A militant and maverick of Mexico’s left since the 1930s, novelist José Revueltas was also an active participant in the 1968 Mexican student movement, for which he was arrested. He was released under Echeverria’s amnesty in 1971 and died in 1976 in Mexico City at the age of 62. Ediciones Era of Mexico City has been publishing his complete works, including many previously unpublished essays, compiled and annotated by Andrea Revueltas (José’s daughter) and Philippe Cheron. Mexico 68: Juventud y revolución, the fifteenth volume, is a collection of essays, letters, and diary entries, divided into three sections: an analysis of the student movement (writings prior to his arrest on November 16, 1968); a lengthy discussion of the theory and practice of “autogestión” (self-learning) and how it was reflected during the student movement; and writings from Lecumberri Prison (1968-1971).
The thrust of the pre-arrest material is that the student movement takes up the banner of the Mexican proletariat which had been smashed dining the 1959 railroad strike. A la Cohn-Bendit, Revueltas legitimizes the petty-bourgeois student movement, which had bypassed the traditional, bureaucratic Stalinist parties (PCM and PPS) and smaller dogmatic sects of Mexico and which had taken up the offensive against PRI hegemony after a decade of severe repression. Revueltas’ thesis is that, in an atmosphere of such repression, and given a defeated working class which had lost its independence and was without a revolutionary leadership, the university, taking advantage of its autonomy, became the center, focus and even refuge for critical resistance. This critical resistance is discussed in the most developed section of this collection: Autogestión. For Revueltas, autogestión transforms institutes of higher education into self-critical parts of society and broadens the social base of protest.
The severe repression unleashed by the Mexican state against the movement in the last months of 1968 forced thousands, including Revueltas, into underground activities. Revueltas was arrested on November 16, 1968, and imprisoned without trial or sentencing. The writings from prison (1968-1971) stress the resolve of the political prisoners to continue their struggle, Revueltas’ analysis of the post-Tlatelolco massacre, his speech during his mock trial (two years after his arrest), letters protesting attacks on political prisoners to the international community, and careful, even masterful, polemics against the government’s claim that “in Mexico, there are no political prisoners.”