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 Editorials | Issues | February 2008 
Spotlight on Mexican Massacre
 Reed Johnson - Los Angeles Times
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| | Mexican army troops escort arrested demonstrators in Mexico City, Oct. 3, 1968, after a night of violence between the army and protesters, mostly students. (AP) | 
| | Mexican army soldiers crouch with weapons ready in Mexico City's Tlatelolco district, in this October 2, 1968 photo. (AP) | | |
Mexico City - It was like Chicago '68, only much bloodier, or Tiananmen Square '89, only more shrouded in secrecy.
Even today there is no definitive count of how many pro-democracy demonstrators were slaughtered by Mexican army troops in the Tlatelolco zone of this capital on Oct. 2, 1968. Was the death toll a few dozen, as the government claimed? Or closer to 300, as some journalists reported? Did President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz approve the attack? No one knows for sure.
But finally, after decades of government stonewalling, Mexicans searching for answers to these questions have some place to turn: the Centro Cultural Universitario Tlatelolco, a cultural center dedicated to exploring the massacre, its antecedents and its aftermath.
Located in a striking mid-century Modernist office tower that formerly housed Mexico's Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, the center sits smack on the edge of the so-called Plaza of the Three Cultures, where the massacre occurred nearly 40 years ago. The centerpiece is a permanent multimedia exhibition that uses photos, archival film footage, music snippets, yellowed newspaper clippings, taped interviews, poster displays and art installations to tell the murky, tragic story. Many Mexicans say it's about time the country had a living memorial to this watershed event.
"It takes you by the throat. I think it's very true to reality, it's very true to what happened," said Elena Poniatowska, 75, who as a journalist helped expose the truth of the massacre with her 1971 bestselling book of survivors' testimonies, "La Noche de Tlatelolco," published in English as "Massacre in Mexico."
The massacre occurred on the eve of the 1968 Olympic Games, which the Mexican government hoped to use as a showcase for the country's economic growth and seeming stability. But this picturesque facade masked growing discontent with decades of autocratic, one-party rule and a persistent gap between haves and have-nots.
After gaining size and strength all that summer, the student-led protests culminated on the evening of Oct. 2, when thousands massed in the Plaza of the Three Cultures, so named because it contains Aztec ruins, a colonial-era church and modern apartment and office towers. The bloodshed began when troops creeping in among the ruins converged on the protesters, and snipers began shooting down on the plaza from surrounding buildings.
For a long time after Tlatelolco, there was no mention in school textbooks or state-controlled television of the massacre.
Then in July 2005, the Mexico City government and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (itself the site of major student protests in 1968) agreed to create a cultural center containing a memorial to the Oct. 2 massacre and the political context surrounding it.
Spread across two floors, the exhibition creates an aural and visual environment that immerses visitors in an incendiary era. One gallery wall bristles with colorful posters, witty bumper stickers and quasi-psychedelic handbills touting anti-government slogans.
One stark gallery, resembling a prison cell, is lined with police mug shots of arrested protesters, dozens if not hundreds of whom were tortured and "disappeared." |
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