For a long time, the Mexican government had been pushing the Mexican people into a unified structure, one where the youth of Mexico did not rebel and the entire population worked together to recreate Mexico as a First World power. This forced and false unity inspired the Mexican counterculture. The youth of Mexico saw other countries protesting their own false unification, and craved the individuality that those protestors had found. This challenge to authority manifested in the rock and roll music and clothing in the everyday lives of Mexico's adolescents. And just as the students in other countries peacefully protested conservative governments, the students of Mexico begin to challenge authority in Mexico too. Gilberto Guevara Niebla, a student leader, stated in an interview: "The Student Movement had many dimensions. On one hand, it was a student movement; on the other, it was not. The Student movement was the bearer of demands that were not only strictly student concerns but those of the society. Before 1968, the authoritarian state had brutally beaten workers, also campesinos, and it had destroyed the leftist opposition parties. It was in this vacuum, that students injected their demands, aspirations, and desires that were not exclusively of student interest, but also of interest to campesinos, workers, intellectuals, political parts, etc.".