The year 1968 is considered one of the most tumultuous in world history. In the US, it is remembered for demonstrations and assassinations. That year we lost Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, and were witness to the beginning of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam and the clash at the Democratic National Convention. In Mexico, things were equally as unstable. In the summer of 1968, only months before the Olympic Games, nation-wide student strikes and protests had prompted an increasingly repressive response from the Diaz Ordaz regime. On October 2nd, just ten days before the Opening Ceremonies, the protest reached its pinnacle.
With the army occupying the university campus, thousands of students marched through the streets of Mexico City demanding democratic reforms. By nightfall, roughly 5,000 unarmed protesters, accompanied by spouses and their children, had congregated in Plaza de las Tres Culturas in the Tlatelolco Section of Mexico City.
Beginning at sunset, army and police forces had begun to surround the plaza. From here, the details of the night remain vague as the Mexican government has kept information confidential, citing matters of national security. Something prompted the government forces to begin shooting live rounds into the crowd. Families, students, and protesters alike were caught in the fire. While the government claimed that “student snipers” had fired first at officers, many from Mexican academia contend that government snipers, from a highly secret battalion, had fired on the police to instigate the conflict.
Civilian reports claim that the bodies were then carried away in ambulances and garbage trucks to a near by military post where they were incinerated. The army worked well into the night washing away the blood with fire hoses. The official government reports put the death toll at around 30. This number is laughable. Nearly every other source, including the US embassy, estimated casualties somewhere between 300-400 dead with hundreds more injured. Without as much as a moment’s pause, the Olympics commenced as if nothing happened.
Today, the Tlatelolco Massacre remains deeply embedded in the minds of those who were alive at the time. Each year, the anniversary is marked with a march to the same plaza and a protest for the release of government records. From the interviews I have conducted and my general observations, the 1968 student protests overshadow any legacy of the ’68 Olympics. Until the government formally acknowledges its role, the people have room for only one memory of that summer.
In recent years, progress has been made. In June of 2002, President Fox released secret police files and named a special prosecutor to determine the role of the government in the massacre. In 2003, the National Security Archive at George Washington University published a series of US government records. Surprisingly, the information from US agencies remains the most cohesive body of information. In June of 2006, former President and Mexican Interior Secretary at the time of the massacre, Luis Echeverria, was charged with genocide and put under house arrest. Yet in typical fashion, a federal judge threw out the charges just this July, ruling that a 30-year statute of limitations had run out.
What is perhaps more interesting though, is that the younger generations have very little comprehension of what happened and the significance of it. The massacre fails to appear in most History textbooks. Yesterday when I asked high school headmaster Samuel Gonzalez Montano how this could be, he replied, “You can’t teach anything that didn’t officially happen.” Thus for now, the newest generation of Mexicans are only to have a general understanding of the Tlatelolco Massacre and the ’68 Olympic Games, as they are unavoidably intertwined. Without a reconciliation of one, a remembrance of the other is nearly impossible.
During a visit to the plaza, I encountered a group of boys playing soccer. When I inquired from one of them if he knew what happened in October of 1968 here in the plaza, he shrugged and looked around. I told him some 300 people died. He seemed lost and turned slowly to read the memorial he was sitting in front of and had lived near his whole life. The end of it reads:
Who? Whom? No one. The next day, no one.
The plaza awoke swept;
The newspapers said for news
the state of the weather.
And in the television, en the radio, en the theaters,
there was not a single change in the program,
not a single announcement.
Nor a moment of silence at the banquet
(or following the banquet).
