ABSTRACTThis article analyzes a 1969 education reform in Mexico that resulted in the closure of 14 of the then 29 escuelas normales rurales (rural teacher-training colleges) and the annihilation of their internal student organizing structures. I argue that the reform was politically motivated and impelled by the anxieties produced by student politics in the Cold War era. I show also how the Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP) participated in the authoritarian surveillance of students during the presidency of Díaz Ordaz and in a long campaign to delegitimize the Federación de Estudiantes Campesinos Socialistas de México (FECSM), the federation that united the students from these schools.
