From 1968 to the missing 43 – why Mexico's dead and disappeared refuse to go away

[Judi Lynn]

From 1968 to the missing 43 – why Mexico's dead and disappeared refuse to go away

A new exhibition in Mexico City links the 1968 Olympics massacre with the disappearance of 43 students a year ago and asks: how much has the country really changed in the intervening years?

• How the Guardian reported the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre

Elena Poniatowska remembers the shoes. It was 6am and the plaza was quiet. The bodies of the dead had been carried away, and she stood in a square in Mexico City’s Tlatelolco neighbourhood, surveying the aftermath: soldiers on patrol, a few dazed residents, blood on the ground.

“The ground was covered with shoes,” says Poniatowska – at 83, one of Mexico’s best-known writers. People fleeing the plaza had left a trail of women’s pumps and men’s loafers, as well as glasses and hats. “It was a sign of persecution.”

When she looked up, Poniatowska saw the shattered windows of the square’s large apartment buildings. Tanks were still standing watch over the scene. “It was really a view after a battle.”

Poniatowska has contributed to a new exhibition at Mexico City’s Museo Memoria y Tolerancia which recreates those events of 2 October, 1968 — when Mexican military and police gunned down hundreds of protesters, mostly university students.

More:
http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/nov/12/mexico-1968-missing-43-why-dead-disappeared-refuse-to-go-away

[Judi Lynn]

1. Who remembers hearing anything about this massacre on US "news" media, at the time?

From the article posted above:

President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, known for his authoritarian rule struck back. As demonstrators gathered that day in October, snipers took up position on the roofs and, following government orders, showered bullets upon them. Likened to the brutal crackdown on students in China in 1989, the incident has been called Mexico’s Tiananmen Square.

Don't recall hearing about this, but I do remember obsessive yammering, day in, day out, about the black US winning athletes who held their fists up and the "black power salute," according to our "liberal" media. Some of them are probably still talking about it when there's a lull in a conversation.

How strangely they have behaved all these years. I don't remember hearing a peep about the massacre, and was curious if there's anyone here who does.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. I don't remember hearing about this, at all.

I was not nearly as aware of international events as I am now, and I had a young family and a job to take care of.



I am not proud of where I was at the time.

[murielm99]

4. I don't remember anything

about this, either.

I was a college student at the time, and very much aware of the news. It could not have been reported in any detail in the U.S.

I understand about having a young family and less awareness of the news. I remember being in that situation myself.

[murielm99]

6. On reflection,

I do remember something about this. It was underreported, but I recall it now.

I did some looking around after my first post.

[bobthedrummer]

5. Vaguely recall a bit of a peep about this MASSACRE Judi Lynn, in October 1968 daily contact with

many returning Vietnam vets who spoke of their experiences took precedence for me and many others.

K&R

[Judi Lynn]

3. How the Guardian reported Mexico City's Tlatelolco massacre of 1968

How the Guardian reported Mexico City's Tlatelolco massacre of 1968

Sports reporter John Rodda was in Mexico City in 1968 to cover the Olympics. But on 2 October he found himself ducking a hail of bullets, then filed the only firsthand report in a British newspaper of the shootings of student protesters

Richard Nelsson
Wednesday 11 November 2015 23.17 EST

. . .

Mexico City, October 3
The meeting was held in the Square of the Three Cultures. The student speakers were in a balcony on a block of flats about three floors up. They looked out on to a vast square which on the one side has a church and the building of the Foreign Ministry, which must be about twenty storeys high, and on the right a block of buildings and the Polytechnic, which has been occupied by the police during the present disturbances.

The meeting was due to begin at five o’clock. I got there at that time, but they were late starting. The meeting differed from last Friday’s in that there were many banners and placards being held by the students. As the crowd filed into the square through its main thoroughfare there were armed police on the balcony of the Polytechnic. They were getting a lot of abuse from the students but they took it with a smile and when the students screwed up their pamphlets and tossed them up to the police, the policemen read them.

I then moved among the crowds, going towards the block of flats and through a back staircase. I made my way to the balcony where the speakers were. The balcony, about the length of a cricket pitch and about four yards wide, had entrances on each side. You had to present your press card to a chap at a rope to get in. I moved over to the left of the balcony and got into conversation with one of the girl students who could speak a little English. I speak no Spanish.

Green flares
She asked for my estimate of the crowd. I said it was 5,000, which I think now was on the conservative side. There was suddenly a burst of loud applause as a group began to walk into the square with a large banner. I asked her what this was all about and she said that was the union of railway workers “who are supporting us.” “We now have the petrol workers, the telephonists, and the electricity workers’ unions supporting us.”

More:
http://www.theguardian.com/cities/from-the-archive-blog/2015/nov/12/guardian-mexico-tlatelolco-massacre-1968-john-rodda