Tlatelolco Massacre: 12 key moments of the 1968 student movement

(Expansion) – Mexico commemorates this Saturday 53 years of the massacre in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, in the neighborhood of Tlatelolco in Mexico City, considered the worst student massacre in the history of the country, committed by the federal government itself.

On October 2, 1968 – according to the accounts of the time – security forces fired and acted against hundreds of young people gathered at the scene to demonstrate against other actions by the authorities, resulting in dozens of deaths.

To date, the exact number of dead or missing is not known. The figures vary: while some versions speak of 25 fatalities, others place the total above 300 people. Just this weekend, the newspaper El Universal published an investigation by Susana Zavala, an academic at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), who reports that from July to December of that year there were 78 deaths and 31 missing.

51 years after those events, we present key moments in the history of the movement that gave life to the slogan “October 2 is not forgotten!”

1. The conflict began on July 22, 1968, when security forces intervened in a confrontation between high school students. There were several detainees, the uniformed officers took Vocational 5 and excessive use of force was registered against the young people.

2. Days later, from July 26 to 29, several schools went on strike and students from the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) called for a march to protest against the reaction of the authorities and demand more democracy; Students from UNAM and the University of Chapingo joined the march. And once again, the government sent police to control the protesters.

3. At that time, Mexico was preparing to host the Olympic Games, which were held from October 12 to 27, so the government of the PRI Gustavo Díaz Ordaz (1964-1970) was concerned that a student conflict would harm the image of the country.

4. By then, the National Strike Council (CNH) had also emerged, made up of students from UNAM, IPN and other universities. Later, teachers, parents, political activists, intellectuals, workers and citizens joined, who considered that the authorities limited the freedom of expression and action of society.

Among the specific demands were the removal of police chiefs, the disappearance of shock groups and the elimination of the crime of “social dissolution”, which justified arbitrary detentions.

5. On August 27, students protesting in the capital’s Zócalo decided to lower the national flag and place a small red and black flag. At dawn on the 28th, Army tanks left the National Palace to disperse the protesters.

6. On September 13, hundreds of students marched through Mexico City with handkerchiefs in their mouths as a message so that the police would not use the provocation of the protesters as a pretext to repress them. The event was named “The March of Silence”.

7. On September 18, elements of the Army took over Ciudad Universitaria, the main campus of UNAM. According to an account in the magazine Nexos, the authorities justified the decision by arguing that there were buildings “illegally occupied by non-academic groups outside the university.” The military also seized IPN facilities.

8. The Chamber of Deputies, then led by Luis Farías, had accused the rector of UNAM, Javier Barros Sierra, of leading the student movement against the Government. Barros Sierra submitted his resignation, but it was not accepted; On September 25, the UNAM Governing Board expressly asked him to remain at the head of the university.

9. For October 2, a rally was called in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in the Mexican capital. Hundreds of students gathered in the Tlatelolco neighborhood. While this was happening, the Army watched for disturbances.

Around six in the afternoon, almost finished the act, a helicopter flew over the square and fired flares, which has been interpreted as a signal for the Olimpia Battalion snipers, located in the Chihuahua building, to open fire against protesters.

Then the youths’ attempts to flee and the confusion began. Different testimonies indicate that some neighbors opened the doors of their apartments to protect the boys, although the military began searches and arrests that lasted until the early hours of October 3. The number of victims remains unclear, as does the number of injured and detained. Some estimates indicate that there were 700 injured and more than 5,000 detained.

10. In the following days, while different authorities tried to justify the military action, based on arguments such as that there were armed students, there were also protests towards the Government. The writer Octavio Paz, for example, resigned from the Mexican embassy in India.

At the same time, some student leaders maintained contact with government representatives and, according to Nexos’ count, they informed their colleagues that the Executive had the intention of closing public institutions of higher education.

11. On Saturday, October 12, President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz inaugurated the Olympic Games. At that moment, a group of protesters threw a black dove-shaped kite over the presidential box, in condemnation of the October 2 massacre. In November, a mourning ceremony was held in honor of the victims, and by December 4, the students returned to class.

12. From then on, what happened on October 2 became an emblematic event of Mexico in the second half of the 20th century, an issue that brought together various opponents of the Government, and the starting point of the political reforms that eliminated the crime of “social dissolution”, opened the regime to plurality and, in the long run, allowed more social participation in public life.