Uruguay, 1968: Student activism from global counterculture to Molotov cocktails

Abstract

The tumultuous 1960s saw a generation of Latin American youth enter into political life in uprecedented numbers. Though some have argued that young radicals were inspired by the culture and politics of social movements burgeoning in Europe and the United States, youth activism came to assume its own distinct form in Latin America. In this book, Vania Markarian explores how the Uruguayan student movement of 1968 shaped the positions of leftist politics in the country for decades to come. She considers how students borrowed and invented their own new culture of radicalism to achive revolutionary change in Uruguary, and Latin America as a whole. By exploring the intersection of activism, political violence, and youth culture, Uruguay, 1968 offers new insights on categories such as the “New Left” and “revolutionary Left” that are central to our historical understanding of the 1960s across the globe.