demanded the dismissal of the new Law facultad dean and secretary, both recent Ubico appointments. This was an aggressive, but not unprecedented, challenge to Ubico’s authority. After all, students in the facultades of Medicine and Pharmacy had made similar demands earlier in the year. But this letter went one step further and proposed two suitable replacements. The letter effectively asserted that the students, not Ubico or his hand-selected faculty, should choose administrators. The letter circulated and the meeting continued.
Then, just as the announcement of the results of the AED elections began, two students proposed a general strike. A roar of excitement filled the room. “Of the passive students of the previous fourteen years, there remained not a whit,” remembered Galich.40 The AED leadership resumed the meeting and announced the election results: escuilach Mario Méndez Montenegro was elected AED president, Hector Zachrisson as vice president, Manuel Galich and Carlos González Landford as secretaries, and Oscar de León Aragón as treasurer. After a round of applause for the newly elected leaders, the crowd again erupted with a motion to strike. Galich remembered, “A ‘hurrah!’ sprang from more than two hundred young but virile throats, and applause rang out through our ‘first minute of the liberation.’”41 They planned a meeting for the following day to give the whole university an opportunity to consider the strike declaration and the AED student leaders time to work out the details. For many decades, San Carlistas would define themselves and their social class through a contentious relationship between the student body, the university, and the state. These early assemblies were the first shouts—hardly whispers—of the struggles to come.
The next day, an even larger group gathered. It was one of the first times in decades that large numbers of students of medicine, law, economics, and engineering had gathered as a group. Representatives from the various facultades took the dais and expressed their support for the strike. The group also voted to unconditionally support the capital city schoolteachers’ strike against Ubico’s education minister. The alliance was practical, as many students like Galich and Ávila Ayala taught at capital city secondary schools while finishing their degrees at university.42 Galich remembers that he and Ávila Ayala left the meeting together and walked from downtown to their homes in the southern neighborhood of Campo Marte in Zone 5, about a three-kilometer walk. They discussed the rising protest as they walked. Anticipating that Ubico would seek retribution, they decided to write two documents: a public declaration of unity between schoolteachers and universitarios and a clear statement of the ideology of the group, an Ideario. The declaration of unity would protect both groups and improve the students’ reputation. The Ideario would clearly articulate the group’s ideals, in case Ubico judged them to be seditious.
First, the Ideario affirmed that administrators and teachers should not be bureaucratic appointments, but rather selected for their academic background and commitment to the university. Second, it argued for the removal of administrators who did not conform to this standard. Third, it prioritized the development of scientific and technical knowledge at the university. It also called for the foundation of a Faculty of Humanities and a research institute on indigenous history and language. It acknowledged students’ desire to participate in policy making at the university. Finally, it called for the government to work closely with students to improve the international reputation of the university through scientific and cultural publications and by reinstating the foreign exchange program. The demands sought to recover the National University’s historic prestige and reorient its activities toward national improvement. Inspired by classical liberalism with a rights-bearing student at the vanguard, the Ideario closed with a declaration that the students’ only interest was the “creation of the ideal university.”43 In sum, it articulated professionalism, study, and encounters with state bodies and institutions as the first expression of student nationalism, which would become the most enduring feature of Guatemala’s middle class.44
Galich’s memoir recounts a remarkable meeting that was held the following morning. Galich, Mario Méndez Montenegro, and Zachrisson were summoned to Ubico’s chambers. His personal secretary, Ernesto Rivas, received the young men and began the meeting with an offer: Ubico would dismiss his recent Law School dean and secretary appointments if they promised to call off the strike. Galich remembered that the young men responded, “We could comply with this agreement, but we cannot speak to whether our colleagues would approve a decision that is personally ours” and Méndez Montenegro confirmed, “In no way can we decide something for the entire University.”45 The students’ collective-minded response may have been surprising to Rivas, who was accustomed to Ubico’s autocratic style. Negotiations continued, though the young students did not budge. At one point, the telephone rang. It was Ubico. After he hung up, Rivas offered even further concessions to the students. In fact as the morning wore on, he offered concessions to all of the students’ demands: the replacement of the recent appointments, the formation of a Faculty of Humanities, and even Ávila Ayala’s reinstatement at the INCV. At the nearby Paraninfo, students, professors, and teachers waited for news from the meeting. Five hours later, Galich, Méndez Montenegro, and Zachrisson left the National Palace for lunch.46
The three men, all in their early 30s, had been invested with tremendous authority as liaisons between the emergent student movement and the dictator. Now, they had to decide whether to present the assembled crowd with the Ideario, the president’s concessions, or both. Galich remembered that they met with friends at the cafeteria of the judicial office buildings to discuss the situation. They ordered lunch from Miss Chaíto, a woman Galich remembered as the “guardian angel of the students who worked at the courts in those years,” who served the students “not only with efficiency, but also with affection.”47 While fighting for a more just future, Galich and his peers relied upon the manual labor of others, especially the affective labor of women in service positions. We cannot precisely know Miss Chaíto’s motives, but we do know that women whose histories have not become iconic also opposed Ubico. Perhaps Miss Chaíto’s labor was a political act in itself—providing support for the overthrow of Ubico—rather than the act of personal affection that Galich recounted.
Over beef stew, avocado, tortillas, coffee, and bread, the young men argued. Galich advocated for a more restrained approach. He was concerned that the embryonic movement might be unable to sustain a struggle against the dictator. Further, if Ubico had agreed to their demands, why should they continue to fight? Méndez Montenegro disagreed. As long as Ubico remained in power and the university was not autonomous, their demands remained unfulfilled. The movement could only gain momentum. Finally, he lost patience and, according to Galich’s memoir, “stood up and leaned across the table, pointing his finger at me, saying in a decisive tone: ‘If you back out now, escuilach, I am going to punch you!’” Galich, it seems, found new resolve. They would not accept Ubico’s concessions. The young men returned to the National Palace. In Galich’s words, “impulse triumphed over caution; intuition overcame reason.”48
The three students returned to the Paraninfo, which by that time overflowed with “students, teachers, people of all social classes, of all professions, of all of the neighborhoods of the city, who came to witness a accomplishment without precedent in Jorge Ubico’s Guatemala.”49 Applause and cheers erupted as Galich reported how Ubico acceded to all of the group’s demands. Another student stood to read the Ideario. Cries of “Viva!” filled the room and it was unanimously approved. Celso Cerezo Dardón suggested a general strike. Others urged the group to wait and see whether the president would issue a formal response to the Ideario. The meeting dissolved into muddled debates and disagreements. Then, in Galich’s cinematic retelling, a young student, barely out of secondary school, stepped forward and yelled, “If you don’t declare the strike, I will declare my own strike!”50
The strike was on. Over the next few hours, representatives from each facultad made speeches and listed demands. Students in laboratory sciences demanded better equipment, other facultades demanded technical schools for workers and a School of Pedagogy.51 That their demands hardly differed from those pursued by students
