In late August 1968, students in Mexico City organized a 400,000-person march through the city’s busiest thoroughfares. They occupied the Zócalo and raised the red-and-black flag—the international symbol of proletarian militancy and solidarity officially adopted by Mexican labor unions in the 1930s. Days later, after state forces attacked and dislodged the students, a scene took place that microcosmically illustrates an issue that is central to Redeeming the Revolution: Federal District workers lowered the “seditious” and “communist” flag while heckled as “acarreados” and “sheep” by a small group of remaining protestors (29). Positing the subsequent massacre of students in Tlatelolco on October 2 as crucial in shaping state-organized labor relations after 1968, Lenti argues that unions allied with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (pri) crucially helped the ruling party both to survive a severe political crisis and to refurbish its revolutionary credentials. Focusing on the 1970s—in particular,...

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