Oso
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Forty years ago today...
Oct. 2, 1968: `A brutal massacre'
by Malcolm Beith
The News
Clouds loomed as night closed in. By the hundreds, the students streamed into the Plaza de las Tres Culturas. A little past 5:30 p.m., some 10,000
students - not to mention hundreds of workers, farmers and others attending in solidarity - had gathered in the square. Rain splattered down.
From his vantage point on the 5th floor of the Edificio Chihuahua, Félix Hernández Gamundi saw soldiers appear at the entrances to the Plaza, but
thought little of it. He and fellow members of the "Consejo Nacional de Huelga" (National Strike Council), or CNH, had met with representatives from
President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz's office earlier that morning. They had struck a tentative agreement to dialogue in the hope of ending what had been a
summer of sometimes bloody discontent. He knew the Army had to be present, to make sure no trouble occurred.
Then he saw that the soldiers had the square surrounded. All exits were blocked.
"At that moment, I knew," he recalled in an interview with The News. "It was a planned operation . for blood."
Forty years ago on Thursday, the Mexican government and the military committed what has come to be regarded as one of the most brutal acts of
repression in the history of the country. The year was 1968, and students and workers from Paris to Prague to London to Los Angeles had spent the
summer protesting their governments' policies.
Mexico had not been untouched by the revolutionary fervor. Throughout the year, universities and schools in the capital, Chihuahua, Veracruz, Sonora,
Sinaloa, Guerrero and Puebla, among other states, had been hotbeds of political and civil protest. Some had been violent. Some had been quelled
through force.
With the eyes of the world on Mexico for the Olympic Games - the capital was to host the XIX Olympiad from Oct. 12-27 - the Díaz Ordaz administration
was keen to show its allies, the United States in particular, that it could keep dissent under control.
DESPERATE TO LOOK GOOD
As early as April and May of 1968, the Mexican military had issued urgent requests to the Pentagon, asking for radios, gunpowder and mortar fuses,
according to since-declassified U.S. government files.
And in the weeks preceding Tlatelolco, with the student protests showing little sign of waning, foreign observers noted that the government was
becoming increasingly edgy.
"Govt has been committed to forceful showdown with students ever since army took over UNAM; showdown reinforced by attack on rector," read a cable
from the U.S. Embassy in Mexico to Washington on Sept. 27.
The Army had taken over the National Autonomous University of Mexico, or UNAM, on Sept. 18, as it was considered to be the primary center of
subversive activity at the time.
"Govt at moment not seeking compromise solution with students but rather seeking to put end to all organized students actions before Olympics.
Secretary of government has informed Emb. officers that CNH itself does not want settlement. Aim of govt believed to be to round up extremist elements
and detain them until after the Olympics."
Shortly after 6 p.m., a professor from the Instituto Politécnico Nacional began to address the crowd.
According to testimony since published in works like "The Night of Tlatelolco," many of those present recalled seeing men wearing white gloves on only
their left hand enter the buildings surrounding the square, and dispersing themselves among the crowd, too.
Jesús Sandoval Acuña told The News that he remembered seeing those men in white gloves - the Olympia Battalion, a special security force set up for
the Games - enter the Edificio Chihuahua and other buildings on the perimeter of the square.
"They didn't seem right," recalled Sandoval Acuña. "It didn't seem right."
Then they heard the shots.
`STRAIGHT OUT OF HELL'
Through his bullhorn, the Politécnico professor on the podium urged the people to remain calm, Félix Hernández recalled. The military was simply
trying to provoke them, the professor said. Remain calm.
They did.
Until the soldiers started firing into them.
"The soldiers fired at the buildings, from the buildings, and then, into the masses," Félix Hernández said. "The plaza was full, there were kids
there. We could see that many were dead. The massacre was brutal."
The bullets were indiscriminate, according to eyewitnesses who lived to tell their story. Women, children - even the white-gloved special forces, by
some counts - were fired upon.
"In a few minutes the whole thing became a scene straight out of hell. The gunfire was deafening," recounted one witness in Elena Poniatowska's "The
Night of Tlatelolco."
Unable to get past soldiers and Olympic special forces to help those below, Félix Hernández and his fellow students ran to the third floor of the
Edificio Chihuahua, and knocked on a friend's door. About 20 of them crammed into the friend's apartment, sneaking glances out the window every now
and then to survey the carnage in the square. The soldiers were firing everywhere.
But before long, the gunfire became sporadic. Then it stopped completely.
Dead silence. Not even a scream.
"We thought it was over," Félix Hernández said.
Then the tanks came. The students in the third-floor Edificio Chihuahua apartment heard the rumbling of the massive vehicles, and huddled together.
They heard the footsteps of soldiers running up the stairs. The soldiers ran back down the stairs.
Hours passed. Then, at about 11 p.m., a rap on the door.
"Military. Open up."
A whispered, but furious debate ensued, Félix Hernández said: If the guests gave themselves up, the family who owned the apartment would likely suffer
the consequences too. If the students went quietly, there was a chance.
They opened the door. The soldiers hauled everyone away, the friend and his family, too.
GUILTY
Most accounts of Tlatelolco put the number of detained at about 1,000. Some were lucky.
Sandoval Acuña was one of the lucky ones. As soon as he heard the gunfire, he made his way to the church at the corner of the Plaza de las Tres
Culturas. Backed by a group of about 15 people, he barged past the handful of soldiers guarding that particular passageway. A few blocks away, out of
their sights, he paused for breath.
The guilt hit him immediately.
"I felt terrible," he recalled. "Being outside, being safe, while the shooting was still going on."
Then the shouting began: "Assassins! Sons of b-tches!"
Even as the massacre was taking place inside the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, some of those on its fringes were protesting, expressing their fury at
the atrocity occurring mere meters away.
Some people outside the square started taking out their pistols and shooting at the soldiers, Sandoval Acuña said. The soldiers fired back.
To this day, official accounts have maintained that the soldiers were fired upon by the students, provoked into acting in the repressive manner that
they did. The students maintain they were engaging in a peaceful protest, and were indiscriminately fired upon.
At the time, the government line was easily bought. (Or forced upon the media. Documents uncovered in the 1990s revealed how publishers and the Díaz
Ordaz administration had worked closely to cover up the events. Some newspapers and magazines were reportedly raided at the time for printing photos
of the events that did not comply with the official version.)
"Serious Fighting for Hours between Terrorists and Soldiers. 29 Dead and More than 80 Wounded; Casualties on Both Sides," read El Universal's headline
on Oct. 3.
"Bloody Encounter in Tlatelolco. 26 Dead and 71 Wounded; Sharpshooters Fire on Army Troops. General Toledo Wounded," reported El Heraldo.
"Foreign Interlopers Attempt to Damage Mexico's National Image. The Objective: Preventing the Nineteenth Olympic Games from Being Held," read El Sol
de México's morning headline.
PICKING UP THE PIECES
To this day, what exactly happened on the night of Oct. 2, 1968 remains murky.
Poniatowska's book, which revolves around testimony garnered from dozens of eyewitnesses, is considered by many to be one of the most thorough sources
on the subject.
Although governments that came after Díaz Ordaz released more and more information, huge gaps in the story remain - for one, the number of victims and
those detained.
Félix Hernández remembers being held for days at a military base with "at least hundreds" of others. He recalls going through a "caricature" of a
judicial process - they were never given the chance to present their case before a judge - during which 500 people were effectively convicted of the
murder of one judicial police officer who had been at Tlatelolco.
Félix Hernández spent more than two years behind bars before being freed on account of the payment of a fine by an anonymous patron.
"The sentencing, the judge - even our liberation was illegal," he said.
Those digging for the real dirt have failed to come up with real answers.
Kate Doyle, a senior analyst at the National Security Archives at George Washington University, has spent much of the past decade poring through files
released by the Mexican and U.S. governments. But at nearly every turn, her investigations have been hindered.
In 1998, a special congressional commission was granted access to some 3,000 boxes of files on Tlatelolco. But according to Doyle, that "fell through.
The government continued to stonewall." The congressional commission was never given the opportunity to follow through on the promise that had been
made.
In 2002, then-President Vicente Fox announced the opening of the nation's security archives - which included files from the Interior Secretariat on
the '70s and '80s "dirty war" era, among other state secrets. A year later, he green-lighted a promising Freedom of Information Law.
"This was a watershed moment," said Doyle.
But investigators would soon find that holes remained, and key documents missing.
Doyle made it her mission at the time to pursue all records from every government agency on Tlatelolco - "every piece of paper that we could find on
those who actually died." But while the declassified information was clearly useful - it gave researchers new leads on government policy, "rich
information" on the military and intelligence during the Tlatelolco period, Doyle said - there were still problems.
A special prosecutor's office, set up by Fox to investigate "dirty war" crimes and compile evidence that could be used in criminal cases, was seizing
files even as Doyle and other researchers were trying to seize on their newfound access to them.
Worse, the special prosecutor investigators were placing them "under seal," Doyle said - they were removing them from the archives, apparently as
evidence for future cases.
Two years later, the special prosecutor's office was shut down. It had not made one single conviction. The files remained "under seal."
Luis Echeverría Alvarez, interior secretary at the time of Tlatelolco and widely considered to have overseen that massacre and ordered other
atrocities as president in the 1970s, was placed under house arrest, but charges of genocide had already been dropped by the special prosecutor.
Some believe things could have been - and could still be - different.
"There is a core set of what we imagine to be the most important documents, which were whisked out from the archives' control," said Doyle. "Rather
than provide us with solid legal cases, the prosecutor served to identify and remove the most important evidence. That's a scandal."
Today, those documents - a list 9,000 pages long, which Doyle's team has put together from the national archives' list of documents in existence - are
in the hands of the Attorney General's Office, or PGR, which was never ordered to release its files.
On Thursday, Doyle plans to publish a formal letter to the PGR, among other agencies, requesting access to these documents. If the PGR doesn't release
them, she said, "We'll go to court."
HOLE IN HISTORY
What transpired on Oct. 2, 1968, was for decades not taught in schools; for years, textbooks simply ignored the event altogether or brushed over it
and blamed the students, according to academics. In 1992, then-Education Secretary Ernesto Zedillo included a few paragraphs in public school
textbooks that many felt blamed the military and government. The result: Hundreds of thousands of books were recalled. Similar efforts have since been
quashed, too, according to education experts.
Still, 40 years on, Tlatelolco resonates among the Mexican public.
And as time passes, information about other incidents from that era - the "other Tlatelolcos" - has emerged.
For some, it's been a long time coming. Sandoval Acuña, a native of Tampico, Tamaulipas, said that the focus on Tlatelolco in years past , while
warranted, has taken limelight away from other Mexican student movements that were suppressed at the time.
"Nineteen sixty-eight was a c-cktail, where lots of things were going on. There were liberal people, miniskirts . it was the beginning of the
`brigadistas' (a group of female protestors who are today often associated with Andrés Manuel López Obrador). The solidarity of the people was
gigantic. But all of the focus is on one aspect, on a few leaders of the CNH," Sandoval Acuña said. "They did everything, according to them."
Now 63, Sandoval Acuña is finishing up a book about those other incidents and movements, which addresses demonstrations earlier in the summer -
including one on Aug. 27 which he refers to as "the mother of all marches."
He sheds light on a Sept. 3 farmers' march, which students joined in the Mexico City suburb of Topilejo. He has investigated student clashes with
police in Zacatenco on Sept. 20. In Veracruz, students were reportedly run out of the Gulf state by authorities throughout the summer. The list goes
on.
Marco Rascón remembers one of the other Tlatelolcos. A secondary school student in Chihuahua at the time, he recalls how the summer of discontent
played out in his northern state.
The hippies, the revolutionary thinkers, the foreigners, the would-be guerrillas, were all out on the campus which he and his peers shared with the
university kids. Peace and love were in the air, as was progressive thought, he said.
"There were new ways of thinking, of living," Rascón recalled. "There was an aspiration of democratization."
Until the military came, that is. The students protested, and their classrooms were occupied. A military helicopter was downed near the state capital,
Rascón recalled. Students and locals were reputedly responsible.
Rascón, then just a teenager, remembers the protests and the heavy hand of the police and military.
But even he admits that Oct. 2. - the "sum of all the barbarism," as Félix Hernández described it - holds a special place in his memory.
That day, the Chihuahua students had held a protest. All had gone peacefully. But at night, he and his fellow students heard a report, passed along by
someone who had read a news cable. Something had happened in the capital.
"Everything was rumors, there was no media," recalled Rascón. Telephone calls to relatives and friends followed. Soon, word got around. A peaceful
protest in Mexico City had been suppressed. A group of students had fired on the military. There was an indeterminable number of dead.
There was confusion in Chihuahua, Rascón said. Opinions differed over what had happened.
But everyone knew what to do: They had to go to Mexico City.
When he and his fellow students from Chihuahua finally arrived, they had a resolve about them, said Rascón, who now lives in the capital.
But they were also of two minds over what would happen next. Throughout the summer, there had been much debate over whether or not an armed uprising
would ever be necessary, or whether peaceful protests would be sufficient to reveal the repression of the regime and incite real change.
Once in Mexico City, a friend of Rascón's headed straight over to the UNAM campus.
"He said, `I'm going to see for myself how, with this act, the government has revealed its repression,' " recalled Rascón.
But the friend was not prepared for what he would see. The campus was "lifeless," he told Rascón and the others. It was horrific evidence of what had
transpired, and of the extent their government could and would go to quell what it deemed subversion.
"He saw that there was nobody - everybody had left. And then he started to weep," said Rascón.
It was at that moment, Rascón said, that they all realized, "this was the beginning of a revolution."
Throughout the world, student movements came to a head in 1968. The momentum for change slowed, and for most, the year would soon become a distant
memory.
But for Mexico, to echo Rascón, it was just the beginning.
All my childhood I wanted to be older. Now I\'m older and this chitn sucks.
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k-rico
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1968 was a violent year, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy assassinations, Demo convention in Chicago, rioting throughout the US, cities on fire, in
Europe too.
Thanks Oso, significant piece of Mexican history.
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elgatoloco
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Thanks for posting that.
MAGA
marooons Are Governing America
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Dave
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Amazing that things haven't changed much
Forty years ago it was leftist students. Today the army has a much broader target.
Indigenous Mexicans.
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comitan
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We have a Mexican friend here in Comitan that was there, the reason he survived because he was inside a building printing fliers, all of his friends
that were passing them out where killed.
Strive For The Ideal, But Deal With What\'s Real.
Every day is a new day, better than the day before.(from some song)
Lord, Keep your arm around my shoulder and your hand over my mouth.
“The sincere pursuit of truth requires you to entertain the possibility that everything you believe to be true may in fact be false”
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Eli
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Oso, Thanks for reminding me, until I read your post I had forgotten it was Oct. 2nd and the importance of this date.
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elgatoloco
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March marks 1968 Mexico killings
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/latinamerica/l...
The massacre of students in the capital by troops just before the Olympics has yet to be properly investigated.
By Tracy Wilkinson and Deborah Bonello
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
October 3, 2008
MEXICO CITY — Thousands of Mexicans marched across their nation's capital Thursday to demand justice for victims of a 1968 massacre of students by
government troops -- contemporary Mexico's most traumatic atrocity and one that remains unresolved.
Survivors of that bloody night 40 years ago and Mexicans who had not been born then joined forces, chanting "Dos de octubre! No se olvide!" (Oct. 2!
Don't forget!) as they converged on the downtown Zocalo plaza.
"I remember how the tanks rolled over the dead and the injured, how they attacked a number of my friends with bayonets," said Cuauhtemoc Padilla
Marroquin, a teacher who was 15 when the massacre took place.
The killings -- official reports put the toll at 25 to 43 but human rights groups have long maintained that the number was closer to 350 -- started
when government forces opened fire on a massive but peaceful student demonstration just days before the Olympic Games were to open in Mexico City. It
was a time of political effervescence in the country and across the globe, and the Mexican government of the day was eager to conceal what had
happened.
The incident in the Plaza of the Three Cultures, in the Tlatelolco zone of Mexico City, remained shrouded in secrecy for decades. Subsequent Mexican
governments were not willing to appoint a truth commission to investigate, and two that were finally formed in the 1990s were ineffective. An accurate
death toll was never established, and efforts by special prosecutors to try officials blamed for the massacre, including former President Luis
Echeverria, failed.
"We can't forget that night because those responsible haven't been punished as they should have, and no society should forget something so traumatic,
so as not to repeat it," said Hector Mora, 45, a professor at Mexico's National Autonomous University who was leading a group of his students in
Thursday's march.
Some Mexicans argue that the failure of authorities to punish those responsible for the massacre has had long-lasting repercussions, including the
stoking of Mexico's entrenched culture of impunity, in which rampant killings and kidnappings are rarely resolved.
"Today, some students didn't come to class because their parents didn't let them -- because some people still believe that Oct. 2 can be dangerous,"
Mora said. "The trauma continues for some."
Natalia Gonzales Servin, 18, was in Mora's group.
"When I was little and my mother told me what happened [that night], I couldn't believe it," the student said. "How could it be possible that so many
people died and the people did nothing and the media less?
"But as I grew up, I realized that a lot of things happen but people don't act -- it's like they're asleep. 1968 was an awakening."
Mexico City's leftist mayor, Marcelo Ebrard, ordered flags flown at half-staff Thursday in memory of the dead. At the federal level, under the
authority of conservative President Felipe Calderon, there was no 40th anniversary commemoration.
Amnesty International called on Calderon to establish the truth once and for all as the only way to heal "a deep scar in Mexican society."
"President Calderon's government has been all but silent on this dark chapter in Mexico's history," the London-based human rights organization said.
"We challenge this administration to open all relevant archives and records, establish a new and independent inquiry and lift the obstacles preventing
those responsible for this horrific crime being brought to justice."
Javier Zuñiga, now an advisor to Amnesty International, was a teacher in 1968 and recalled taking his wife and child that night to what was supposed
to be a peaceful demonstration. The army moved into the square, gunfire rang out as dusk fell, and the crowds tried to flee in panic; the next day,
piles of bloodied clothes littered the square.
"Forty years on from the Tlatelolco massacre, so many disturbing questions remain unanswered," Zuñiga said in a statement released by Amnesty. "Who
ordered the massacre? For how long had it been planned? How many were killed? Who are those whose bodies still have not been identified?"
Echeverria, the former president who was interior minister at the time of the massacre, was placed under house arrest in 2006 and faced possible
genocide charges related to the 1968 killings. But last year, a federal court dismissed the charges -- while ruling that genocide had taken place
because "government authorities at the time jointly conducted a prearranged and coordinated action aimed at exterminating a national group of students
from various universities."
The president at the time of the massacre, Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, also was never prosecuted or charged.
Despite government efforts at secrecy, the events of that night came to light over time, thanks to the work of ground-breaking Mexican journalist
Elena Poniatowska and survivors who have also published their own accounts. A multimedia exhibition was opened early this year on the site of the
killings.
Turnout at the annual marches has waned over the years. Padilla Marroquin, the survivor participating Thursday, stressed the importance of
representing those who died.
"We carry on fighting because I know that if I had died that night and some of my friends had survived, they would be here where I am today."
MAGA
marooons Are Governing America
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