 student left have used Tlatelolco to mobilize for political engagement as well as how young people might practice politics otherwise. Analysis suggests that, in response to a first erasure immediately after Tlatelolco through which governing elites sought to cover up the massacre and downplayed their responsibility, activists and affiliated cultural producers (visual artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, and so on) have established and continue to maintain a second erasure that reduces the multiplicity of politics in the late 1960s to a predictable, enduring antagonism between a force of repression embodied by the PRI and a heroic student movement that resists repression in the name of a self-sacrificing movement family. I show that young people act into a repression-heroism political framework erected around this antagonism, ii and that by performing politics within the limits of that framework, they produce student movement space in which young people – even if not enrolled in school – will tactically identify as student activists in order to gain access to politics. Analysis suggests that student-left rituals of anti-state protest contribute to socially reproducing a ‘police state’ of fixed social categories through which post-1968 young people’s politics is channeled. I show that the repression frequently invoked to characterize the adversary of Mexico City’s student left is secondary to shared rituals of protest and representation that make that repression possible. Upon first specifying the disparate procedures through which the contours of the properly political are naturalized, I theorize activist and aesthetic practices of vinculación that squeeze between the terms of the post-Tlatelolco repression-heroism framework and create conditions for solidarities around always unfinished political identities, both for activists and also for space. The political-theoretical argument explores how to construct a ‘we’ without repetitively reactivating the past as a measure of what can be done in the future. Analysis of examples from contemporary art (Ximena Labra, Thomas Glassford), literature (Roberto Bolaño, Carlos Fuentes), and activism (Artistas Aliados #YoSoy132) suggest potential for restoring post-1968 youth politics to a co-constitutive relationship with space, so it might be understood and practiced not in terms of a history rendered circular but as a singular effect of ongoing processes through which as yet unaccounted- for solidarities might be forged. iii Acknowledgments I would not have completed this dissertation without support and assistance from countless people, beginning with my family. My partner Zoe’s readiness to remind me of what I’m doing and willingness to support me through moments when I lacked faith in my abilities were essential. I would not have been capable of this without her presence in my life. My parents and sister, nieces, aunts, and their partners have also been essential to ensuring the wellbeing that allowed me to see this project through. Thank you all. Mathew Coleman deserves special thanks for his work as my advisor since 2009. Mat’s excitement about books and ideas, ability to tell me what I’m doing in words I may not otherwise have found, and generosity with insights into navigating academic life have been invaluable. As an advisor, Mat has also always been, for lack of a better term, real. I appreciate his willingness not to mince his words, as well as his patience as I sought to respond to challenging feedback. Thanks for everything, Mat. I am very grateful for your support. I have also benefited greatly from the comments, critique, and advice of my other committee members throughout my graduate studies in Geography at Ohio State. Thank you to Nancy Ettlinger, Becky Mansfield, Stephanie Smith, Mary Thomas, and Joel Wainwright. Thanks also to the following faculty members at Ohio State who I never had the pleasure of having on a committee, but who generously provided guidance over the iv years: Leo Coleman, Kevin Cox, and Kendra McSweeney. Beyond Ohio State, I want to extend thanks to several academics in the US, Mexico, Canada, and across the Atlantic, whose friendship and support shaped the project, notably Benjamin Arditi, Ishan Ashutosh, Veronica Crossa, Derek Gregory, Oliver Gabriel Hernández Lara, Guiomar Rovira, and Karen Till. Avoiding redundancy with previous acknowledgements, the following people also deserve special mention for their friendship, or for otherwise assisting me during my field research in central Mexico. Thank you to ‘Nacha’ Rodríguez Marquez, Víctor Bárcenas, Jonathan Hernández Cantú, Tonio Soto, Elena Poniatowska, the late John Ross, Fernando Ramírez López, Víctor Garcia Zapata, Juan Luis Ramírez Torres, Annabel Castro, Julio and Tercerunquinto, Tochtli of Tochtli Producciones, Miguel and Sandra at Okupa Ché, Alberto del Castillo Troncoso, Mina Navarro, Chato, Nadia, and the punks of Colonia del Carmen in Xochimilco, Daniel Hernández, Thomas Glassford, David Cilia Olmos, René Rivas Ontiveros, Raúl Alvarez Garín, Tobi of Biblioteca Social Reconstruir, Beatriz Argelia González, Iracema Gavilán, Lorena Botello, Adrián López Robinson, Tiburcio on Balderas, Citlalli Hernández, Mariana Rivera, Ximena Labra, Hugo Florez, and Bety, Arturo and Gabi Cadena, with their parents Beatriz and Ismael. Thank you all. I could not have completed this work without your generosity. During the writing stage, accountability and a schedule were essential. Between 2012 and 2013, participants in a graduate student writing group in the Department of Geography at Ohio State provided the necessary accountability as I wrote a prospectus and the first chapters of this dissertation. In 2014, their friendship and empathy were v essential as I completed the dissertation and navigated the job market. Thanks especially to James Baginski, Christine Biermann, Chris Hartmann, Jeff La Frenierre, Justine Law, and Zoe Pearson. Several students in the Department of History at Ohio State also provided substantial feedback on this work through Stephanie Smith’s Latin Americanist writing seminar in 2013 and 2014. Thanks especially to the returning participants in those seminars, Dani Anthony, Alex Castillo, Reyna Esquivel-King, and Hideaki Kami. Zoe Pearson, again, was a key source of support and accountability while we lived in Bolivia for the second half of 2013. Thanks also to Brian Michael Murphy for being available for regular conversations about life beyond the dissertation in 2013-2014. Finally, I could not have done this research without financial support from the following institutions: the Tinker Foundation (and the Center for Latin American Studies at Ohio State), the Department of Geography at Ohio State, the Mershon Center for International Security Studies, the Office of International Affairs at Ohio State, the Latin America Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers (AAG), and the Political Geography Specialty Group of the AAG. Thank you. vi Vita June 2001 .......................................................Columbus Academy 2006 ...............................................................B.A. Comparative Studies, The Ohio State University 2008................................................................M.A. Geography, The Ohio State University 2009 to present ..............................................Graduate Associate, Department of Geography, The Ohio State University Publications Crane, N. J. and W. Kusek. (2014). Embracing Dissensus: Reflections on Contemporary Research Strategies in Cultural Geography. Journal of Cultural Geography, DOI: 10.1080/08873631.2014.906857. Crane, N. J. and I. Ashutosh. (2013). A Movement Returning Home? Occupy Wall Street After the Evictions. Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies, 13(3), 168-172. Crane, N. J. (2013). Review of Edward McCaughan’s Art and social movements: Cultural politics in Mexico and Aztlán. e-misférica, 10(1). Crane, N. J. (2012). Are ‘Other Spaces’ Necessary? Associative Power at the Dumpster. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 11(3), 352-372. Crane, N. J. (2011). Review of John Ross’ El Monstruo: Dread and Redemption in Mexico City. Human Geography, 4(2), 133-135. vii Crane, N. J. and Z. Pearson. (2011). Can we get a pub from this? Reflections on competition and the pressure to publish while in graduate school. The Geographical