XVII Congress of the Brazilian Studies Association

“The Grave Responsibility of Brazilian University Students”: Reform, Development, Democracy, and the Transformation of Brazilian Student Activism, 1956-1964

• In Event: Revisiting the Brazilian Civil-Military Dictatorship I

Abstract

In 1957, university students from around Brazil gathered in Rio de Janeiro to tackle a topic new to them – the question of educational reform in Brazil. While students had been active in politics since the 19th century, the National Seminar of Higher Education Reform in 1957 marked a first. Having focused on national politics in previous decades, students were increasingly turning to their own experiences in university and, dismayed by what they saw, advocating for university reform and for a greater role for students in defining both development and democratic society in Brazil. Analyzing student meetings, seminars, congresses, and strikes, this paper argues that the period of 1956-1964 was a transformational moment in Brazilian student politics in ways that would come to define student struggles throughout the military dictatorship of 1964-1985 and beyond. With the arrival of progressive student leadership in the União Nacional dos Estudantes in 1956, Brazilian university students increasingly took up the cause of university reform, a demand that reflected their own interests, and connected it to national issues of development and the democratization of society. In the process, I argue, these students transformed student movement politics in Brazil, laying the groundwork for discourses, issues, and forms of mobilization that would facilitate student resistance to military rule throughout the 1960s-1980s and that would continue to shape student mobilization well into the 21st century.

Author

• Colin Snider, University of Texas at Tyler