Tlatelolco massacre

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Memorial stele from 1993 in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas with a poem by Rosario Castellanos

The Tlatelolco massacre ( Matanza de Tlatelolco ) on October 2, 1968 was the mass murder of 200 to 300 peaceful students in the Tlatelolco neighborhood of Mexico City . It took place at the height of the student protests at the time and was perpetrated by the Mexican military and other security forces. The mass murder was triggered by snipers from the presidential guard posted on rooftops who targeted police officers. Believing they were being attacked by the demonstrators, the police then opened fire on the crowd. The background was hushed up for a long time, and official investigations were not carried out until 1998.

course

The massacre occurred ten days before the opening of the Olympic Games on October 2 in Mexico City in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in the Tlatelolco district. President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz (PRI) had the student demonstrations bloodily suppressed by military tanks and the secret police . The number of dead is stated contradictingly: Officially, there is talk of a few dozen, the other side speaks of thousands, the actual number remains unknown; Research has shown 34 known and 10 unnamed fatalities. With the massacre, the PRI government forced the termination of the strike by the students of the Autonomous University (UNAM) and the Polytechnic Institute (IPN) and halted the social movements that resulted from it.

Processing of the events

In 1993 a memorial stele was erected in Tlatelolco Square, which names some victims and contains a memorial poem by Rosario Castellanos . The poem expresses the poet's indignation at the silence the day after the massacre.

An official review only began in 1998 under President Ernesto Zedillo ; it was effectively hampered by government agencies. Only under President Vicente Fox , who was no longer provided by the PRI , documents that had previously been kept secret became accessible. The most important result was that the shooting was, as long suspected, deliberately triggered by special forces of the Presidential Guard, who were positioned on the roofs of the houses surrounding the Plaza de las Tres Culturas.

On June 30, 2006, the then 84-year-old former interior minister and later president Luis Echeverría Álvarez was arrested on suspicion of genocide as the person primarily responsible for the massacre . He was placed under house arrest until the trial. At the beginning of July 2006 the proceedings were discontinued due to the statute of limitations.

At the end of September 2018, shortly before the 50th anniversary of the massacre, the Mexican state admitted that the massacre was a "state crime".

Film adaptations

  • Jorge Fons : Rojo Amanecer , Mexico 1989 (German: Red Dawn )
  • Carlos Mendoza: “Tlatelolco: las claves de la masacre”, Mexico 2002, documentary
  • Carlos Bolado: Tlatelolco, verano del 68 , Mexico 2012, drama [1]

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Dario Azzellini: Mexico 1968 - Massacre for undisturbed Olympiad. Telepolis, December 28, 2001, accessed October 3, 2018 .
  2. Official report of the Ministry of the Interior of October 2, 1968 ( Memento of January 31, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on November 7, 2011. (PDF; 1.6 MB; Spanish)
  3. Kate Doyle: The Dead of Tlatelolco. The National Security Archive, October 1, 2006, accessed October 3, 2018 .
  4. Elisa Kriza: social and gender relations in the Mexican '68 literature . In: Ute Franz (Ed.): Women in Research 2018: Contributions from young Bamberg scientists . tape 10 . University of Bamberg Press, Bamberg 2019, ISBN 978-3-86309-639-7 , pp. 173-190 , doi : 10.20378 / irbo-53943 .
  5. Declaration by Jaime Rochín del Rincón, head of the Comisión Ejecutiva de Atención a Victimas (CEAV), on behalf of Roberto Cifrián, deputy head of the Secretaría de Gobernación (SeGob): Represión en 68 fue crimen de estado: Segob . In: El Universal, September 25, 2018, accessed November 5, 2018.
  6. Tlatelolco: las claves de la masacre ( Memento of the original from November 24, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Google Video, 75 min. (Spanish) Retrieved October 10, 2011. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / video.google.com