Tlatelolco massacre
The Tlatelolco massacre (Spanish: La Masacre de Tlatelolco) was a military massacre committed against the students of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN), and other universities in Mexico.
Tlatelolco massacre
The massacre followed a series of large demonstrations called the Mexican Movement of 1968 and is considered part of the Mexican Dirty War, when the U.S.-backed Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) government violently repressed political and social opposition. The event occurred ten days before the opening ceremony of the 1968 Summer Olympics, which were carried out normally.
On October 2, 1968 in the Tlatelolco section of Mexico City, the Mexican Armed Forces opened fire on a group of unarmed civilians in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas who were protesting the upcoming Olympics. The Mexican government and media claimed that the Armed Forces had been provoked by protesters shooting at them,[1] but government documents made public since 2000 suggest that snipers had been employed by the government.
The number of deaths resulting from the event is disputed. According to U.S. national security archives, American analyst Kate Doyle documented the deaths of 44 people;[2] however, estimates of the actual death toll range from 300 to 400, with eyewitnesses reporting hundreds dead.[3][4][5][6][7][8] Additionally, the head of the Federal Directorate of Security reported that 1,345 people were arrested.[9]
In October 2003, the role of the United States government in the massacre was publicized 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 which were released in response to Freedom of Information Act requests.[21]
The documents detail:
Head of march from the teachers' college to the Zocalo
Part of the march to the Zocalo
Sign states "No estuve ahí pero no olvido" (I wasn't there but I do not forget)
Tlatelolco in the arts[edit]
The 1968 massacre has been referenced in the arts and pop culture in various ways. For example, in literary works such as "La Noche de Tlatelolco" (1971) by Elena Poniatowska which collected interviews, chants, slogans, and banners from student movement survivors.[28] Tlatelolco movement veterans like Carlos Monsiváis, José Emilio Pacheco, Octavio Paz, and Jaime Sabines have written poems on the massacre and films like Jorge Fons's Rojo Amanecer (1990) have kept the memory alive.[28] American composer John Adams set Rosario Castellanos' poem on the massacre at Tlatelolco in his oratorio El Niño (2000). Tlatelolco has marked the history of massacres and national injustice in Mexico in other historical ways which have permeated the arts such as it being a place of Aztec sacrificial performances, being the place where the Aztecs surrendered to the Spanish, and giving way to legitimizing the genocide of indigenous people in Mexico.[28]