Tanalís Padilla, Unintended Lessons of the Revolution: Student Teachers and Political Radicalism in Twentieth-Century Mexico (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2022), pp. 376, $28.95 pb.

Abstract

mountains, in the cities the university students fulfilled a prominent mission. They sought urban communities’ sympathy with the revolutionary process through the knowledge they had acquired in their professional training, which they adapted to fit the political context of their country. Rueda’s book transcends the student scenario. Her history resembles a carefully prepared theatrical staging, in which her actors progressively take the floor and position themselves in a leading role, despite walking on a stage of violence and political repression. This scene presents the student movement as a collective actor, in which women and men alike used their youth to oppose their dictators for four decades. Those interested in Students of Revolution will not just find the history of a single country. Instead, Rueda’s book also reflects the influence of the United States, thus offering a complete history of the Cold War− a history that does not focus on a generation of young people united in a revolution, but on a culture of youthful dissidence, inherited over four decades and which gave life to the last revolutionary process of the Cold War in a fervent territory like Central America.