“The Mexican Holocaustâ€?… November 18, 2008
October 2nd, 2008 was the 40th anniversary of Mexico’s cleanest, deadliest, most public and most covered-up massacre. For months College students made antigovernment protests demanding democracy in Mexico, the freedom of political prisoners, dismissal of the (corrupt)police chief, disbanding of the antiriot police, guarantees of university autonomy, and the repeal of the “law of social dissolution” (regulating the punishment of acts of subversion, treason, and disorder). At the time Gustavo Diaz Ordaz was president of Mexico and had been responsible for some very controversial policy decision making including the arrest of David Alfaro Siqueiros, a social realist painter and muralist, and the violent suppression of several strikes. Money interests once again received priority, and students and labor were kept under control so as not to disrupt economic growth. From July through October, academic life in the city and throughout Mexico was halted as students rioted. Diaz Ordaz was preparing the country to show foreign visitors Mexico was both politically and economically stable. Diaz Ordaz never mentioned the students in his informe; he appeared not to care about them. He had something else in mind: the Olympics were coming to Mexico City. But the student movement grew larger in size and grew louder. How could Mexico’s government host and only care about the Olympics when behind the screen of Olympic buildings there would remain extreme poverty, the stratification of a society that was hostile to those usually forgotten, and the cruelty of a government willing to pretend anything. Luis EcheverrÃa Ãlvarez, the new interior minister, agreed to discuss the issues with the students but changed his mind when they demanded that the meeting be televised. The students, their demands unmet, escalated the scale and frequency of their protests. In late August, they convened the largest antigovernment demonstration to date, rallying an estimated 500,000 protesters in the main plaza of the capital. Seeking to bring a halt to the demonstrations, DÃaz Ordaz ordered the army to take control of UNAM and to arrest the student movement leaders as well as activist. The corrupt, cold hearted government blamed the communist. Gastavo Diaz Ordaz, the ugly president with the mistress who went public, used the problem to express his hard line about everything: the presidency, the Communists, the students, and the state. Mexico was a democracy, free and growing, in the view of the president, and no one had the right to challenge the state.
“No queremos Olimpiadas, queremos revoluciónâ€
To show that they had not been silenced, the students called for another rally at the Plaza of the Three Cultures in Mexico City’s Tlatelolco district. About 5,000 protesters attended to the rally. Tanks waited outside the entrances to the plaza as did soldiers and the Olympia Brigade, a group of men each of whom wore a white glove on the left hand only. The tanks and the soldiers were ordinary business for the government; the one white glove was strange, as were the helicopter and the flares. According to the survivors the soldiers opened fire first, and the soldiers and tanks came rushing in, closing off the exits, turning the crowd into a mob. Parents and their children screamed, gunfire came from every direction; then the men each with the one white glove invaded the crowd, and there was no more gunfire. No one was permitted in or out of the plaza, no ambulances for the wounded, just the thousands who had been there and the tanks and the soldiers and the men who wore one white glove. People were beaten, humiliated, torture, burned, shocked and killed. Families who sheltered students in their homes were also victims of the Mexican holocaust. The lights of the plaza were shot off, phone cables were cut off. Five hours after the first shot, ambulances were allowed in the plaza. Forty years after the massacre, the number of deaths is still uncertain; although the government’s official number is less than 40 deaths. One Picture can easily show more than 40 dead bodies together. No one knows what happened to the rest of the bodies. Were the uncounted bodies dumped into the sea? Who planned the massacre: was it Diaz Ordaz or Echeverria? Forty years after the attack in Tlatelolco, the full details of the massacre remain mired in mystery. The massacre put an end to several weeks of student demonstrations and strikes demanding democracy, in a country that was formally democratic but where the PRI controlled all branches of the state and a major part of the social movement. Just 10 days after the massacre, Mexico hosted the 1968 summer Olympics. As if the cruel murders had never happened ten days earlier. Forty years after not one individual has been prosecuted for their role in the killings. There is still impunity in Mexico. The blood of the young people and the tears of the adults are still fresh and painful. The smell of the blood wet the air, the smell of the blood spills the air.-Carooh
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