Mexican students massacred by army in 1968, by gangs today
3,022 views · Published 6 October 2018 · 3:18 · Indexed 27 September 2026
Channel: AP Archive · 2018 · News & Politics
(1 Oct 2018) STORYLINE: Mexican students say powerful figures responsible for violence still operate with impunity, as the country marks the 50th anniversary of a deadly crackdown on student protests. When soldiers massacred as many as 300 people at a student protest in Mexico City's Tlatelolco plaza on Oct. 2, 1968, the killers wore uniforms. Today, students in Mexico say they are still under attack, but now from thugs, drug cartels, paramilitaries or rapists. Today's student activists - and even the graying veterans of the 1968 democracy movement - acknowledge they now have free speech, something the '68 generation fought for. But they say the impunity remains the same; nobody was ever convicted for the 1968 killings. As Mexico marks the 50-year anniversary of Tlatelolco on Tuesday, the massacre remains something of an open wound: Nobody knows exactly how many died when soldiers opened fire on a peaceful demonstration, and it wasn't until last week that a government agency acknowledged for the first time that it was "a state crime". "They took out a gun and started shooting," recalls Enrique Espinosa of that day 50 years ago when he witnessed gunmen opening fire against the crowd, and who at 69 remains tall and thin just as he appeared in a famous 1968 photo showing student protesters stripped to their underwear and held at gunpoint by soldiers against a wall in a Tlatelolco apartment building. "Everybody panicked. Most people started running. They ran one way, and they ran another," he said. Nor - say both those who survived the attack and the generation that has inherited their activist mantle - has the country learned crucial lessons from the tragedy, with nearly all the crimes of today similarly going unresolved and unpunished, by both state and non-state actors. With the exception of a few charred bone fragments, nobody has ever found the bodies of 43 students at a rural teachers' college who were kidnapped by police and turned over to a drug gang in September 2014 - another grim anniversary that Mexico marked in recent days with no sign of resolution in sight. The students from the Ayotzinapa teacher's college were never seen again. Despite the governmental Victims' Commission's recent acknowledgement of the massacre as a "state crime that continued beyond Oct. 2 with arbitrary arrests and torture" and a pledge for reparations, justice remains elusive. "Luis Echeverria is still (free) in his home," said Epigmenio Ibarra, a journalist turned documentarist, of the man who was president at the time. Times today are different in other ways. In 1968 students struggled against a monolithic government that presided over a booming economy and was at the height of its power. Just a few days after the Tlatelolco massacre Mexico hosted the Olympic Games. While the games were marked by dissent -US sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in a Black power salute - today's situation is much more chaotic with a government that is barely in control of many aspects of society, battered by violent drug cartels that are often supported by rogue cops and mayors. Ironically, right before the 50th anniversary, students were back on the street demonstrating after thugs known as 'porros' attacked a student demonstration at the National Autonomous University in September. The violence shocked Mexicans who thought "porros" - ghost students who register but don't take classes, and instead serve as hired thugs for politicians - were a relic of the past, like the June 10, 1971, march in which "porros" killed at least a dozen students. But some things have improved. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter: https://twitter.com/AP_Archive Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/APArchives Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/APNews/ You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/39b63cb6e78439f9ba759db7e4b5bb4e
