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Héctor Manjarrez’s fictional worlds are populated by characters who are uncer-tain about their place in the Mexican Student Movement of 1968 both before and after the massacre at Tlatelolco on October 2. In contrast to the certainty that underscores the Mexican state’s paternalistic prescriptions, exclusions, and violence in the mid-twentieth century, this essay analyzes how Manjarrez de-ploys uncertainty in order to restore the potential for a democratizing politics. Through an analysis of París desaparece (2014), Pasaban en silencio nuestros dioses (1987), as well as the short story, “Johnny,” from Acto propiciatorio(1970), this essay explores Manjarrez’s attempt to construct secularized narra-tives of 1968 that resist defining the Tlatelolco massacre as a necessary sacrifice for future redemption. Building from that violent defeat, Manjarrez sheds the disillusionment of his generation and mobilizes literature to search for new political alternatives. Thus the literary becomes an important site from which to think and narrate a radically democratic politics for the left by making room for the contradictions and everyday indecisions of human beings whose uncertainty exceeds their dogmatic desires and programs
