Massacre of Tlatelolco

The massacre of Tlatelolco , so known as the night of Tlatelolco (according to the book of the Mexican écrivaine Elena Poniatowska), took place in the afternoon and the night of October 2nd, 1968, in the place of the three cultures in the section of Tlatelolco of the town of Mexico City, ten days before the celebration of the plays olymic of summer of Mexico City. The number of deaths is prone to controversy: some estimate that there were thousands of deaths, but certain sources pay between 200 and 300 dead. The government sources indicate " 4 died, 20 blessés". The exact number of arrest is also discussed.

Massacre

1968 was one year of world disorders, but its outcome took with the Mexico a tragic turn. The October 2nd 1968, at the beginning of evening, the Mexican army opened fire on students gathered on the place of the Three Cultures of Tlatelolco to Mexico City. The exact number of victims is still not known precisely, but this event put an end brutally to more than three months of student's dispute.

At a few days of opening of the Olympic Games organized in 1968 in Mexico, the government of the president Gustavo Díaz Ordaz decided to buy in blood the pax olimpica . The commonly allowed assessment evokes more than 300 dead, thesis relayed by the writer Octavio Paz in the Labyrinth of loneliness . However it forever be possible to know the exact number of victims, those having been transported in military camps after slaughter. Witnesses of the time report that the shooting would have caused by members of the police force, disseminated within the hundreds of students gathered on the initiative of the CNH - Consejo Nacional de Huelga . Carrying a foulard blanc with the hand to avoid being taken for targets, these police officers would have opened fire on the army which framed the meeting in order to make degenerate this demonstration and giving to the mode the opportunity to finish some with the claims coeds. Indeed, if this public meeting were of peaceful nature, of many confrontations violent one had already taken place before between the university world and the police force. A blur surrounds still today the responsibilities for the personalities of the time as for knowing from where the order came.

Consequences

The Noche Triste , as call it the Mexicans, was the point of organ of a movement started three months before. The dispute was mainly the fact of the students, although those were supported very largely by the new middle-classes of the country. The influence of May 68 in France on the Mexican events is obvious, as a slogan of the time shows it It is interdict to prohibit , formula headlight of the Parisian revolts.

Many experts agree to say that 1968 were also in Mexico the beginning of the questioning of the mode with sole party - PRI, Partido Revolucionario Institucional (member of the international Socialist) - in place since 1929. The economic growth from which the country as from 1945 profited is not accompanied in parallel by measurements by political expansion, installing a faintness growing in the Mexican company. This questioning culminated in 2000, with the first political alternation since 71 years, acquired by the president Vicente Fox - SIDE, Partido Acción Nacional , (liberal right-hand side) Noche de Tlatelolco , title of the book of the journalist Elena Poniatowska, remains still today the symbol of the repression exerted by the PRI during these many years.

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