Students Confront the Government: The Massacre at Tlatelolco
Lesson by Octavio Madigan Ruiz, Amy Sanders, and Meredith Sommers, Resource Center of the Americas
August 27, 1968 student demonstration on Juárez Avenue. Marcel·lí Perelló
In 1968, students throughout the world challenged their governments’ policies and practices. Students organized demonstrations in Egypt, Italy, Yugoslavia, the United States, Uruguay, and France. Mexico was no exception. Students organized to protest the lack of true democracy in Mexico. The political system had been dominated by one party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), for decades. Every president of Mexico since 1929 had been from the same party. (This did not change until Vicente Fox and the National Action Party (PAN) broke the cycle in the 2000 election.) Every effort students made to raise a voice of protest was met with repression.
The Mexican student movement galvanized popular discontent, at least for a brief period of time. The students also gained worldwide attention and exposed vast contradictions in the government and other institutions. The Mexican government was threatened by the burgeoning democratic movement as the world’s gaze shifted to the upcoming Olympics in Mexico City. In an effort to silence the dissent, the police and army occupied the university campus.
The tension began in July, but the climax came on October 2, 1968, ten days before the Olympic games were to begin in Mexico City. On this date, the police and army fired on thousands of demonstrators. Hundreds were killed, thousands were beaten and jailed, and the government did its best to sweep the incident under the rug.
The tragic incident of October 1968 took place in the same location as the Spanish massacre of the Aztecs at Tlatelolco almost 500 years before. This lesson, organized as a “readers’ theater,” contains narrative reading, pauses for discussion, and a writing assignment. Primary source materials, printed in italics, are used almost exclusively. Most of the documents, eyewitness accounts, and testimonies are from the book Massacre in Mexico by Elena Poniatowska, a journalist and writer of testimonial literature. Her brother was killed during the riots in 1968.
Grade Level: High school
Time Required: One class period
Objectives and Summary of Activity
To analyze the policies and practices of Mexico’s ruling party.
To analyze conflict situations and brainstorm when and how to alleviate tensions
To compare testimonies and documents of students, government officials, and observers to recognize their divergent views of political change and democracy
The reading opens with a news flash about the October 2 student massacre. Students then read a chronological account of events, including a description of a silent march held on September 13, 1968, and a poem written to honor those who died on October 2. Also included are the students’ demands, the government’s responses, and comments from a variety of people who either were involved in or observed the events.
1. Narrator’s Announcement
Attention! Attention! Serious fighting has been reported in Mexico City. Last night, October 2, 1968, police and federal troops fired on university students when they were having a demonstration in the plaza at Tlatelolco (tlot-e-LOL-co). The government reports that 29 people are dead and 80 are wounded. A spokesperson for the students says at least 500 were killed on the spot and 1000 are seriously wounded. How did this happen? Who is responsible? What is the accurate number of deaths? Why did this happen? Let’s go back to the beginning.
2. Reader In Mexico
in the mid-1960s, students complained that they had no voice in the government nor in the universities they attended. When they did try to speak out, the police brutally attached them. When students had a strike at the National University in 1966, federal troops were sent in to restore order. What began as a grievance in 1968 quickly became a movement that attracted tens of thousands of Mexicans who were discontent with the government. The students focused their attention on the police, the corruption in the government and the unwillingness of the government to meet with them. Basically the student movement was an attempt to confront the lack of true democracy in Mexico.
3. Reader
The following petition was issued by a committee of students in the summer of 1968. It addressed their concerns regarding police brutality and the issue of impunity, which means to not be punished for human rights violations. Students sent the petition to Mexican President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz and distributed it widely throughout Mexico City. This is what the petition requested: Six-point petition:
Disband the riot police force
Dismiss top police officials
Restore autonomy, or self-rule, to the National University of Mexico
Free all political prisoners
Repeal the anti-subversive article in the criminal code which punishes Mexicans for challenging the status quo
Compensate the wounded and the families of all those killed in clashes with the police
© 1998 Resource Center of the Americas (www.americas.org). Reprinted with permission from Octavio Ruiz et al., Many Faces of Mexico (San Francisco, Calif.: Resource Center of the Americas, 1998).