The 132 Movement in Mexico: How Students Changed the Presidential Election

This paper examines how a political performance becomes an effervescent social space that feeds the formation of binary discourses in electoral confrontation, and how this opens doors to political change. It is intended to establish the force of an event within the hierarchy and political structure; how the influence of political performance can reach a broader social scale. It analyzes the university student movements called 131 and YoSoy132. They were structured from the performance of the presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party during a campaign meeting with students. Different political and media actors defined their position regarding the movements, sometimes classifying them as democratic, and in other cases as political gimmicks to benefit a political party. This allowed the formation of a binary narrative or discursive field ranging between integration and exclusion of movements during the electoral scene. In this sense, the paper shows how political performance may give rise to the creation of icons and referents for social change.