In May 2012, just weeks before the recent presidential elections in Mexico, a group of students at the Universidad Iberoamericana challenged the presidential candidate for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Enrique Peña Nieto, during his campaign stop at the university. 1 Peremptorily dismissed as being mob infiltrators hired by Peña Nieto’s political opponents, 131 Ibero students posted a video on YouTube displaying their university IDs and reiterating their outrage at the PRI’s persistent autocratic spurning of everyday citizens. 2 The video sparked a spontaneous new grassroots political movement,“# YoSoy132”(“I am 132,” following up on the original 131 students) that rejected the PRI’s authoritarian neoliberalist platform and, in particular, its long history of collusion with powerful news media corporations. 3 In the following weeks, hundreds of thousands of# YoSoy132 protestors repeatedly took to the streets across the country, to demand the democratization of the news media and the liberalization of the political system in Mexico.

# YoSoy132 has regularly been compared to Mexico’s 1968 student movement which, as many have argued,“undermined forever the foundations of authoritarianism in Mexico.” 4 Like their 1968 counterparts,# YoSoy132 has mounted a powerful anti-systemic call for a renewed politics “from below” to counteract the longstanding autocratic cronyism and corruption of the nation’s political leadership. Yet the comparison of# YoSoy132 with 1968 raises profound questions concerning the development of the public sphere in Mexico and its ability to foment a functional democracy. Whereas# YoSoy132 has been tolerated-slash-ignored by the PRI, its 1968 predecessor prompted violent government attacks ending in tragedy. 5 On October 2nd, just ten days before the opening of the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, a large student demonstration had gathered in a plaza in the Tlatelolco neighborhood of the city, to demand a democratization of Mexico’s political system that would match the country’s rapid industrialization under the so-called “Mexican Miracle.” On orders from Interior Minister Luis Echeverría and President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, government troops opened fire on the rally, killing several hundred and wounding thousands more. 6 The PRI instituted an immediate information blackout, and mobilized its corporatized support networks towards a show of public condemnation of