The Real Haunted Stories Of Tlatelolco Massacre

On Tuesday, October 2nd, Mexico will commemorate the 1968 Tlaulco massacre, while many today see the quashing of the dissident student movement 50 years ago in Mexico City as a turning point for democracy. It really predicted one of the most restrictive decades in recent history. The government misused its power to jail and remove hundreds of young people in the 1970s and 80s in a desperate attempt to eliminate a Marxist threat in the Republic.

The tragic events of October 2968 began in July when the anti Riot police unit, known as the Granaderos, entered the campus of the private Instituto Polytechnico National IP N to break up a fight between IPN students and a group from Isaac Ochotaina High School. Incorporated into the public National Autonomous University of Mexico. Both colleges collaborated to dissolve the controversial police unit due to the officer's harshness.

The following days saw multiple marches that brought together public and private students and professors for the first time. These protests became violent, with Grenaderos again accused of using excessive force. Many universities across the nation supported the dissident movement in Mexico City as protests, marches and police clashes continued throughout the month. Hostility toward President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz and the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI. Increased federal officials were embarrassed by the student demonstrations timing.

Mexico's officials hoped the October 12th Olympic Games in the capital would demonstrate the countries economic and social progress after World War 2. As protests grew, the authorities became increasingly intransigent. The students had a major issue with Ordaz, who ordered the army and police to break up sit insurance at UNAM and IPN, resulting in violence and numerous arrests. Barrows resigned as Uname rector on September 23rd after tanks dismantled a camp in the Zocalo Main Plaza.

Unam rector Javier Barros Sierra led 50,000 students in a peaceful demonstration against government repression and academic autonomy violations on August 1st. Protests in Europe and the anti Vietnam War movement in the. Inspired, idealistic young men and women to speak out against their government on October 2nd. Thousands of students, professors. Workers. And others peacefully gathered in the Plaza de la Tres Culturas in platelocco, the Capitals Plateauco neighborhood, to hear National Strike

Committee members speak from the third floor balcony of the after the demonstration began. An army chopper tossed a flare into the gathering of 10,000, sparking shooting from the apartment building's upper levels. Soldiers who had moved into the Plaza from its boundaries fired on a terrified throng, fleeing the violence. After 30 minutes of shooting dead littered the square, soldiers swiftly took them away, searching the buildings and surrounding area and detaining hundreds of individuals, many of whom were sent to detention camps.

In her acclaimed book massacre in Mexico, journalist Elena Ponutofska refuted the government's 32 death toll, which has long been questioned. While versions disagree on what happened that day and who fired the first shots from the apartment complex, it is clearly known that government infiltrators were at the. Photographs and recordings eventually identified individuals as Olympia Battalion personnel.

An elite anti terrorism unit created to secure the Olympics. It is unclear whether they fired the rounds from the apartment block to confuse and irritate the troops. But there was no cooperation between the army and the Olympia Battalion on that tragic day. No firearms linked to accused agitators. Who Mexican officials say started the shooting were recovered in the apartment tower. Since the print and broadcast media worked with the Diaz or Das administration to portray the students as the aggressors, the outcry against the slaughter was low.

Plateauco resolved student protests and ensured a smooth Olympic Games. The Slaughter's aftermath has shaped Mexico's social and political life. Mexico's dirty war was Diaz Ordaz and his successors, Luis Echeverria and Jose Lopez. Portillo is brutal sweep of left wing students. And suspected guerrilla organizations. Government troops committed 1200 forced disappearances, widespread torture and likely unlawful killings with US support. Change would come.

The 1990s liberalized Mexico's restricted economy and gave the press greater independence, although the PRI remained in power until the end. President Vicente Fox of the Conservative National Action Party, Pan pledged a truth Commission to probe 19 Sixties, 70s and 80s atrocities in 2000, but it never materialized and no one was convicted. High Court justices have rejected recent attempts to charge former president Echavaraya, who was Inter.

During the 1968 massacre and others accused of directing soldiers to fire on students. Many explanations have been proposed about the government's role in the Tateloko massacre. Due to a lack of documented proof and a whitewash of the truth, nothing has been proven and likely never will be. However, the occasion reminds Mexicans to be aware of the vulnerability of their democracy and hold administrations accountable.