Social movement
October 2, 1968 - Student demonstration in Tlatelolco, Mexico.
Context, place, date and historical data
Date October 2, 1968
Location: Mexico City, Mexico
In July 1968, during the government of President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, a series of demonstrations and student marches began in Mexico City that criticized the government's authoritarianism, supported the protests around the world, asked for university autonomy to be respected, and demanded freedom. of political prisoners. The UNAM students were joined by those from the National Polytechnic Institute and all the educational centers of Mexico City; then teacher associations and unions until it became a great social movement.
Process of deindividualization
The Mexican state that characterized the movement as the attempt to overthrow the government, establish a communist regime as part of a Subversive Plan of International Projection and criminalized it, arguing that its participants were terrorists, criminals or a danger to national security. For this reason, it was continuously repressed during its course and in order to end it, on October 2, 1968.
On October 2 of that year, a demonstration
was called in the Plaza of the Three Cultures in
Tlatelolco. The movement was already declining with many of its leaders jailed, but the social environment was very tense 10 days after the start of the Olympics. A few minutes after the demonstration began, with the leaders who were free and a speaker on the third floor of the Chihuahua Building, a Mexican army helicopter launches flares over the crowd. With this signal, the military, paramilitaries and snipers open fire on the 5,000 protesters, mostly students. The death toll is unknown to date, but is between 300 and 500, with more than 2,000 detainees. This was the end of the student movement, the Olympic Games were held 10 days later in Mexico City without incident.
In its 5th. Government report in 1969, 11 months later, President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz said "I fully assume personal, ethical, social, legal, political and historical responsibility for the government's decisions regarding the events of the past year." He considered that he had fulfilled his duty by "saving Mexico from communism", whose implementation was never one of the objectives of the student movement.
However, today to date that movement is remembered in Mexico and on October 2, 1968 it is not forgotten, since again students from different universities march against the government.
