Revista de la Universidad de México: 1968, Collectivity as Editorial Stance

Abstract

In November 1968, the Revista de la Universidad de México (Magazine of the University of Mexico, RUM) published an issue that included an “Account of the Facts” regarding the student movement and its tragic end in Tlatelolco. In general, the magazine included outstanding literary figures from Mexico and the world. For this issue, however, a collective without ties to the literary canon was chosen to write the account. Thanks to Vicente Rojo’s design, Héctor García’s photographs and a collectively authored text (to which were added a narrative piece by Alfonso Reyes and an extract of a poem by Octavio Paz), the RUM generated a narrative that denounced the abuse of power, abandoned its literary elitism and granted to the collectivity a space that until then had been denied: the center. With this it demonstrated an editorial stance that confronted the power of the State. In this analysis, I perform a reading of the issue, relate it to other publications and draw on the social context of the era to understand the atypical nature of this document.

Keywords: literary studies, magazines, Revista de la Universidad de México, Mexican student movement of 1968, cultural studies