The Tlatelolco massacre took place on the night of October 2, 1968, in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco, Mexico City.
The death toll remains uncertain: some estimates place the number of deaths in the thousands, but most sources report 200-300 deaths. Many more were wounded, along with several thousand arrests.
The massacre was preceded by months of political unrest in the Mexican capital, echoing student demonstrations and riots all over the world during 1968. The Mexican students wanted to exploit the attention focused on Mexico City for the 1968 Olympic Games. Mexican President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, however, was determined to stop the demonstrations and, in September, he ordered the army to occupy the campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the largest university in Latin America. Students were beaten and arrested indiscriminately.
Student demonstrators were not deterred, however. The demonstrations grew in size, until, on October 2, after student strikes lasting nine weeks, 15,000 students from various universities marched through the streets of Mexico City, carrying red carnations to protest the army’s occupation of the university campus. By nightfall, 5,000 students and workers, many of them with spouses and children, had congregated in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco.
The massacre began at sunset when army and police forces — equipped with armored cars and tanks — surrounded the square and began firing live rounds into the crowd, hitting not only the protestors, but also other people who were present for reasons unrelated to the demonstration. Demonstrators and passersby alike, including children, were caught in the fire, and soon, mounds of bodies lay on the ground.
The killing continued through the night, with soldiers carrying out mopping-up operations on a house-to-house basis in the apartment buildings adjacent to the square. Witnesses to the event claim that the bodies were later removed in garbage trucks.
The official government explanation of the incident was that armed provocateurs among the demonstrators, stationed in buildings overlooking the crowd, had begun the firefight. Suddenly finding themselves sniper targets, the security forces had simply returned fire in self-defense.
In October 1997, the Mexican congress established a committee to investigate the Tlatelolco massacre. The committee interviewed many political players involved in the massacre, including Luis Echeverría Álvarez, a former president of Mexico who was Díaz Ordaz’s minister of the interior at the time of the massacre. Echeverría ADMITTED THAT THE STUDENTS HAD BEEN UNARMED, and also suggested that the military action was planned in advance, as a means to destroy the student movement.
In October 2003, the role of the US government in the massacre came to light when the National Security Archive at George Washington University published a series of records from the CIA, the Pentagon, the State Department, the FBI, and the White House released in response to the Freedom of Information Act.
The documents detail:
* that in response to Mexican government concerns over the security of the Olympic Games the Pentagon sent military radios, weapons, ammunition and riot control training material to Mexico before and during the crisis.
* that the CIA station in Mexico City produced almost daily reports tracking developments WITHIN the university community and the Mexican government from July to October. Six days before the confrontation at Tlatelolco, both Echeverría and head of Federal Security (DFS) Fernando Gutiérrez Barrios told the CIA that "the situation will be under complete control very shortly."
* that the Díaz Ordaz government "arranged" to have student leader Socrates Campos Lemus accuse dissident PRI politicians such as Carlos Madrazo of funding and orchestrating the student movement.
The events of that horrific day demonstrated the government’s brutal response to students, workers, campesinos and families who dared to participate in a DEMOCRATIC SOCIAL MOVEMENT. Hundreds were injured, crippled, murdered and disappeared, leaving behind only blood stained clothing, scattered shoes, and blood in the streets. Even today, the Mexican Government has refused to release political prisoners arrested for their involvement in these incidents.
This October 2nd marks the 40th anniversary of the Tlatelolco Massacre, an event that must not be forgotten, as we acknowledge the continuation of HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN MEXICO: constant assassinations, detentions, and torturing of political prisoners.
I’m writing the speech to be held at a vigil on the anniversary of the massacre, where I will say it aloud in English, then again in Spanish. My second language is Spanish, so I have no problems with the translations, just the actual beginning.
in case anyone was wondering here’s the info:
Vigil/Demonstration:
Where: Mexican Co
Vigil/Demonstration
Where: Mexican Consulate, 2nd and Linberg in front of hospital, McAllen, TX
When: OCTOBER 2, 2008
8:30 p.m. (bring candle)
WHY: BECAUSE THE DIRTY WAR CONTINUES
FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS!
You could start with a poignant quote such as the one below
George Santayana:
Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
your essay next
In your conclusion you could relate the opening quote and just list some of atrocious human rights violations around the world eg Tiananmen Square etc etc and make some comment about how we haven’t really learned from history- or
you could ask what is it that we can learn from this…and that it must never be allowed to be repeated.
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