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(Expansion) - Mexico commemorates on Wednesday 51 years of the massacre of the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, in the Tlatelolco neighborhood in Mexico City, considered the worst student massacre in the country's history, committed by the federal government itself.
On October 2, 1968 - according to the accounts of the time - security forces shot and acted against hundreds of young people gathered at the scene to demonstrate against other actions of the authorities, which resulted in dozens of deaths.
To date, the exact number of dead or missing is unknown. The figures vary: while some versions speak of 25 fatalities, others place the total above 300 people. Just this weekend, the newspaper El Universal published an investigation by Susana Zavala, an academic from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), who reports that from July to December of that year there were 78 dead and 31 missing.
Plaza de las Tres Culturas, in Tlatelolco, Mexico City. (RONALDO SCHEMIDT / AFP / Getty Images)
At 51 years of those events, we present key moments in the history of the movement that gave life to the slogan “October 2 is not forgotten!”.
1. The conflict began on July 22, 1968, when security forces intervened in a confrontation between high school students. There were several detainees, the uniformed took Vocational 5 and there was excessive use of force against young people.
2. Days later, from July 26 to 29, several schools entered into work stoppage and students from the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) called for a march to protest against the reaction of the authorities and demand more democracy; Students from the UNAM and the University of Chapingo joined the march. And once again, the government sent police to control the protesters.
3. At that time, Mexico was preparing to host the Olympic Games - which were held from October 12 to 27 - so that the government of PRI Gustavo Díaz Ordaz (1964-1970) was concerned that a student conflict would damage The image of the country.
4. By then the National Strike Council (CNH) had also emerged, consisting of students from UNAM, IPN and other universities. Subsequently, teachers, parents, political activists, intellectuals, workers and citizens joined in, who considered that the authorities limited the freedom of expression and action of society.
Among the specific demands were the dismissal of police chiefs, the disappearance of shock groups and the elimination of the crime of "social dissolution", which justified arbitrary detentions.
5. On August 27, students protesting in the capital Zócalo decided to lower the national flag and place a small red and black flag. By dawn on the 28th, Army tanks left the National Palace to disperse the protesters.
6. On September 13, hundreds of students marched through Mexico City with handkerchiefs in their mouths as a message so that the police would not pretext the provocation of the protesters to repress them. The act was named "The March of Silence."
7. On September 18, elements of the Army took Ciudad Universitaria, the main campus of UNAM. According to an account of the magazine Nexos, the authorities justified the decision on the grounds that there were buildings "illegally occupied by extra-university groups outside academic purposes." The military also took IPN facilities.
8. The Chamber of Deputies, then directed by Luis Farías, had accused the rector of the UNAM, Javier Barros Sierra, of leading the student movement against the Government. Barros Sierra submitted his resignation, but was not accepted; On September 25, the UNAM Governing Board expressly asked him to remain in charge of the university.
9. On October 2, a rally was convened in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in the Mexican capital. Hundreds of students gathered in the neighborhood of Tlatelolco. While this was happening, the Army monitored that there were no riots.
Around six o'clock in the afternoon, after the ceremony was over, a helicopter flew over the square and fired flares, which has been interpreted as a signal for the snipers of the Olimpia Battalion, located in the Chihuahua building, to open fire against protesters.
Then the young people's attempts to flee and confusion began. Different testimonies indicate that some neighbors opened the doors of their apartments to protect the boys, although the military began searches and arrests that lasted until the first hours of October 3. The number of victims remains unclear, as is the number of wounded and detained. Some estimates indicate that there were 700 injured and more than 5,000 arrested.
10. In the following days, while different authorities tried to justify military action, under arguments such as armed students, there were also protests against the Government. The writer Octavio Paz, for example, resigned from the Mexican embassy in India.
At the same time, some student leaders maintained contact with representatives of the Government and, according to the Nexos count, informed their colleagues that the Executive intended to close public institutions of higher education.
11. On Saturday, October 12, President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz inaugurated the Olympic Games. At that time, a group of protesters launched a dove-shaped black kite on the presidential box, in repudiation for the October 2 massacre. In November a lucrative act was held in honor of the victims and, by December 4, the students returned to class.
12. Thereafter, what happened on October 2 became an emblematic event of Mexico in the second half of the twentieth century, an issue that united several opponents of the Government, and the starting point of the political reforms that eliminated the crime of "social dissolution", opened the regime to plurality and, in the long run, allowed more social participation in public life.
Tlatelolco Massacre