Leticia Neria PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText ...

Thus they decided to fight against the government underground, using different kinds of
pressure and a variety of aggressive methods. 103
Belligerent groups were in urban areas as well as in the countryside. They
organised themselves as guerrillas, 104 from a variety of backgrounds and training,
although they were mostly left wing with communist tendencies. Their members were
predominantly middle class young people with a high school or university education. 105
In 1959, in the southern state of Guerrero, the Asociación Cívica Guerrerense (ACG)
appeared, a group organised by students and professionals which supported the rural
population and fought against the local government. 106 Genaro Vázquez became its
leader. One of its most important achievements was to push the national Congress to
unseat the state government and to designate a provisional governor. 107 After being
arrested in 1966 and escaping in 1968, Genaro hid in the mountains and organised his
armed movement, Asociación Cívica Nacional Revolucionaria (ACNR). 108
By 1967, in Atoyac de Álvarez, also in Guerrero, the school teacher Lucio
Cabañas had gained popularity among the population for giving advice and supporting
parents of school children, as well as oppressed peasants. He participated in various
civil movements. Although he began peacefully, on 18 May 1967, when the Federal
Police opened fire against the population during a demonstration, Lucio decided to
103 Since the 1960s, a variety of guerrilla movements emerged not only in Mexico but in other Latin
American countries, including Guatemala, Colombia, Uruguay, Argentina. It was not simply a Mexican
phenomenon, and this influenced the decisions taken by the different governments. See Judith Larson, ‘La
guerrilla en América Latina ¿terrorismo o guerra popular?, Papers: revista de sociología, 7 (1977), 91-
112. [accessed 23 December 2011]
104 Before the late 1960s, the most recent and influential insurgent armed group in Mexico had been the
peasant movement in the state of Morelos, led by Rubén Jaramillo, which started in 1943 and which was
violently persecuted for almost twenty years. The group was finally stifled when Jaramillo was killed in
his house with his wife and three children in 1962. Jaramillo’s movement is fully described in Laura
Castellanos, México armado 1943-1981 (México: Ediciones Era, 2007), pp. 23-62. See also Elena
Poniatowska, Fuerte es el silencio (Mexico: Era, 1980; repr. 2006), p. 41.
105 Castellanos. México Armado… p. 180.
106 Ibid., p. 104.
107 Ibid., p. 110.
108 Ibid., p. 116.
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