Bulletin of Latin American Research, 2016 DOI:10.1111/blar.

12473

#YoSoy132 and the Mexican Spring

of 2012: Between Electoral
Engagement and Democratisation
PATRICK GUN CUNINGHAME
Universidad Autnoma Metropolitana, Mexico City

This article examines the origins, trajectory and limitations of the Mexi-
can students movement, #YoSoy132 (YS132, I Am [number] 132), that
emerged during the 2012 presidential election campaign in opposition to
the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI, Institutional Revolution-
ary Party) candidate, Enrique Pea. The movements electoral engagement
led to internal crisis, and demobilisation following the PRIs return to
power. After its creation at a private university, the movement became the
first nationwide student movement since 1968. It will be argued that the
internal tension between democratisation and electoral inclination and
engagement did not allow the movement to develop autonomously from
the party system nor to organise around its own political agenda.

Keywords: #YoSoy132, democratisation, electoral engagement, Mexican

Spring, students movement.

The #YoSoy132 movement raised a broad range of educational, political and social
demands based on democratisation and voiced them through local, regional, national
and international mobilisations. The movement (top ten Twitter trending topic in
mid-May 2012) organised itself similarly to the Indignados and Occupy social move-
ment networks: through horizontal directly democratic assemblies, without a formal
leadership structure. In the course of the protests, it became more deeply engaged
in the presidential and national elections and was erroneously identified by the mass
media with the 2012 candidacy of Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador (popularly known
as AMLO) of the centre-left coalition, despite its claims to be neutral and non-party.
As press scrutiny grew, the movement tended to withdraw into itself and its Asamblea
General Interuniversitaria (AGI, Interuniversity General Assembly) became closed to
outside observers and participants, so limiting its democratic and political potential.
After the presidential elections on 1 July 2012, the movement went into crisis and
decline, divided by the effects of state repression and affected by the demoralisation that
afflicted the left once the federal electoral tribunal found against any claims of electoral
fraud in September 2012. This article aims to analyse the causes and consequences of
the movements sudden rise, its democratisation demands to the media and other areas
of public life, its switch to a strategy of more open electoral engagement, its subsequent
post-electoral decline and more recent revival as part of the Ayotzinapa movement
since October 2014. It will do this by engaging in the theoretical debates of Mexican

2016 The Author. Bulletin of Latin American Research 2016 Society for Latin American Studies.
Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK
and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. 1
 Patrick Gun Cuninghame

and Latin American sociologies of social movements and contentious politics about
this and previous Mexican social movements, particularly the Asamblea Popular de
los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO, Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca) and the
Frente Popular por la Defensa de la Tierra (FPDT, Popular Front for the Defence of
the Land), based in Atenco, State of Mexico. Finally, the article will argue that YS132,
despite its spectacular rise and its highly creative and democratic forms of organisation,
mobilisation and communication, was unable to maintain its initial momentum and
fell into a time-honoured cycle of internal cleavage (radical direct action versus a more
moderate electoral inclination and its reformist demands), collective withdrawal and
demoralisation in the face of press criticism, state infiltration and political repression.
In so doing, it changed its nature from being primarily a student movement to being
a broader citizens movement, including university and high school students, lecturers,
teachers, researchers, young people and other members of civil society. I argue that
electoral engagement, following Alonso (2013), was a trap for the movement as its
novelty, autonomy and force depended on its rupture with all political parties and the
political class overall. However, through a combination of political skulduggery by the
parties and naivet by the movement, it was drawn into an increasing focus on the
elections to the exclusion of other more important medium and long-term issues it had
already identified through its assemblies and manifesto. The article concludes that this
change in social composition allowed it to prepare itself to create alliances with more
recent and more radical movements of opposition to the Pact for Mexico coalition
governments 20132014 and its programme of neoliberal reforms. Similarly, I argue
that this change allowed the movement to denounce the severe crises in human rights
and governance since the massacres of Tlatlaya, Iguala, Apatzingan, Tanhuato and
Narvarte in 2014 and 2015, which security and/or paramilitary forces are alleged to
have perpetrated (Castellanos, 2015).
Methodologically, the article is based on qualitative research methods, particularly
participant observation, in-depth interviews and documentary analysis. It is theoreti-
cally informed by the debates among sociologists, some of whom participated in the
#YoSoy132academic@s, a spinoff of the YS132 movement formed mainly by faculty
members and researchers appointed in Mexican universities. The YS132 was both
remarkably innovative in terms of its social composition, artistic and linguistic cre-
ativity and use of social media technology, while at the same time showing continuity
with Mexicos series of students movements since 1968. The principal line of division
in the debate has been whether YS132 was more of an aesthetic and emotional social
phenomenon, interested more in projecting a new political style and feeling in contrast
with the more serious aesthetic of previous students movements. This perspective also
claims that YS132 was more interested in changing the terms of the political debate,
particularly over Mexicos urgent need for a non-partisan and accountable mass media
as a guarantor for a more genuine and deep-rooted transition to democracy than
what has taken place since 2000, than changing the highly unequal nature of Mexican
society (Fernndez Poncela, 2013; Galindo Cceres and Gonzlez-Acosta, 2013; Salazar
Villava and Cabrera Amador, 2013; Fernndez Poncela et al., 2014). Pineda (2012)
and Cadena-Roa and Serrano Campos (2013) have emphasised the social and political
divisions within the movement. Pineda identified some seven ideological tendencies,
some diametrically opposed to each other, such as the progressive liberalism of the
private university students and the socialist, autonomist and libertarian orientation of
most of the state university students. These tendencies simultaneously energised and
fractured the movement, while making it a broadly representative if ambiguous instance
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 YS132 and the Mexican Spring of 2012

of the political desires of Mexican youth tired of political corruption, dishonesty and
inertia. This more political analysis links back to previous works, such as Rhoads
and Mina (2001), on the Consejo General de Huelga (CGH, Strike General Council)
of the Universidad Nacional Auonoma de Mxico (UNAM, National Autonomous
University of Mexico) student strike and occupation in 19992000, the last significant
students movement. Acosta (2012) has emphasised and criticised the utopian, and
by implication, unrealistic and ingenuous nature of its practices and demands, while
Sosa Plata (2012), Candn Mena (2013) and Rovira Sancho (2013) focus on its use of
social media and its demand for the democratisation of the media. By contrast, Alonso
(2013) has criticised YS132s electoral inclination and engagement, a stance I share
along with Pinedas more politically sensitive analysis. Thus, the theoretical framework
informing this article is more socio-political than socio-cultural and seeks to explain
the movements political actions on the basis of its social composition and ideological
standpoints.

The Origins of #YoSoy132

YS132 was similar to both the Indignados and Occupy movements in its program-
matic focus on processes of democratisation, its use of social media as its principal
organisational and communicational tool, and its deployment of civil disobedience as
its form of collective action. Occupy acknowledged these similarities by expressing soli-
darity with YS132, which it over-optimistically dubbed the Mexican Spring, implying
it was about to overthrow an authoritarian political regime in the same way the Arab
Spring movements had in 2011 (Marshall, 2012). In common with the social move-
ments of the 20062013 global mobilisation cycle (Ortiz et al., 2013) all three developed
horizontal, leaderless, organisational structures, with the general assembly as the main
decision-making body, producing a complexly negotiated set of demands for both gov-
ernment and society (Marshall, 2012).
The anti-Pea/PRI riots in Mexico City on 1 December 2012, an event later known
as #1Dmx, marked the end of #YoSoy132s first and most expansive stage as a move-
ment. It was a far cry from the Mexican Spring of MayJune 2012, when Enrique
Pea Nieto (EPN)s smoothly run election machine was nearly derailed after he made
the mistake of publically defending his brutal repression of the Atenco anti-airport move-
ment in May 2006 as Governor of the State of Mexico at one of Mexicos most elite,
but progressive, private universities, so triggering the YS132 movement. Mexicos first
nationwide student movement was created within weeks, as a network of local assem-
blies in hundreds of private and public universities, high schools and even some primary
schools, coordinated through an interactive social network-style website which, how-
ever, later transpired to have been the work of a PRI activist and Centro de Investigacin
y Seguridad Nacional (Centre of Investigation and National Security [Mexican secret ser-
vice]) agent (Proceso, 2012a). This internet-based organisational model soon allowed
thousands of Mexican students studying abroad to organise themselves into 52 local
assemblies and upset EPNs triumphalist post-electoral European tour in August (Pro-
ceso, 2012b).
However, the movement was influenced by the post-electoral malaise which affected
the Mexican left and sharply declined in numbers and activity after the #1Dmx distur-
bances and repression, having failed in its objectives to achieve free, fair and informed
elections or to democratise the mass media, particularly the Televisa and Tele Azteca
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 Patrick Gun Cuninghame

duopoly, accused of creating a cross-party telebancada (telecaucus) of compliant politi-

cians who have faithfully defended the interests of Televisa in particular, and benefited
from the 2014 Telecommunications Reform Act. This was despite the Acts stated aim to
create a new national TV channel to end monopolistic practices in TV and radio broad-
casting and mobile phone telephony, dominated by another monopoly, Telcel, under the
control of Carlos Slim, one of the wealthiest men in the world (Snchez Garca, 2014).
YS132 can be categorised as an anomalous students movement, similar to the Onda
Anomala Italian movement of 20082010 against the Bologna Process and the privatisa-
tion of higher education, as it started in the private universities among upper-middle class
students, before spreading to the politically more radical and socially more lower-middle
class/working class state universities (Cuninghame, 2008, 2012). YS132 began on 11
May in an elite Jesuit private university, the Universidad Iberoamericana, one of the
more progressive, which unusually has an independent trade union the Sindicato de
Trabajadores de la Universidad Iberoamericana. Until then it seemed that EPN was going
to win the elections easily, given his vastly superior (if not entirely legal) financial, polit-
ical and publicity resources and despite various scandals as the Governor of the State
of Mexico (20052011), the most populous of Mexicos 32 federal states and the most
violent (Navarrete, 2012). Expecting to be well received by the social elite, he received a
nasty shock when hundreds of students barracked him with chants and banners saying:
Remember Atenco!, Murderer! and Out!. Despite bussing in hundreds of PRI sup-
porters to pose as students and prevent hostile questioning, the operation only succeeded
in further incensing the Iberoamericano students who subjected EPN to a barrage of
hostile questions and chanting on Atenco, the high rate of femicides in the State of Mex-
ico during his governorship and other scandals, finally forcing him and his entourage
to retreat to a toilet before hastily withdrawing (interview, Caldern, 2012; Cervantes,
2012). TV broadcasters and the PRI leadership hypocritically accused the Iberoamer-
icano students of being bussed-in AMLO supporters. The response was prompt: 131
students uploaded videos of themselves on YouTube with their student cards to prove
their identities, each one saying I am student one, I am student two, etc. Student num-
ber 132 symbolically is everyone else who supports their cause, so giving the movement
its name. Initially called Somos Ms de 131 (we are more than 131), the Iberoameri-
cana students still use the name for their local assembly. The movements first action
took place on 14 May, with a march by private university students on Televisa the main
broadcaster, to demand an end to their smear campaign (Pineda, 2012).
The next step was to connect with the students of the public universities and with the
rest of civil society and public opinion. On 23 May, YS132 had its first mass demonstra-
tion in the centre of Mexico City. It had taken off as a social movement-network and
from then on there were daily public meetings and assemblies in all the main public and
private universities in Mexico City, with frequent flashmob demonstrations, particularly
against the PRI and Televisa. All the meetings, which spread throughout the country in
a few weeks, were completely open to anybody (not just students) to attend, and were
usually held in open public spaces. Marches and gatherings were rigorously peaceful
and not only was graffiti forbidden but many marchers carried brooms to sweep the
untidy streets in an attempt to attract more moderate and even conservative middle-class
students and youth, who had never attended a march before (Rovira Sancho, 2013).
The movements main demand, in the spirit of the events of 11 May and the dec-
laration by the 131 Iberoamericana students, was the democratisation of the media
(Candn Mena, 2013). Opposition to the privatisation and neoliberalisation of public
and higher education, the main thrust of the Chilean and Quebec students movements
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 YS132 and the Mexican Spring of 2012

of the same year, was mentioned in their manifesto but never mobilised around, being
seen more as a local issue where traditional radical students movements could better
intervene (We Are 132, 2012). While EPNs Pact for Mexico government a coalition
of five political parties, including the centre-left Partido Revolucionario Democrtico
(PRD, Democratic Revolutionary Party) introduced a telecommunications reform
in 2013, one of whose aims was supposed to be the creation of an autonomous
cross-party media monitoring organisation, similar to the role of the National Elec-
toral Institute in electoral politics, the political class appears unable and unwilling to
promote such a democratic reform of the media. Thus it seems that a reform of the
media will have to be pushed from below by civil society, as YS132 correctly analysed
(Rovira Sancho, 2013).
The high point of YS132 in terms of massified directly democratic discussion and
decision-making was the movements first AGI on 30 May in UNAM, the second largest
university in the Americas, which was attended by approximately 10,000 students and
youth from all the main public and private universities and high schools in and around
Mexico City in an impressive example of leaderless, horizontal, direct democracy. Hun-
dreds of proposals were generated, including one for free, public, secular, high quality
education for all from children to postgraduate, with the state to increase expenditure
to 810 percent of GDP (at the moment it is less than 1 percent), among many other
demands, most of which were eventually incorporated into the movements manifesto
(We Are 132, 2012).
The assembly divided itself into fourteen discussion tables, each one tasked with pro-
ducing a set of demands through open, democratic discussion. The best attended was
the table on the overall political position of the movement, while the two other largest
tables were dedicated to media reform and electoral politics, each attended by over
1000 people, making open-air discussion and decision-making highly problematic (Gun
Cuninghame, participant observation, 2012). Nonetheless, discussion summaries and
demands were presented by each table for approval by the reconvened general assem-
bly. Thus the movement had a complex and full agenda of agreed demands, practices
and self-regulations with which to meet the challenge of becoming overnight one of
the largest social movements in Mexican history. However, as Pineda (2012) states, this
foundational event marked a sharp move in the direction of anti-neoliberalism, to the
dismay of many of the progressive liberals from the private universities who feared the
growing influence of the distrusted, but politically more experienced and radical UNAM
students collectives and committees.
The proposals were then discussed at each university and high school involved in
the movement, and a second AGI took place on 5 June which ratified the proposals
amended and approved at local level. Thus the movement started to build links with
other more autonomous, localist, movements, like that of the Huichol First Nation,
against the destruction of their UN World Heritage-protected religious site at Wirikuta
by Canadian opencast mining company First Majestic, and of Cheran, an autonomous
Purepecha first nation community in the state of Michoacan, fighting to protect their
ancestral forests from narco-controlled illegal logging (Boni, Garibay and McCall,
2014; Del Conde, 2015). However, the autonomist, anarchist and anti-capitalist lefts,
based mainly in the state universities, remained diffident towards the movement. This
was probably due to its upper middle-class origins, radical but reformist demands,
ultra-polite demonstration tactics (its marches did not disrupt traffic, and swear words
were not used in slogans and placards out of respect for ordinary citizens), and the ways
it drew press attention away from the less fashionable but more deep-seated protest
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 Patrick Gun Cuninghame

movements of workers, peasants, migrants, the unemployed, First Nations and of the
poor (interviews with UAM-Xochimilco students, 2012; Nain, 2012).
Nevertheless, the movement gave voice to those who were horrified at the prospect
of the return to power of the authoritarian PRI, and were determined to prevent that
from happening by any non-violent means necessary This was the largest ideological
tendency in YS132, and described by Pineda (2012) as politically inexperienced indig-
nados. Wherever EPN made a public appearance during the rest of the election cam-
paign, YS132 organised protests. Some of the demonstrations outside Mexico City were
attacked by PRI members, contradicting its claim to have abandoned the violently repres-
sive methods of its past. Despite YS132s internal contradictions and lines of social,
political and ideological cleavage, the movement seemed set to grow still further, hav-
ing wrong-footed those who described the present generation of students and youth as
apathetic, consumerist, conservative conformists (Howe and Strauss, 2008).
Shortly after the first AGI, YS132 issued its manifesto, in which the electorally
inclined and institutional nature of the origins and demands of the movement were
made clear:
Firstly we are a nonpartisan movement made up of citizens. As such we
do not express signs of support for any candidate or political party, but
we respect the plurality and diversity of the members of this movement.
Our desires and demands focus on the defence of freedom of expression
and the right to have access to information; with the understanding that
both of these are essential to form a conscientious and participatory citi-
zenry. Therefore, we promote an informed and reasoned vote. We believe
that in the current political circumstances, abstaining from or not voting are
ineffective actions to advance the construction of our democracy. We are a
movement concerned for the democratisation of the country; as such, we
think that a necessary condition to achieve this is through the democratisa-
tion of the media. This concern stems from the current state of the national
press and from the centralisation of the media in the hands of the few. Sec-
ondly YoSoy132 is an inclusive movement that does not represent only
one university. Its representation depends only on the people who join this
cause, which is articulated through the university committees. In essence,
our movement seeks the democratisation of the media in order to ensure
transparent, plural, and minimal standards of objectivity to promote aware-
ness and critical thinking. This is why we demand:
Real competition in the media sector, particularly with regard to
the media duopoly of Televisa and TV Azteca.
All media (radio, television, and print) incorporate instruments
to safeguard the public interest.
The various schools of communication publically bid for their
public channels licence.
Access to internet to be a constitutional right, under the terms
established in the first article of the Mexican Constitution.
There be spaces for debate between youth, academics, and the
media about the above demands.
[Respect for] the safety of the members of this movement, who
express themselves freely throughout the country and for those
journalists who have been struck by violence.
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 YS132 and the Mexican Spring of 2012

Furthermore, we express absolute solidarity with the people who

in recent days have been suppressed in different states of the
republic for expressing their ideas. Our immediate demand is for
a national televised broadcasting of the debate of the candidates
for the presidency of the republic. This is not an imposition on a
privileged audience, but rather it is a way to guarantee the right to
choose to see it or not, for those who today do not even have that
possibility. To the university students and youth of Mexico: this
movement calls on you to organise, to join us and make these
your own demands and to express them, especially using your
creativity, through culture! (We Are 132, 2012)

The manifesto made clear the overwhelming preoccupation of the first generation of stu-
dents in Mexican history to have been acculturated since childhood through the medium
of the new technologies with the issues of the democratisation and freedom. They
recognised the democratisation of Mexican society as an issue going far beyond the
organisation of free, fair and informed elections. The movement also showed its more
moderate stance on the question of real democracy, compared to its Spanish cousin,
The Indignados/15M, who at that time refused to participate in elections or vote until
their change of tactics in 2014 with the establishment of the radical left political party
Podemos, representing a marked break with its previous horizontal and anti-institutional
orientations. However, YS132s declaration in favour of electoral participation, includ-
ing the voluntary protection of ballot boxes and voting stations from theft and other
forms of electoral fraud and the democratisation of the media, immediately attracted
criticisms from both within and outside the movement:

Is not the protection of the polls on July 2 evidence that this movement
wants to legitimate the democracy of the political parties in Mexico? Do
the youth of #YoSoy132 limit their concept of democracy only to voting
and legitimating party structures in this country? Does it come down to
voting for the least worse of the candidates, and what is the least worst?
Do the young citizens that make up the #YoSoy132 movement really have
no notion of their organisational capabilities, or are they so limited as to
having to be reflected in one of the four political parties running for the
presidency? Do we no longer have historical memory or consciousness?
(Nain, 2012)

Almost every university, including some previously considered to be bastions of politi-

cal conservatism and economic neoliberalism like the Instituto Tecnolgico Autnomo
de Mxico (ITAM), and the Centro de Investigacin y Docencia Econmicas (CIDE),
affiliated to YS132. At the UAM-Xochimilco (UAM-X), a left-leaning state university
in Mexico City where Subcomandante Marcos was an Arts and Design Lecturer before
going underground in 1983, about 100 students attended the first YS132 meeting on 25
May. About half were student activists and half were students without previous polit-
ical experience or interest. Most of the UAM-X students come from working class or
lower-middle class backgrounds, and many were initially diffident towards the idea of
the YS132 as the representative movement of all Mexican students and youth (Gun
Cuninghame, participant observation, 2012).
A group of lecturers, some of whom took part in the students movements of 1968,
1986 or 1999, set up #YoSoy132academic@s and held a demonstration in June against
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 Patrick Gun Cuninghame

the perceived pro-EPN anti-AMLO bias of the supposedly autonomous and neutral regu-
latory body the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE). On June 10, the day of a second televised
presidential debate that IFE decided not to broadcast on all channels nationally despite
the demands of the movement, there was a major demonstration by YS132 in the central
square of Mexico City.
The two rightist parties, the majoritarian PRI and the governing Partido de Accin
Nacional (PAN, National Action Party) counter-attacked, using FinFinder software to
identify, harass and arrest the key activists, as well as with more traditional methods,
such as infiltration, according to the political hacktivist group Anonymous. The result
of was the creation of a dissenting group, Generacin MX (GMX), which on 11 June
announced their split, claiming that YS132 was not electorally neutral as it had claimed
in its Declaration of General Principles, but favoured AMLO. Mocking the origins of
YS132, GMX uploaded a video entitled I am no longer 132, but declaring its objectives
to be identical, i.e. democratisation of the media, political reform, environmental pro-
tection, and greater attention by politicians to the plight of Mexican youth. On 12 June,
Rodrigo Ocampo, spokesperson of GMX, gave a press conference in which he reiterated
that YS132 had been captured by the PRD and other leftist parties. He denied being a
member of the PRI or that he was an employee of COPARMEX, the Mexican employers
association, claiming that his involvement was only in my free time (Proceso, 2012a).

The Limits of Electoral Engagement

Initially, YS132 had kept its distance from AMLOs electoral campaign, claiming to be
neutral and interested above all that the vote was fair, free and informed by an unbi-
ased, democratic media. Unfortunately, the movement never managed to define clearly
what it meant, since no country has an entirely free or democratic media, as they
are mostly privately owned and therefore serve private interests rather than the general
interest, while public broadcasters such as the BBC are likely to be dominated by the
political agenda and values of the government of the day. Sections of YS132 placed their
somewhat liberal faith in the ability of competition among broadcasters to produce a
free and fair press, although such a claim is contested in countries where such compe-
tition exists. However YS132 did declare how and why it wished to democratise the
media and why this was its first and most important aim (#YoSoy132, 2012).
As the presidential campaign wore on and media vilification and state repression
increased, the movement lost its initial openness, making its weekly AGI closed to all but
locally elected delegates, thus reverting to indirect, parliamentary-style democracy and
beginning the split with the more libertarian anti-capitalist left of the movement. It has
to be underlined that the movement faced a huge administrative and logistical challenge
in organising and co-ordinating itself simultaneously locally, regionally, nationally and
internationally in a democratic, decentralised manner, to prevent the traditional domi-
nance of the centre over the margins in Mexican political culture. The movement was
unable to resolve this tension in such a brief period and under increasing surveillance,
infiltration and repression.
Part of the blame for this tendency to become less democratic while settling for a more
electorally inclined agenda must be placed at the door of AMLO and the PRD, which did
not respect the movements apolitical nature and attempted to intervene internally for
its electoral benefit, fearing the same radicalisation as had happened in 19992000 with
the CGH movement, which had caused the PRD considerable problems in the run-up
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 YS132 and the Mexican Spring of 2012

to the transitional 2000 elections (Rhoads and Mina, 2001). Despite YS132s claim to
be scrupulously above party politics, which was core to its initially broad attraction to
urban youth disillusioned with electoral politics, confusion arose over the nature of the
relationship between the movement and the PRD with the organisation of a fund-raising
rock concert by activists later discovered to be linked to the PRD. This damaged its claim
to be non-party and permitted the PRI and CISEN to create splits within the movement
(Proceso, 2012a; Revolucin 3.0, 2013). The pro-PRD activists within the movement
began to push it towards a more openly pro-AMLO stance, as could be seen at the
third (online) presidential debate, this time organised by YS132 and not by IFE, with
the presence of three of the four candidates, EPN being the obvious absentee. In this
debate, AMLO failed to follow the highly technical format of the discussion, apparently
presuming that he already had the support of the movement, but appearing out of touch
with the younger generation and its cyber-politics. It was no surprise that he lost the
election on 1 July by a much greater margin than in 2006, and was unable to mobilise
the same public outrage against an alleged electoral fraud, this time based on vote-buying
among poorer voters by the PRI.
YS132 claimed to be non-party and was more a reformist than a radical social
movement, especially during its peak period in MayJune 2012. The majority did not
accept the left wing of the movements demand at the first AGI for marches and a general
strike on 2 July, whoever won, and many of whom openly expressed anti-trade union
and anti-strike positions. In any case, the movement took no immediate action against
the apparent electoral fraud until September when the National Convention against the
Imposition was formed, but neither did AMLO, the PRD or any other left-wing party.
AMLO had seemed to have benefitted electorally from the movement and support for
EPN was falling in the final days of the campaign, according to opinion polls. While
the movement was clearly anti-PRI and anti-EPN in particular, this also caused internal
unease as many wanted to express their rejection of all the candidates, of IFE and of the
whole electoral process, which they considered fraudulent, biased and anti-democratic
from the outset.

The Development of #YoSoy132 after the 1 July Elections

The AGI initially was held weekly in different universities in Mexico City. After the 1
July elections it assembled less frequently but more often in state capitals, following
protests against the centralisation of the movement. However, the AGI were unable to
recapture the democratic spirit and enthusiasm of 30 May and the movement gradually
diminished through the rest of 2012 and 2013, when YS132 existed mainly outside
Mexico City and abroad and became a youth-citizens rather than a students movement
(Quintana Guerrero, 2013). The movement revived itself in late 2012 through its alliance
with the FPDT and, ironically, the Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas (SME, Mexican
Electricians Trade Union), together forming the National Convention, a name taken
from the Mexican Revolution which was also used by the EZLN for one of its first
meetings with organised civil society in 1994. The aim was to create a new coordinating
body to carry forward the post-electoral struggle against the returning PRI authoritarian
regime. However, the speed of the neoliberal counter-reforms of 2013 took everyone by
surprise, and only the EZLN and the Co-ordinadora Nacional de los Trabajadores de
la Educacin (CNTE, National Coordinator of Educational Workers), have managed

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 Patrick Gun Cuninghame

to sustain and even increase their resistance against the counter-reforms and increased
repression of the new government.

#YoSoy132 and the Opposition to the Neoliberal Counter-Reforms

of the Pact for Mexico Government
Regarding the present social and political composition of YS132, it has evolved from
being student-led and student-based to a youth-citizens movement, although now much
smaller than in 2012. There is a YS132 academics branch, mainly of younger, precarious,
part-time and hourly paid staff, and ordinary citizens of all ages have participated. How-
ever, the general political situation returned to the stagnation and resignation of pre-May
2012 until the equally dramatic rise and fall of the much more radically anti-systemic
Ayotzinapa movement in which YS132 and student activists played a prominent role.
This development occurred in late 2014early 2015, following the Iguala massacre (26
September), in which 43 trainee teachers of the historically far left Ral Isidrio Burgos
Rural Teacher Training College in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero went missing, possibly mur-
dered, in an incident that involved narcos and local public authorities. YS132 ceased
to exist in the UAM-X and UNAM during 2013, and is now much more identified
with the private universities where it originated and with overseas graduate students.
In the case of the UAM-X, the historical but much smaller student committees have
returned to the fore, but were unable to prevent the imposition of a new rector at the
end of 2013 or to mobilise a mass demonstration or direct action to protest against
it, as they had done in 2011 in a similar case of imposition from above. On the wider
political stage, historical political actors such as the SME, but above all the CNTE,
have formed the backbone of the widespread opposition to the wave of eleven neolib-
eral counter-reforms on work, basic education, telecommunications, tax reform, and
the privatisation of the Pemex oil company introduced by EPNs Pact for Mexico gov-
ernment in 20132014. Also the EZLN finally broke its long period of relative silence
in early 2013, announcing the establishment of an Escuelita (Little School) in the Zap-
atista communities of Chiapas, to help reactivate civil society and the Other Campaign,
now renamed the Sixth. The EZLN have mentioned YS132 favourably in their commu-
niqus and YS132 have referred to the EZLN as one of their main influences. However,
YS132 has formally defined itself as a pacific movement since February 2013 after a
period of internal division over the use of violence at the #1Dmx demonstrations, which
resulted in the exit of the contundentes (supporters of violent direct action) (Silva and
Solares, 2013). The proposals for the reform of the media and telecommunications, ini-
tially presented in June 2013, promised the possibility of finally opening up the duopoly
to some competition from other national (but not international, understandably given
the global dominance of Sky and CNN) broadcasters that might lead to improvement
in standards and variety of provision in telenova-ridden Mexico. There was even some
initial support for expanding local community radio, which is particularly important
for First Nations and has been one of the few media outlets for the radical left and
its related social movements. However, the secondary reform laws under discussion in
20142015 have shown a hardening of support by the Pact for Mexico government
for the duopoly and against the attempts of the currently out of favour Carlos Slim, to
break into the TV and cable markets and expand his Latin American telecommunications
empire.

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 YS132 and the Mexican Spring of 2012

#YoSoy132 and Other Students and Social Movements

Perhaps the main difference in terms of political culture between YS132 and previ-
ous student movements in Mexico, particularly in 1968 and 1986, but even of the
more autonomist and anarchist 19992000 UNAM movement, has been its refusal
of centralised leadership. This marks a sharp break with national Mexican and
regional Latin American radical left political culture which has been until very recently
leadership-oriented. The Che Guevara, Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez personality cults
demonstrate the historical importance of charismatic leadership for the Latin American
left (Fallaw, 2006). Many orthodox Marxist Mexican intellectuals and academics, some
of whom still describe themselves as ex-leaders of the 1968 students movement, have
struggled to understand YS132 and its refusal of centralised leadership and vertical
organisation, along with that of the Indignados and Occupy, and a few have dismissed
them all as petit bourgeois utopians unable to accept the harsh realities of political
power (Acosta, 2012).
Because of the upper-middle class social origins of YS132, most of the radical left was
initially dubious. When the YS132 spread to the more politicised public universities, it
radicalised. And the closer it got to the 1 July elections and the greater the repression
became, the movement began to shrink. However, at no point was it as radical, either in
its demands or its practices, as the Ultras (extremists) of the 19992000 CGH student
occupation movement. This shut down Mexicos most important public university and
prevented the introduction of even minimal fee hikes, which has had a lasting effect
in slowing down the neoliberalisation of the Mexican state universities, although this
varies and some provincial state universities charge as much as private universities (Daz
Escoto, 2007).
The failure of the PAN governments of 20002012 to consolidate the transition to
democracy and the rule of law, going beyond mere electoral alternance and governabil-
ity, has led to the accumulation of considerable frustration and disappointment among
ordinary citizens. Frustration included the political class, the mainstream mass media,
the various left parties, but also independent trade unions and some social movements
which have failed to innovate effective strategies of resistance to neoliberalism. The PRD,
the main party of the centre left, faces outright moral decadence and electoral collapse,
given its role in the Iguala massacre and disappearances. This generalised indignation,
which seems to have reached even the most privileged social classes, has been exacer-
bated to an extreme by the brutal conduct of the counter-productive war against drugs
since 2007. Both drug consumption within Mexico and drug trafficking from Mexico
to the US have increased since that year, while the death toll has reached 125,000 dead
and some 27,000 missing, including tens of thousands of Central and South American
undocumented migrants, many now being discovered dead in hundreds of clandestine
mass graves, having been kidnapped and enslaved by narcos, a million displaced and
severe damage to the social fabric that will take decades to heal (De Cordoba, 2009;
Schaeffer-Duffy, 2014).
After the mobilisation cycle of collective action against neoliberal education policies
in 19982000, student movements have adopted a more defensive posture. Recently,
there have been movements that unite students from different state universities, such as
the Metropolitan Student Committee (CEM) and the Movement of Candidates Excluded
from Higher Education (MAES) that press the government to increase substantially the
number of places in a higher education system that currently allows only three out of
ten of those who apply to gain a place at a state university (Albertani, 2012).
2016 The Author. Bulletin of Latin American Research 2016 Society for Latin American Studies
Bulletin of Latin American Research 11
 Patrick Gun Cuninghame

Paradoxically and very differently from student movements elsewhere in the Americas
and Europe, YS132 has given much less emphasis to the neoliberalisation of the enter-
prise university and much more to the questions of media democratisation and electoral
reform, due to its apparently strong internal social and political divisions, between stu-
dents from the working and lower-middle classes at state universities and those with
middle and upper-middle class backgrounds at private universities. However, according
to the theory of cognitive capitalism (Hardt and Negri, 2009), these previously opposed
social groups are all becoming part of a precarious deprofessionalised cognitariat due
to the levelling-down effects of the new information and communication technologies;
therefore, their political union, if only temporary in the case of YS132, is a sign of a
more profound social and political shift. This would have begun in the central capitalist
economies around 2000 and now affects the working and middle classes of the emer-
gent Latin American countries, forming a multitude that is increasingly socially and
geographically mobile, politically amorphous, prone to swings both to the extreme left
and right, and economically integrated into the circuits of global cognitive capitalism
(Negri and Cocco, 2006). While YS132 declared its opposition to the neoliberalisation
of public universities and pressed for much wider access to higher education as part
of its manifesto, it did not launch a national campaign of action on these demands,
preferring to coordinate with other social movements against the imposition of EPN,
claiming that the presidential elections of 1 July 2012 were as plagued by irregularities
as those of 2006. The Pact for Mexico government has so far not followed the Bologna
Process model of the United States and the European Union for the neoliberalisation
of higher education. But a reform of higher education in line with its other neoliberal
counter-reforms is expected before the end of EPNs presidency in 2018.

Conclusions
YS132 has undoubtedly been the most important student movement in Mexico since
the 19992000 CGH movement. That the movement was unable to consolidate on
such promising beginnings in May 2012 and instead had to contend with increasing
government repression, media vilification, internal divisions and attempts by the PRD
to co-opt and convert it into its electoral youth wing, have clearly outlined the size of the
task facing any student and youth-based social movement which aims to change Mexico
democratically, non-violently and from below.

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Interviews
Caldern, Eligio (2012) Professor of Sociology, Universidad Autnoma Metropoli-
tana Xochimilco since 1974, 15 June 2012, Mexico City.
Gun Cuninghame, P. (2012) First Inter-university General Assembly, 30 May, UNAM,
Mexico City.

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