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

Good reads:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016136826

[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.