October 2, 1968. Chihuahua Building, Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Mexico. The terrible photos that a few years ago went around the world due to their atrocity show battered, defenseless, some of them naked, students surrounded by soldiers of the Mexican army. In On History we now narrate the Tlateloco student massacre in Mexico.
1968 movement in Mexico
In the year that occupies our attention today, the Mexico Olympiad 1968but international concern was growing: it was the time when the worst moments of the vietnam warA few months before, the tragic Prague Spring had occurred.
The year 1968 was a relevant year then and continues to have a very important political and social burden today. In that year Soviet tanks entered the Czech capital; in Paris, the students had risen up (the well-known French May 68), racism in South Africa reached its peak, and Mexico was experiencing strong internal instability as a result of the bad economic conditions they were going through.
On August 27 of that year, More than 200,000 students marched through the center of Mexico City and they settled in the Zócalo, a central square of the Federal District. The next day, the local police suppressed the revolt.
Mexico was the ideal city to become the stage to show disagreements with the internal politics of the federal government and global instability, due to its upcoming organization of the Olympic Games. But Mexico and her government were not willing to become a focus of revolt, precisely on such important dates.
The riots followed one another, and in September the government ordered the army to occupy the University Campus, causing dozens of injuries among the students. Then there was already talk that there had been dozens of deaths and that the police had cremated them to hide the evidence from the world. Even so, the protests continued at an increasing rate, while the participants from all over the world were arriving in the capital.
What is the White Brigade?
The White Brigade was established in 1976 by the Federal Security Directorate to combat urban guerrillas, more specifically to investigate and locate the Communist League September 23. This League arose as a result of the union of the Revolutionary Student Front, the Sick of Sinaloa, the Lacandones Command, Los Guajiros and members of the MAR.
This Brigade was composed, according to the documents, by “members of the Mexican Army, Federal Security Directorate, Attorney General of the Republic, Attorney General of the Federal District, General Directorate of Police and Traffic of the Department of the Federal District, Attorney General of the State of Mexico ».
According to the data, this brigade had 55 vehicles and 253 weapons, with monthly compensation of three thousand pesos plus general expenses. In addition, they had a large gasoline budget to be able to carry out all the activities for which they had been trained.
They had training specialized in the Communist League to be able to intercede and analyze information, in addition to training versed in hand-to-hand combat and handling different types of artifacts.
Some names that stand out the dreaded White Brigade They are: Arturo Acosta Chaparro, Francisco Quiroz Hermosillo, Miguel Nazar Haro, Salomón Tanuz and Francisco Sahagún Vaca.
This Brigade disheartened and destroyed the League, through the use of torture most horrifying, the murder and death of its members. All these acts against the urban guerrilla ended up being known as the Mexico’s Dirty War.
Students gathered in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas
On October 2, 1968, at the Plaza de Tlatelolco or of the Three Cultures I know nearly 50,000 students gathered. But they did nothing but fall into an ambush, because from all the converging streets, the army forces appeared, surrounding the square. A flare was fired… and the slaughter began.
The soldiers began to shoot indiscriminately at those present, while the students fled in terror. Almost 400 students died that dayand more than a thousand were seriously injured.
Most of the bodies were burned. and the wounded were taken to military hospitals to hide the Truth. At night, the firefighters and the police were in charge of washing all the traces of the assassination in that square with pressurized water jets, leaving it pristine for the next morning.
So many years later it is not yet known where the orders came from. The Mexican president at the time, Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, apparently requested a military presence in the plaza, but it was the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces who ordered the fire. All the documents of that massacre were burned or do not appear. The Mexican president, Díaz Ordaz, has already died; his successor, Echevarría, says she knows nothing. Only certain documents from the CIA, the FBI, the White House and the Pentagon seem to shed some light on the matter.
The investigation into the student massacre in Mexico 68
The Pentagon had sent during 1968 to Mexico experts in anti-subversive struggles to teach the Mexican military.
There are documents in which Echevarría, Secretary of the Interior during the Government of Díaz Ordaz, and successor in the Presidency of the sametold the CIA that the situation would be brought under control soon.
According to the CIA, the Mexican government had arranged with some of the student leaders a false accusation by which political leaders opposed to the Government were the ones behind the student revolts
Four hundred deaths have been counted, based on the letters denouncing the disappearances of dozens of mothers, but the exact number of that disaster will never be known. Since then, every October 2 in the square, these mothers demonstrate carrying photos of their disappeared children shouting: «Alive we had them! We want them alive!”
Consequences of the Tlatelolco massacre
For a time, part of the Mexican population and, above all, the world population, was not aware of the reality of what happened in Mexico, because from the first moment the Official version was that it had been reduced to a group of terrorists who had attacked the soldiers. During these years, the Mexican government had great power within the media and only a few isolated reporters or photographers had evidence to contradict said official version.
Little by little, testimonies of mothers, of young people who had come to the plaza of Tlatelolco, and evidence in the form of photographs and videos were bringing to light a truth that was never really known who was ultimately to blame.
Contrary to what might have happened, the Tlatelolco massacre It did not mean a radical upsurge in the protests or a manifest and violent discontent with the government, but rather a feeling of abandonment and momentary paralysis of the Mexican people, who found themselves as silently ruminating on his pain, without internal or external support, confused, with a latent hatred so great that it paralyzed him and prevented him from acting, perhaps for fear of even greater reprisals.
It could have seemed like moments, years in which Mexico did not seem to realize, in the short term, what that massacre really was. But, contrary to what it might seem, it served the country, the Mexican people, to mature little by little, to create a democratic consciousnessof the need for freedom of expression, of rejection of authoritarian power.
It is true that after the events of the Tlatelolco square, radical (and not so radical) leftist movements arose, some of which were the germ of the socialist party that would emerge in the late 1970s. Some of these movements were the September 23 League or the Poor Partyheaded by Lucio Cabañas (this already existed since 1967).
It could be said that this episode in the history of Mexico was also very important because it evidences the incapacity of the PRI to dialogue or reach a peaceful solution with the students, perhaps pressured by world powers in favor of neoliberalism such as the United States. The fact is that, with the confidence of the people or not, it would still take decades for him to leave power.
The National Strike Council and the student protests
As previously indicated, the difficult situation that the Mexico and different international circumstances served as a breeding ground for the events that took place on the day October 2, 1968. However, there are some antecedents of special relevance when it comes to understanding the circumstances that led to the Tlatelolco massacre. In this area, the student protests that took place in the months prior to the massacre and the constitution of the National Strike Council (CNH) are very important.
The National Strike Council was created in response to repeated violations by the Mexican government of university autonomy provisions during the summer of 1968. At a time when, according to the Penal Code, “social dissolution” was considered a crime and in the Since the government wanted to present a positive image at the Olympics at any price, the creation of the National Strike Council was a real confrontation with the established authority.
The CNH was made up of student delegations from more than 70 higher institutions and had more than 240 delegatescounting on prominent members such as Raúl Álvarez Garín and the controversial Sócrates Campos Lemus, to name just a few. Among other issues, the CNH sought the repeal of articles 145 and 145b of the Penal Code, which decreed prison sentences for meetings not sanctioned by the government and any action that could be considered as “alteration of public order” (measure generally used as a form of political repression), the freedom of all political prisoners and the abolition of the grenadiers (police units specialized in state security).
Its creation has a lot to do with two events in particular: the assault on the so-called Vocational School 5 and the repression of the protests that took place at UNAM. Both events took place in the summer of 1968 and tensions increased further within the country.
The raid on Vocational School 5
The assault on Vocational School 5 took place el July 23, 1968 and, during that day, the grenadiers attacked hundreds of students and teachers, supposedly under government mandate. The executive indicated that the grenadiers had only acted because they were looking for various members of street gangs who had allegedly enrolled in said school.
However, the political tone of said assault was evident and, after this episode, the protest activities increased, creating small groups with the name of brigades that were in charge of disseminating their ideas among the population already denounce the tyrannical repression of the government.
The activity of these brigadistas…