We explain what the tlatelolco killing of 1968 was and what were its consequences. In addition, its characteristics and commemoration.
What was Tlatelolco’s killing of 1968?
The Tlatelolco slaughter It was a massacre perpetrated by the Government of Mexico During the repression deployed against a group of thousands of protesters gathered in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, on October 2, 1968.
This tragedy occurred within the framework of a series of protests and manifestations called 1968 student movementwhich began in July of that year and were starring students of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the National Polytechnic Institute and other educational institutions.
To the protests, teaching, workers, professionals and intellectual sectors of Mexico City and other states were integrated. The movement demanded a greater democratization of Mexican political life and questioned the authoritarian government model and economic dependence on foreign capitals, especially American.
The killing was perpetrated by a paramilitary group baptized “Battalion Olimpia”together with the Mexican Army, the Secret Police and the Federal Security Directorate (DFS), and constituted a representative event of the claiming struggles in Latin America and the world that characterized the year 1968, as well as the repressive responses of the governments of the time.
Tlatelolco killing history of 1968
Background of the Tlatelolco Matanza
The Tlatelolco massacre occurred within the framework of a series of protests and mobilizations that Headed the students of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and other Mexican educational institutions since July 1968.
They had previously taken place in Mexico protests and Claims of students, workers and professionals that demanded labor and salary improvements.
One of the most important movements was A strike of doctors between 1964 and 1965which became very important and was finally repressed by the government of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, who had just assumed the presidency.
This mobilizations climate ran into the repression of the government of the Institutional Revolutionary Party that governed Mexico For decades, which in turn fed discontent.
For some urban, student and intellectual average sectors, the reason for the claim was not so much economic but political: against authoritarianism and repression, in favor of a democratization or of greater political participation.
The 1968 student movement
The Mexican student movement was organized in response to the events that took place in Mexico at the end of the 1960s. However, also It was inspired by other student and social mobilizations from countries like the United States (against the Vietnam War and favor of civil rights) and France (against the Government of Charles de Gaulle and the traditional political parties).
On July 22, 1968, a confrontation between students from two educational establishments in Mexico City caused the intervention of the body of grenadiers (The riot police of the Mexican capital), which applied the force in an excessive way. The following two days the student aggressions continued and the grenadiers intervened with greater repression: they entered the educational institutions and assaulted students and teachers.
The student response was the organization of A march against police violence for July 26mainly integrated by students from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the National Polytechnic Institute and who joined militants of the Mexican Communist Party.
The repression of July 26, 1968
On July 26, 1968, Thousands of students marched to the Zocalo (main square of the city) to demonstrate against police violence. Before reaching the square, the body of Grenadiers rammed against them, caused their dispersion and left a balance of around 500 wounded and several detainees.
The following days occurred episodes of violence and the Army occupied the buildings of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN). Meanwhile, National strike council was formed, composed of students of the UNAM, the IPN and universities of other cities.
During August and September Rights and marches were made, some of these crowds and with the support of workers, professionals, teachers and intellectuals. Also led between grenadiers and students. The repression caused the movement to decline at the end of September. On October 1, the Government withdrew to the Army from the educational facilities he had occupied.
The student mitin of October 2, 1968
On October 12, 1968, the Olympic Games that would be held in Mexico City had to begin, so the Mexican government chaired by Gustavo Díaz Ordaz was interested in placating the student movement Before that date.
On Wednesday, October 2, one day after the Army left the facilities of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the National Polytechnic Institute, it was held A meeting of the student movement in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, in Tlatelolco (Mexico City), convened by the National Strike Council.
The meeting summoned thousands of people and was guarded by the army, which surrounded the square. There some demands were agreed that had already been formulated in August, such as the freedom of political prisoners, the disappearance of the body of grenadiers or the compensation of victims of repression.
Minutes before six in the afternoon, A helicopter threw some flares and after a while a shooting began. It is not well known where the first shots arose, but the consequences were more shots, blows, runs, persecutions and an important balance of dead, wounded and detained.
The Matanza of October 2, 1968
According to some testimonies, in the Chihuahua building, where they were the spokesmen of the student movement and numerous journalists, Members of the Olimpia Battalion were infiltrateda paramilitary group of the Mexican government.
According to this version, after receiving a signal in the form of a flaw launched by a helicopter, these They opened fire against the crowd and against the Mexican Army that protected public order around the protest, which caused as a response that the soldiers fired against the building. Police officers infiltrated between the crowd, identified with each other for wearing a white glove or handkerchief in their hands, proceeded to hit and submit students.
The army persecuted the protesters even within the surrounding buildingswhere they entered to protect themselves from the shooting, although it did not have a court order that legally endorsed their conduct. Hours later, the square was full of corpses and many students were forced together with the Chihuahua building or on the outskirts of a convent, where they were forced to undress.
Some journalists were confiscated their photographic or filming rolls. The detainees were imprisoned and some were sent to the number one military field, while the tanks were patrolling the area in which the massacre had been consummated.
The number of the dead of the Tlatelolco slaughter
To this day, the exact number of dead is not known in the Tlatelolco slaughter. The official version of the government announced just under 30 deaths. However, in one of the interviews conducted by the Mexican writer Elena Poniatowska to the witnesses of the massacre, a mother who rummaged among the bodies looking for her son revealed that she had told more than 65 bodies.
Other versions They say that the figure ranges between 200 and 300 people killedas the English correspondent John Rodda concluded at the time, who accounted for testimonies about the acts of the square and on the serious injured wounded to hospitals. Others claim that they were more than a thousand.
The Special Prosecutor for Social and Political Movements of the past, in a report released in 2006, he consigned around 350 dead. Some witnesses said the bodies were removed in garbage collection trucks.
The injured were calculated at more than a thousandin the same way as the detainees. Some calculations estimate that only in the number one military field there were almost 2000 detainees.
The involvement of the CIA
In October 2003, a report was published that announced declassified documents of US organizations such as the CIA, the State Department, the Pentagon, the FBI and the White House. These documents revealed the intervention of the CIA (American Foreign Intelligence Service) and the Pentagon in the surveillance and repression of the Mexican Student Movement of 1968.
The CIA made reports on the student organization and the actions of the government during the months that the conflict lasted, while The Pentagon sent weapons, ammunition and radio equipment requested by the Mexican government to control the movement and avoid disturbances during the Olympic Games.
The Mexican government also believed that the student movement could be the germ of a communist agitation, which also worried US agencies that were in the middle of the cold war. For this reason, CIA reports focused mainly on students and left -wing professorsespecially those linked to the Communist Party. The Network of American spies in Mexico received the name in Litempo Code.
Responsibility and justice for the tlatelolco slaughter
In 1998, the Government authorized the Congress to open an investigation into the events of October 2, 1968. However, it was with the Government of Vicente Fox (2000-2006), who came to the presidency outside the institutional revolutionary party that Mexico had governed for seventy years, which the investigation was promoted, some documents were released and The Special Prosecutor for Social and Political Movements of the past was created with the aim of revealing the truth around crimes committed by security forces in the past decades.
Today it is recognized as perpetrators of the massacre to the Mexican Army, the Secret Police and the paramilitaries of the Olimpia Battalion. The then president of the Republic, Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, and the Secretary of the Interior and Successor in the Presidency, were also responsible as responsible, Luis Echeverría Álvarez, who was accused in 2006 of genocide for his alleged participation in the massacre of Tlatelolco and for other criminal acts during his mandate. Anyway, it was acquitted in 2009 due to lack of evidence.
In 2018, within the framework of commemoration for the fifty years of the massacre, A government commission first recognized that it was a state crime.
Consequences of the Tlatelolco Matanza
The Tlatelolco massacre ended the student conflict and did not prevent development without altercations of the Olympic Games, between October 12 and 27. In December, the National strike council dissolved. However, what happened in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas had important and durable effects on Mexican society.
The main consequence of the slaughter was The formation of a critical attitude of civil society Regarding democratic government powers. Although during the presidency of Díaz Ordaz there were years of economic growth, the tension between the ruling party and various social sectors increased.
Some groups were radicalizedfor example in public universities, and this led in some cases to the formation of new guerrilla organizations, which acted during the period of armed conflict and political repression usually known in Mexico as “dirty war.”
On the other hand, the massacre He led to the growth of citizen protestforced the Government of Díaz Ordaz to take social measures and to grant the vote to all those over 18 (until then, only the single people over 21 and the married people over 18 could vote), and progressively undermine the political monopoly of the Institutional Revolutionary Party.
The commemoration of the Tlatelolco slaughter
At present, the three cultures of Tlatelolco contains A plaque that remembers the names of 20 of the people killed in 1968.
Since 2011, by decision of the Chamber of Deputies, On October 2, the massacre is commemorated in Mexico through a national duelin memory of the fallen and as a date of national repudiation of violence.
For this reason, Every October 2, public buildings flags must be raised at half -mast. In 2018, fifty years after the massacre, he enrolled in the honor wall of the session hall of the Chamber of Deputies: “To the 1968 student movement.”
The Tlatelolco massacre in the literature
The Student Movement and the Matanza de Tlatelolco of 1968 They were represented in chronicles and fiction works by numerous writers, both Mexicans and other countries. Some of them are: Elena Poniatowska, Roberto Bolaño, Fernando del Paso, Luis González de Alba, Antonio Velasco Piña, Luis Spota, Oriana Fallaci, Leopoldo Ayala, Jorge Volpi, among others.
References
- “Student movement of 1968” CNDH (SF) in the National Human Rights Commission – Mexico.
- Delgado de Cantú, GM (2015). History of Mexico. Historical legacy and recent past. Third edition. Pearson.
- The Tlatelolco massacre: what happened on October 2, 1968, when a brutal blow against students changed Mexico forever “Nájar, A. (2018) in BBC News World.
- Poniatowska, E. (2015). Tlatelolco’s night. Marea-Era.
- Von Wobeser, G. (coord.) (2014). History of Mexico. Economic Culture Fund.
