Student Activism, Latin American

Student activism describes students of all backgrounds and political perspectives and includes public and private school students from elementary to graduate school who do various kinds of (usually organized) work—marches, flyers, strikes, walk-outs, forums—aimed at making or resisting change. In general, actions of students are aimed either at changing current school and/or sociopolitical policies and practices or at resisting recent or proposed changes to school and/or sociopolitical policies and practices. Mixed societal reactions to student activism mediate its impact. Some student activism movements at least partially achieve their desired outcomes. Others result [Page 1348]in unintended effects, such as military and state repression of students and society. While movements vary widely in subject matter (cause), size, sustainability, and success, they often shape and are shaped by national and global events and forces (e.g., international conflicts, economic depression, changes in political regimes) that are salient at particular times and places.

To varying degrees, student activism in Latin America has shaped national and transnational politics and events. This has been true at least since 1810 to 1825, when university students and graduates participated in the Latin American Wars for Independence against Spain. Among many significant and studied movements of student activism in Latin America is the 1918 Córdoba reform movement that started in Argentina and swept across the region; the Mexican student movement of 1968; and the widespread student involvement during the era of Ernesto Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution, culminating in the late 1960s. While student activism in Latin America has been researched less since the 1970s, activism continues throughout the region. In Colombia, for example, student activists played a role in initiating the new constitution of 1991 by collecting signatures to bring constitutional reform to a national vote, called the “seventh ballot.”

Notably, the Córdoba reform movement, while seeking to reform parochial and stratified institutions of higher education founded by the Catholic Church during Spanish colonialism, helped establish some of the core principles of Latin American public universities and influenced subsequent student movements. The reform movement argued against imperialism, militarism, and privatization. It supported tuition-free, open-access, secular, democratic, national, and autonomous institutions, as well as faculty and student participation in institutional governance. Autonomy, as a concept associated with Latin American universities, has implications that may be unfamiliar, such as the restriction of military presence on university campuses.

These concerns for the most part have continued to dominate student activism in Latin America, especially in light of globalization and the privatization of public services that have been the subjects of increased concern at least since the late 20th century.

In many situations, these concerns play out in terms of the defense of (free) public education, (e)quality of education, and institutional autonomy. For example, in 1999, students opposing tuition increases at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) shut down this university of more than 250,000 students for about 9 months until military police reacquired the campus. The documented and/or dominate student activism in Latin American from the 1950s onward largely has been against forms of imperialism and privatization, also often reflecting leftist, socialist, and Marxist ideologies. However, students certainly hold a variety of political views and participate(d) in various movements, which might be considered conservative, liberal, revolutionary, religious, military, and so on. To varying degrees of popularity, significant issues for student activism in Latin America also include the educational and economic equality for traditionally underrepresented populations, such as indigenous peoples, women, and gays and lesbians, in addition to environmental issues and ecojustice.

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