The Organization and Struggle of University Students in Paraguay: Student Movement Demands for Socio-educational Rights

Abstract

Since the Stroessner dictatorship, the Paraguayan student movement has played a central role in the struggle for quality, accessible and universal higher education. Collective actions such as the “takeover” of the Catholic University of Asunción (UCA) campus, the “UNA No Te Calles” campaign and the struggle for “zero fees” in public universities have demonstrated a high level of politicization and the emergence of a movement organized around specific educational and democratic demands, which often go beyond the existing student institutions and traditional themes. In this chapter, we analyze the political mobilization led by young people, breaking with traditional forms of organization, highlighting the most innovative dimensions of these experiences. Our theoretical framework combines the structure of opportunities in their political context, their symbolic discursive framings as well as the resources mobilized by the members of the movements and their collective action repertoires. Our qualitative research methodology includes documentary review, a literature review and semi-structured interviews with members of the movement and its organizations privileging the voices of the actors involved and the reconstruction of the political context in which the Paraguayan student movement emerged and developed, which provides historical meaning to these collective experiences.