The students are fighting for a more open democracy. The government's calls for large voter turnouts and other democratic forms seem like sheer hypocrisy to the students, since only one party ever wins. In their view, labor and peasant organizations which were originally meant to serve the workers by adding unified weight to their demands serve only the government in its efforts to control the country.

In many ways the growth of students protest over the past five years is a sign that Mexico is growing up. After the brutal Mexican Revolution, national leaders were faced with unifying a country in which local war lords jealously ruled their domains. Leaders began to reconstruct the country around new organizations and unions is order to replace the influence of army factions with stable government. They did their job so well that Mexican presidents after World War II held unchallengable authority. Slowly in the middle sixties, however, young members of the middle class, who had grown up in a peaceful society, tired of a system which in the interests of stability left them little decision-making power. They wanted to pick their own leaders and run their own organizations. Foreseeing major disturbances unless the government opened its closed doors. Carlos Madrazo, the president of PRI in 1964, began to democratize the party by initiating primary elections. He was fired by President Diaz Ordaz who ruled over a Mexico increasingly torn by student strife. Finally in 1968 thousands of protestors challenged the very basis of his presidential power.

Despite the spontaneity of the 1968 movement, the student leaders showed a great awareness of the government's methods of handling protestors and a great dexterity in avoiding the government's advances. The students formed the National Strike Committee to best resist attempts to subjugate them. Sometimes, however, their fear of the government led them to make decisions which actually weakened their organization. Afraid to name a few top leaders who might then be bought off by the government, the students sat through hours of indecisive discussion without direction.

Believing labor too controlled and the peasantry too uninformed, the students played a public relations game aimed at wooing the middle class. Students demanded reform not revolution. Three demonstrations of between 250,000 and 500,000 people were conducted without violence. The government, on the other hand, began to use harsher and harsher methods. President Ordez was pressured by the approaching Olympics for which the government had spent millions. As time passed the students became less pliable. Finally on "La Noche Triste" tanks put an end to what negotiations could not solve.

Now, after three years, a new president rule Mexico and professes the need for rapid political change. The 1968 movement was seen by many as a critical changing point for the better in Mexican politics. Student leaders recently released from prison are not so sure. They admit that President Echeverria has fought hard to remove all traces of the rightist regime of Diaz Ordaz. But they suspect his intentions, which may be only to solidify his own position rather than to reform the government.

Some of the student leaders meet every week in a small cafe next to the school of political science in UNAM. They try to reach agreement on how to organize the students, how to raise money, and what to do once students and money are available. At the end of one such meeting a student turned to Romeo Gonzalez, one of the most radical of the 1968 student leaders, and asked him his prediction for the future. "Nothing has changed and nothing will change," Gonzalez said. "When the Mexican sees this the government will need the tanks again--but it won't be for a long time.