Revolution, Counterculture, and the Class Question: Student Movements and the Working Class in the United States and Latin America

This paper explores the fractious relationship between youth-driven movements for social change and the working classes in the United States and Latin America during the 1960s and 1970s.  Using the Sandinista student movement in Nicaragua, the Mexican student movement of 1968, and student movements in the U.S. as case studies, it examines the role of leftist ideology, attendant models of political organizing, and class-based identities in shaping conflicts and cooperation between youth and working-class peoples during this period.  It analyzes the varied and often fruitless efforts of middle-class students to build working-class support for their attempts at social transformation, as well as the alternative role of youth culture in facilitating cooperation between youth of different classes.  The paper ultimately suggests that youth movements in this period faced significant obstacles to integrating working-class peoples due to the limitations of class identity and political ideology, although in some instances the global counterculture allowed for significant dialogue across class boundaries.