Did 1968 – a major moment of political and cultural revolt when young people across the globe rallied under the banner of “international solidarity” to challenge the Cold War consensus as well as the authorities of governments, institutions, and ways of thought – spell the end of nationalism?1 The symbolic shorthand “1968,” perhaps more than any other event of the twentieth century, quickly became synonymous with the triumph of internationalism. “National frontiers mean less than generational frontiers nowadays,” the London Times noted with astonishment in May 1968.2 Since then, the notion that the international trumped the national in this era has only become more firmly established in assessments of 1968.

This chapter reconstructs rumors and demonstrations in 1968 around the death of Gholamreza Takhti, Iran's beloved gold-winning wrestling champion, recentering them in the history of the 1979 revolution and the global 1960s. The account of the demonstrations provided here explains a mobilization tactic used to great effect in the lead up to the 1979 Iranian Revolution: the staging of protests on the fortieth day of mourning. Locating this tactic in 1968, at a moment of global protest, and before ideological disputes between leftists and Islamists congealed in Iran, casts a spotlight on the indeterminate quality of the revolution as a lived event. The authors argue that discussions of “global 1968,” and approaches to global history more broadly construed, must account both for the local specificity and the global echoes signaled by events like the Takhti demonstrations.

This paper aims to recover the history of the Congress of Latin American Women held in Santiago de Chile in November 1959, using it as a snapshot to illuminate the various political currents within the Cuban delegation. At a time of rapid polarization and shifting alliances, the ideal of transnational, Latin American solidarity appealed to women activists from both Cuba’s “Old,” Marxist Left and the “New,” insurgent Left, despite their many differences. This common ground helped establish elements of cooperation between some women of the 26th of July Movement and women affiliated with the pre-revolutionary Communist Party. Although the well-known Federation of Cuban Women was established as a result of the alliances developed through participation in the Congress, these transnational, “Latin Americanist” origins of the FMC have largely been forgotten.