Mixtec Youth in Oaxaca: Indigenous Rebels of the Global 1960s

This paper examines the engagement with and contributions to the political radicalism of the Global 1960s on the part of an indigenous youth movement in Oaxaca, Mexico. In recent years, the literature on the Global 1960s has expanded in compelling directions; examining the political cleavages between the new and old lefts, changes in cultural consumption, and the differential experiences of youth and generational conflicts. Scholars have added depth to a literature once dominated by participant memoirs. In the case of the United States, a focus on the activist experience of communities of color such as African Americans, Native Americans, Chicanos, and Puerto Ricans has strengthened the discussion. Yet in Latin America, the analytical frame has scarcely move beyond urban centers. This contributes to a broader conundrum within the literature in which two narratives about the 1960s run parallel but seemingly do not cross. One narrative emphasizes global anti-colonialism, associated with events in Africa and Asia and the throwing off of European colonial structures. The other narrative focuses on national (sometimes nationalist) student struggles, in countries such as Mexico or Brazil. This paper uses the experience of youthful Mixtec militants in southern Mexico to help bridge the divide. Their participation does not fit with the “othered”, mystical image of natives posited by segments of the counterculture.  Nor did they advocate revolutionary violence as did urban and rural guerrilla groups in Mexico.  Rather they struggled for their professionalization as teachers in order to assist their communities materially.     To do so, they engaged with the era’s anti-colonial politics, introduced to them by radical young Mexico City anthropologists.