The Rise of Mexico's New Left in the Wake of the Cuban Revolution as Depicted in El Espectador

This paper examines the impact of the Cuban Revolution on the national and (leftist) political landscapes in Mexico. It argues that the student protest of 1956, together with the labor and student strikes of 1958, the Cuban Revolution, and the heightening of Cold War tensions, gave rise to a new culture of political violence and protest inside the nation’s most important universities (UNAM and the IPN), a culture that came to characterize the long sixties in Mexico. It illustrates the characteristics of Mexico’s New Left by focusing on a small yet important group of intellectuals who were influential inside UNAM and who decried the degeneration of the Mexican Revolution in their prime vehicle of expression, the magazine el espectador.