REPRESENTATIONS OF BRAZIL’S STUDENT MOVEMENTS IN THE DAILY PRESS IN 1968. FROM CALABOUÇO TO THE SEVENTH DAY MASS

Abstract

The global phenomenon of the student movements carried out during the long year of ’68 had very particular characteristics in Brazil. Amongst other things, this sector of the university population - which had been embroiled in an intensifying process of politicization since the beginning of the decade, especially since the beginning of the military dictatorship (1964) - emerged as a social, cultural and political group at the very forefront of the resistance to the dictatorship, capable of ample mobilization, and of influencing the country’s general policies. This article investigates the social ideologies and the imagined communities painted by the daily press in Brazil about the student mobilizations carried out during the first trimester of 1968, focusing on the events in the Calabouço restaurant, the shockwave caused by them and the Seventh Day Mass. The objective is to analyze the discourse produced about these events in the public sphere, the students’ motivations and demands, the spaces, times and intensities of their actions, and the streams of public opinion generated by the press’s publication choices.

Keywords:
new social movements; university; students; 1968; public opinion