«Imagined Communities»: Student and Revolutionary Movements in the Headlines of Mass Media Newspapers and Magazines During the Brazilian Dictatorship

Abstract

Brazilian historiography emphasises student political practice as the main action of those students who were against the authoritarian and conservative regime. To explain the student movement through its political activity or subversion towards the established social patterns became commonplace when discussing the behaviour of much of 1960s youth. Even though such aspects are import, they take little account of other peculiarities of these students’ history. This article explores Anderson’s (2008) hypothesis on «imagined communities» – i.e. when people in a group establish synchronic identification through references given by daily communication – in this context. This highlights the emotional pandemic of the youth coalition of the 1960s, which spread to general political movements. From this perspective, the student movement is understood as an interaction among subjects of a similar age, mobilized by their identification with shared images, mainly on printed documents. This analysis reveals that in Brazil: 1) the students identified with the revolutionary youngsters in the magazines who would later become icons, such as Fidel Castro and Che Guevara; 2) The reports and «hearsay» of youth action, recorded in the articles and stimulated and amplified by street demonstrations, schematic readings, impromptu rallies, graffiti and slogans, etc. We discuss synchronicity as an aspect of this period of history that was associated with the sensory stimuli involved in demonstrations, as well as the creation of stereotypes and representations of youth.