University students have long played an important role in latin american politics. Preceding by several decades the first signs of youthful protest in the United States, student activism in Latin America has been persistent and often decisive. For example, student groups were instrumental in the overthrow of regimes in Cuba (1933, 1959), Guatemala (1944), Venezuela (1958), and Bolivia (1964). At one time or another, virtually every governing strongman in the region has had to contend with varying opposition from student groups. Indeed, as Robert Alexander has noted, “in the past four decades they have constituted one of the most important pressure groups in twenty republics.”