40 years ago: the Tlatelolco Massacre

Will write in a while.
Spent last two days preparing special supplements for the anniversary.

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(I feel so old skool...)

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[this is from my autobiography; I was 14 then]

1968, an axial year

Back to Mexico [from the US] I was dedicated mostly to listening to rock music. I'd wear some Budweiser bermudas, a screaming green polyester t-shirt (not the yellow one, it attracted the bees) and I'd drank a beer while listening to my records.
I soon found out that rock had entered also into other buddies' heads. Noticeably, Rafael Pérez and a friend of his, Jorge Bush (sic), who were enthusiastic about Cream, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Jefferson Airplane, The Rolling Stones and a guy who played the guitar in a hallucinatory way: Jimi Hendrix. Soon my friend Víctor also passed from the world of Los Panchos to the other land of master Mick Jagger.
Someone would buy or borrow a record and we'd all go to listen to it under a console, 'cause nobody had a stereo with baffles. We'd put our heads under the furniture, to listen to the music at its maximum, while staring endlessly at the cover.
From then on, rock would be the main raw matter of my life's soundtrack. Probably in 1968 it would be “Hush”, by Deep Purple and “Summer Time Blues” (“there ain’t no cure for the summer time blues”).
From those months are also El Semanario de Milton, a sort of a local mini-newspaper, which I typewrote with carbon copies and sold for a peso, and my liking of bowling, which I started to practice asiduidly.
Víctor had learned how to drive and from time to time he stole his father's quite rattled 1958 Mercury 1958, in which we went nowhere, rolling for rolling's sake, listening to rock in La Pantera, Radio Exitos y Radio Capital. Who know why but we identified ourselves with a song by the Stones: “I Can Get No Satisfaction”. There was no satisfaction in Heaven on Earth, in the provincial and ultranationalist Mexico we had to live in, as fate.
What Víctor really wanted was a motorcycle. He had, with perfect fifteen year-old logic, an scheme to get it. We'd gather olympic stamps, which came in Camay and Ariel soaps. With 20 different ones, we'd win a washing machine. With the sale of the washer, we'd buy our moto.
It was obviously absurd to start buying soap, so we shoplifted them. We'd enter the supermarket with our mackinoff, and we'd fill our pockets with Camay soaps. We'd slash the Ariel bags to extract the metallic stamp. By the second day, we didn't know what to do with so many soap bars in our homes, so we started to break windows with them, or we'd go into a locale, ask for permission to go to the bathroom and fill the toilet with soap bars.
What was behind those little samples of senseless violence? Primery teenage rebellion. But also the wish, very big, to create chaos where there was an excessive order. An order whose rigid hierarchy had us at the lowest scale.
We soon had several 15 stamp pages. The 16th (worth for a mixer) never arrived. But we kept going to the supermarkets, we kept on stealing, we kept on breaking glasses. There was no peace in Heaven on Earth.
There was no peace. That was for sure. High School 4, where Víctor studied, was on strike. The papers spoke about student agitators. Photographs of burned buses appeared on them. Suddenly, the word "stundents" was pronounced with hatred on the TV. I remember a note in the femenine section of “Novedades”, which counseld mothers to explain to their young children that, even if their older brothers were students, that didn't mean they were bad.
We had a very remote idea of what the movement was about. We knew that the students were for the destitution of the police chief, for the elimination of the riot cops force and against an article of the Constitution. We knew that the cops had severely beaten the students. We perceived that adults were unanimously against the movement and that the youngsters were in favor. We knew about some jokes of the students against the President. And Víctor wanted to burn a bus.
The case is that Víctor, most of the rockers and myself declared ourselves simpathizers of the movement. Not Carlos and Rafael. Carlos, because his dad was a police officer; Rafael, because his dad was a judge and someone had fired against his house (years later, judge Pérez would say that those shots were, evidently, from provokers).
One afternoon, on August 27th. we were taking the sun in Rafael's roof when shouts coming from Melchor Ocampo St. called our attention. They came from busloads of students going to the Museum of Anthopology. There would be a march and you could tell it would be gigantic.
We discussed a bit over going or not. Rafa didn't want to. Víctor and I went to the Goethe and Melchor Ocampo corner. He made the stop to the first bus who was going by with the shout of "People Unite!" . I stood alone, in the corner, petrified, deciding whether to go to the march or not. I don't know how many minutes after, I started to walk towards Chapultepec.
There I found Víctor and we went to Reforma to wait for the group of High School 4 to get into the march. It was an impressive party, guided by figures symbolizing the union of students from IPN, UNAM, Chapingo and the people. A lot of kids, and everywhere. Everyone smiling. Everyone chanting funny things, that changed the meanings of songs, of commercials and of the everpresent government propaganda (every night hour, on Tv and the radio: "It's 9 o'clock, do you know where your children are"; "Make the city beautiful: go to the barber shop"; "To make family is to make fatherland").
For our surprise we started to meet known people: the quarterback of the Pointers, our flag-football team, the boyfriends of Rafael's sisters, "Snot" Maclovio who also played football with us. Prepa 4 arrived and we moved in. We were given banners. Mine had the image of a guy I didn't know: Demetrio Vallejo, railroad worker, union organizer, political prisoner. I demanded it be changed for one of Emiliano Zapata. We marched happily.
I remember that near cinema Diana, the girl marching next to me offered me water in a Pato Pascual soda bottle, that in front of the US embassy we shouted “Ho-Ho-Ho-Chi-Minh, Johnson, Johnson, chin-chin-chin” (I thought that hochimín were only three sylables that rhymed with chin-chin-chin [f... f... f...). It was fun to chant the cheerleadings of High School 4 and to look at the faces of the people who went out to see us. A lot, in rows of at least 3 persons.
Past the Columbus Circle, some one started to shout “¡Zó-ca-lo! ¡Zó-ca-lo!” [Main-square], when the demostration was programmed to finish in the Juárez monument. In fact, we were told, the head of the march was already in the Constitution Plaza. “We are about 700 thousand", said a boy.
Víctor and I exchanged glances. Zócalo sounded dangerous. Before arriving to the Horsey [Statue of Charles IV] we decided to get out. We went through the order-service group (medicine students, or at least boys and girls with robes) and started to walk home.
To our surprise, by Plaza Necaxa we found a great quantity of soldiers, in their tanks and armored vehicles. They looked at ease. We passed through them with the fear that they could read in our faces that we participated on the march.
At home, we found my father somewhat worried. We told him we had gone to "watch" the demonstration. He said no, that he was the one who went to see the demostration and saw us marching. I thought, then, that he'd beat the hell out of me. But his reaction was almost the contrary. He told us that it was a good thing what we had done, because Mexico needed a democracy, but told us to be careful.
I had the impression that Víctor would not have had the same luck, even if his parents were "atheists and progressives", for they were -first of all- members of the ruling party. (Years later I found out that Víctor's older brother, an Army officer, but also an anthropology student, was discovered in a pro-student plot with armed forces companions, and court-martialled; his parents begged with their party friends and they could managed to have him dishonorably discharged and expelled from the country).
That night, the students that arrived to the Zócalo were expelled by Army tanks.

(I will continue later).

Four days later, president Díaz Ordaz pronounced his infamous speech in which he said that the government had been soft "to critisizable extremes".
Those days, a boy who was passing near the newspaper stand gave Víctor and me some leaflets, calling to the March of Silence, where thousands of stundents marched with tape over their mouths to express the lack of freedom. We gave them away in the neighbourhood, subrepticiosly. We saw a cop in a corner of the 'hood and ran away in fear.
Perhaps the combination of the menacing speech by Díaz Ordez, the growth of the movement and our small participation moved my parents, and Víctor's to make us an offer we could not refuse: they gave us money to go to Acapulco. We were there a couple of days, taking sunbaths and imagining we'd hit on very good looking girls. Then our families arrived to Acapulco and talked us about joining a bowling league.
As the bowling tournament developed, so did the confrontation between students and the forces of law and order. Our team, The Fleas, ended up in 15th place and the last date of the tournament was October 1st.
The following night was terrible, marked by the sound, first, of the helicopters flying over the zone, and later, of the ambulances that, one after another, went by Thiers Av. with destination of the Red Cross. Somber, chilling rumors came with the noise: something very grave had happened in Tlatelolco. The next day we knew it: the students were massacred.
The newspaper and the TV said there had been a fire exchange. In the conscience of the people it was clear that they lied. There was a lot of confusion in my mind, and a heavy, difuse, anger. There was an army cordon around the Tlatelolco Habitational Unit, where a true state of siege was on.
October 5th, a Sunday, we were playing flag-football on the street, when we saw that in Darwin St. light tanks and other armored vehicles were passing by, in their route from Tlatelolco to Military Campr Number One. The game was suspended. We went to see the strange parade, feeling impotent. Víctor was the first one to tell them to **** their mother. Several of us followed him: "Murderers!", "Son of Bitches!", we yelled. Víctor even threw a cigarette butt against them. Luckily it hit the jeep's door.
Something very deep had changed in the country. Deep enough so that some privileged teenagers, some kids who were among the great beneficiaries of the "Mexican miracle" would tell members of the Army to go screw their mothers. Deep enough so that a whole generation would never ever be the same any more.
That generation would be fundamental in the struggle for democracy in Mexico. But we, the street flag-football players, were very young then. On Sunday night we yelled "Murderers!" to the military. Monday morning, very early, we were in the queue to buy tickets for the Olympic Games.

Thanks FB, for the perspective.

Fascinating and very sad, Fbaezer.

Thank you, fbaezer.

The meeting, 40 years ago

A documentary, in Spanish. Takes from the march I went to, to the March of Silence, to the start of the Tlatelolco massacre.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gicKScNY004&feature=related

My understanding of spanish is slow, but the film speaks loudly.

Thanks for your responses, fb!