1968 Mexican Student Movement, The
by Donald J. Mabry, Professor Emeritus of History, Mississippi State University.
On July 22, 1968, two rival groups of male adolescent students
fought each other in the Ciudadela neighbourhood of Mexico City; the next day the city
government responded by sending policemen to stop the accompanying vandalism and to arrest
the perpetrators. These riot police (granaderos) attacked the students so
ferociously that protests were lodged. No one could have foreseen that both of these
testosterone-driven events were the opening scene of the drama of the 1968
University-State conflict which climaxed in the Tlatelolco massacre. On October 2nd
of that same year, Mexican government forces fired upon a large crowd gathered in the
Tlatelolco plaza, killing scores, if not hundreds, of people. The connections lay in the
history of student behavior, the nature of the government of President Gustavo Díaz
Ordaz, and anxiety concerning the Olympic Games to be held in Mexico in October, 1968, the
first time the Olympiad had ever been held in a Latin American nation.(1)
More and more students, particularly porras (gangs), had
been engaging in various acts of violence and the government had responded with warnings
and then with the deployment of regular and riot police, but these appeared to be minor
events. Fights between preparatory students, who were part of the National Autonomous
University of Mexico (Universidad Autónoma de México or UNAM) system, on the one hand,
and vocational school students, who were part of the less prestigious National Polytechnic
Institute (Instituto Politécnico Nacional or IPN) system, on the other, were not
uncommon. Males of that age sometimes fight to "prove" their masculinity and
sometimes fight because of class tensions. Both were true on July 22nd. In the
months before that date, there had been instances of students stealing, sometimes
destroying, city buses as a protest about fare prices or the quality of service. Porras
had become an all too familiar phenomenon within UNAM, but were difficult to control or
abolish because UNAM's autonomy since 1929 made it off limits to police except in rare
instances. Some of the porras were backed by powerful politicians. The protracted
UNAM strike of 1966 in which a rector (president) had been ousted and the university
police had been abolished did not produce much violence.(2)
None of this was atypical of 20th century Mexican
history. What was different was that the Mexican government had become more willing to use
force to suppress student violence.
For Mexico, 1968 was a special year, one in which it would host the
Olympics during October 5-27 to demonstrate to the world how modernized and civilized it
was. The Mexican economy had been booming for years and was to be displayed so the world
would know that the nation had arrived. That this would be the first time the Olympics had
ever been held in a Spanish-speaking country gave the nation a special claim to prominence
among Latin American countries and allowed it to surpass Spain itself. The government
spared no expense to provide excellent facilities for the athletes, retainers,
journalists, and others who would flock to the country. Realizing that Mexico would not
fare well in the medal competition and sensitive to the ancient charges that the nation
was barbaric, government leaders arranged a cultural Olympics that would allow Mexicans to
shine and give the Mexican Olympics a special tone. Not all of the $140 million dollars
spent on the Olympics was to be a one-shot affair, for many of the buildings would be used
later by the general population for housing and recreation; the money was also a capital
investment in the tourist business, an important source of profit and foreign exchange.
President Díaz Ordaz and other government officials believed, no
doubt, that hosting the Olympics was the most important act of the year, if not of
decades, and that nothing could be allowed to interfere with this great enterprise.
Believing this, they assumed that all other Mexicans were equally concerned with the
Olympics, that the consuming passion of the organizers and promoters was shared by
students, workers, peasants, and provincials. Thus, all acts were seen through the filter
of the Olympic Games; all words and events were linked to this great celebration of youth.
But Mexican officials differed little from their counterparts in the
United States, France, and other nations of the Western world; they did not recognize the
causes of nor understand the rationale behind the youth cult flowering in the 1960s and
the emergence of the iconoclastic New Left. Youthful rebellion was nothing new in Mexico,
as the long history of university student strikes demonstrated and as many in the
government knew from having once participated themselves. Mexico in 1968 seemed to be
riding a wave of prosperity and the government was proudly proclaiming to the world that
the Mexican Revolution worked, so how could the managers of the miracle understand that
affluence brought guilt and rebellion, that middle- and upper-strata youngsters felt
ashamed that they were doing so well while the bulk of their fellow citizens suffered from
privation and despair, that they chafed under the yoke of the contradictions between what
schools, the media, and government officials had told them and the reality they saw around
them? Even though the rebellion of the young was evident in the United States, even at
elite schools such as Columbia, or in France during the May Revolution, these seemed
irrelevant to Mexico, for the latter was moving upward and onward, and Mexican students
could be as "decadent" as those in France or the United States.
Although students had challenged governmental authority in years
past and the government had employed violence as a tool to suppress open dissent, neither
had gone as far as they did in 1968. Usually, university student conflicts with
governmental authorities had been confined to university neighborhoods and involved only
minor skirmishes; in 1968, students were much more violent and they and their allies
demonstrated and fought in widespread sections of Mexico City. Students vilified President
Díaz Ordaz by name, breaking the longstanding tradition of holding the President as
sacrosanct. The national government, which controlled Mexico City, not only used the tough
granaderos but also the national army. The conflict escalated, partly because
neither side was playing by the rules. Non-students also entered the conflict, perhaps
unnerving the government.(3)
The Federación Nacional de Estudiantes Técnicos (FNET) staged a
protest march on July 26th, a move that would have been symbolic but harmless
except that march passed by Alameda Park in downtown Mexico City where the Central
Nacional de Estudiantes Democrátiticos, a pro-Castro group, was also holding a rally.
CNED leaders praised the Cuban Revolution and called for a similar revolt in Mexico.
Instead of proceeding to the IPN campus, the FNET marchers stopped to hear the harangues.
No one can prove whether students began to vandalize neighbouring businesses or the granaderos
and other police stationed in the area attacked the demonstrators. What is known is that
students and police fought each other as the students fled through the narrow streets
towards the National Palace and then to the old university quarter a few blocks from the
Palace. The students burned a bus and overturned other buses to form barricades. Students
and police were injured and some students were taken to jail.
Both sides responded in ritualistic fashion. The government asserted
that Communists, foreigners, and outside agitators were responsible. Students from the
IPN, the Normal School, and the national agricultural school denied the accusations and
demanded that the government release and indemnify the arrested, suppress porras
and some student groups, expel trouble making students, and abolish the granadero
corps, all predictable in light of events. Further, these students demanded repeal of
Article 145 and 145 bis of the penal code, a vaguely-worded statute which the
government used to imprison selected opponents, particularly leftists. Only this last was
unusual since no participant had been arrested on political grounds. Communist students
also argued for the repeal of this law but few of their other demands matched those of the
IPN-led group. In spite of this rhetoric and continued scuffling on July 29th,
some resolution might have been achieved had the government inadvertently increased the
size of the protest and altered its nature by employing the national army.
The army was used because the various other security forces were
having little success in bringing the students under control. Much of the fighting was
occurring only a few blocks from the National Palace, too close for comfort for those who
ruled. Early on July 30th, an army officer, frustrated by the inability of his
troops to enter the precincts of the National Preparatory School #1, the historic prep
school from whom generations of national leaders had graduated, ordered the firing of a
bazooka to blow down its wooden doors. With that act, students and faculty of UNAM who had
not been involved joined the movement. Strikes and protests quickly spread to other
universities in the city and across the nation. To many, it appeared that the government
had little regard for higher education and the national tradition that UNAM was off-limits
to public security forces.
On August 1st, President Díaz Ordaz, speaking from
Guadalajara, promised that his government would engage in a dialogue with the students.
For the next few weeks, both sides would negotiate the agenda and the place for the
dialogue while trying to gain a better bargaining position. Javier Barros Sierra, rector
of UNAM, led a protest march of 100,000 persons through the city on August 1st.
Not to be outdone, IPN students and faculty held their own mass march four days later. To
create a united front, students from these institutions and others organized a National
Strike Council, an organization so large and unwieldy that it could never effectively
represent student interests.
The CNH led a 300,000-person march through the central city on
August 13th to emphasize its level of support. When no progress occurred on the
dialogue front, the CNH led another mass march on August 27th to the Zócalo,
the central plaza bordered by the National Palace, the National Cathedral, and the city
hall. Demonstrations and celebrations were common in the Zócalo for it was physically at
the very heart of the national government. Had this demonstration been like others,
relatively short in duration, nothing significant would have occurred. Instead, the CNH
leadership decided to leave 5,000 people there to "hold" the plaza, an act which
could be and was seen as a direct confrontation with the authority of the national
government. The movement had gone too far. Soldiers, police, and firemen retook the
Zócalo in the early hours of August 28th, using force indiscriminately. Díaz
Ordaz had made it clear that his government had been pushed to the limit. In case the
movement had not understood the meaning of the events of August 28th, he issued
a stern warning as part of his State of the Union address on September 1st.
Student leaders had not been paying attention or had overestimated how much popular
support they enjoyed, for the CNH had demanded, foolishly, that their dialogue with the
government take place in the Zócalo at the very hour the president would be delivering
his State of the Union address.
Both sides wanted to break the impasse, but only the government
could win. Students and their allies were part of the privileged sector of Mexican
society; most Mexicans did not enjoy the luxury of attending university. They had to
struggle daily to acquire the basic necessities. Although many of them probably hoped that
a day would come when their children or grandchildren could attend university and some of
them might sympathize with anti-government sentiment, they relied on the government to
maintain public order and provide social services. Students battling public security
forces was unlikely to appeal to them, and the government had, after all, agreed to
discuss the issues with the students. By September 13th, the CNH understood
that it could no longer risk a physical confrontation with the government and chose to try
to prove that the movement was still strong and to gain moral authority via a silent march
through the city. The government wisely ordered its forces to monitor the march and not
intervene unless the marchers clearly endangered public safety.
Pressure to end the student movement before the Olympics increased.
Foreign reporters were reporting the events, an embarrassment to Mexico. The marches and
street theatre would interfere with the athletic and cultural Olympics if they continued.
Too little progress was being made on starting the dialogue which might bring a speedy end
to the controversy. UNAM, located in the southern part of the city and near some major
Olympic venues, had become the headquarters of the movement, so, on September 18th,
the army invaded the campus, assaulting anyone in its way and arresting persons it hoped
were members of the CNH. Although few CNH members were arrested, the organization had to
yield its authority to its central coordinating committee; the government had successfully
begun the fragmentation of the movement and caused the protest resignation of Barros
Sierra on September 23rd.
The invasion of UNAM sparked a wave of violence and then the
military takeover of the IPN. Street battles between students and other dissidents, on the
one hand, and the army and the police, on the other, erupted on September 19th
and continued intermittently for days. Fighting became particularly intense near the IPN
campus and the Tlatelolco housing project. On September 23rd, the army took
control of the IPN as well. The CNH, which had planned to meet there, made Tlatelolco its
unofficial headquarters. Disoriented and on the defensive, the weakened movement did not
stop.
In hindsight, it is difficult to understand how the movement leaders
failed to read the signs that the patience of the government had ended. Soldiers in jeeps,
armored cars, and tanks guarded the main streets of the city which, ironically, were
bedecked with signs and banners proclaiming peace and brotherhood and welcoming the
Olympiad. Movement leaders had to move constantly to avoid arrest by soldiers and police.
The mass meeting in the Plaza of Three Cultures at Tlatelolco on September 27th
did not regenerate the excitement the movement had been enjoying for months, so the
leaders called for another mass meeting on October 2nd to be followed by a
march to the IPN. That Díaz Ordaz named his two representatives for the dialogue on
September 28th meant that the government believed that it had the upper hand.
It had no intention of allowing university people to dictate terms. To some extent the
student leaders realized this. They publically demanded that the army leave UNAM before
the dialogue began and that was done on September 30th ,but they also
publically promised that they would not interfere with the Olympic Games. Quietly, they
began meeting with the governmental representatives.
In the late afternoon of October 2nd, the crowd began to
gather at the Plaza of Three Cultures to hold still another rally and then a march to the
IPN to protest the continued occupation by the army. The atmosphere was tense, for
soldiers and their equipment were visibly stationed near the plaza. By 6 P.M. thousands of
people, some residents of the neighbouring apartment buildings who were curious about the
event had gathered in the historic plaza. Shortly thereafter, soldiers invaded the plaza,
shooting into the crowd. Government agents, secreted in the plaza, began arresting as many
of the leaders as they could. The massacre lasted for hours. No one knows how many people
died and estimates vary according to the politics of the person making them. What was
surely dead was the student movement. What was alive was the Mexican Olympics which
thrilled the world and gave new prestige to the nation. Those who attended or watched via
domestic television saw the Mexico the government wanted seen.(4)
In spite of official propaganda Mexico was an emerging democracy
which sought social justice, the 1968 student movement revealed the system for what it
was: authoritarian, sometimes brutal, and primarily interested in making the rich richer.
In spite of a federalist, democratic constitution, the nation was ruled centrally from
Mexico City and the government's political party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party
(PRI in Spanish), "won" almost every election. Social services were dispensed
according to political imperatives not need and income disparities were increasing. The
misuse of force had precipitated the mass demonstrations and the continued reliance upon
repression only exacerbated problems. Having mishandled the dispute and faced with
international embarrassment, the Díaz Ordaz government used the strongest tactic it knew
to stop the movement.
Previously immune from governmental violence, the upper and middle
classes learned through their children that they would be attacked if they questioned the
system too closely. Scholars, both domestic and foreign, began criticizing the system and
calling for democratic reform. The best they could do in the short term was a
"leftist"president, Luis Echeverría, who promised reform and even delivered on
a few of his promises, and a little more money put into education, including the creation
of the Metropolitan Autonomous University to reduce the enrollment pressure on UNAM. In
the long term, the student movement made it more difficult for the government to defend
the status quo. Change came slowly and was caused by many factors, including severe
economic crises and better mass communications, but change did come. In 1997, PRI lost
control of the lower house of Congress, the Mexico City government, and the governorships
of several states.
1 See Donald J. Mabry, The Mexican University
and the State: Students Conflicts, 1910-1971 (College Station, Texas A&M University Press, 1982).
2 Ernesto Flores Zavala, El estudiante inquieto
(los movimientos estudiantiles 1966-1970). (Mexico City: UNAM, 1972), 113-120;
"Bus Fares and Student Demonstrations in Mexico," Minerva 5 (1967),
301-3; Fausto Burgueno, "El movimiento estudiantil en la provincia," in Juvencio
Wing, ed., Los estudiantes, la educación y la política (Mexico City: Editorial
Nuestro Tiempo, 1971), 46-53; Gaceta, April, 1968; Carmen Cira Guitán Berniser,
"Las porras: estudio de caso de un grupo de presión universitaria," Thesis,
UNAM. 1975.
3 This chapter draws upon Mabry, The University
and the State and the voluminous materials consulted to produce that work. A list of
the most pertinent materials for the 1968 student movement can be found on page 248 of
that book; additional sources are cited elsewhere in the book or listed in the
bibliography.
4 Although the government claimed that snipers had
fired first and that the military was only responding to protect the people, the
videotapes of ABC and NBC News for October 3, 1968 tell a different story. They can be
consulted in the Vanderbilt University Television Archives.
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