Mexico: October 4th: It is a massacre; there is no other word to describe what happened to a meeting organized by the Student Strike Committee in the Plaza of the Three Cultures, in the center of the Tlatelolco district, a huge concrete and glass urban center which from now on will retain a sad notoriety in the annals of repression.
The site is ideal for ambush if it was indeed an ambush as many people claim. Tlatelolco has already been the site of several battles in the last few weeks, but this one of Wednesday (October 2nd) was by far the roughest.
The meeting began at five o’clock, with the declared purpose of demanding the departure of troops which still occupied the Polytechnic Institute, which is located several hundred meters from the square. In fact, an order to march from there to the Polytechnic had even been countermanded. Several speakers, men and women belonging to the Strike Committee, had already spoken. One of them was on the third floor of the Chihuahua building, on an open balcony leading off the apartments, which served as a rostrum. Surrounded by about fifty people, he was in the middle of declaring that it was vital “to continue the struggle” and to demand “a public dialogue with government to defend the constitution and the law.” Men, women and children, many of them sitting on the ground, were listening. The students filed in and out among the people passing out leaflets. On the large streets surrounding the plaza the traffic was normal. Army units were drawn up around the Polytechnic. Up in the sky a helicopter from the federal district patrolled the city. In the garden of the complex, children were swimming in the large pool. Their fathers were returning home reading the newspaper. Five minutes later, a second helicopter joined the first, and then at 6:20, we saw two green signal flares shoot up above the church of Santiago Tlatelolco. Several cries rang out: “stay calm, don’t run.”
It is already dusk and no one can understand the reason for the confusion. The speaker repeats the command to keep calm, but suddenly he is attacked and throttled by one of the people standing next to him. The other occupants of the rostrum try to escape. They are seized by plainclothesmen coming out of the apartments behind them. On the esplanade is an ancient Aztec pyramid surrounded by ditches, and the crowd tries to escape without really understanding what is happening but finds itself facing five hundred helmeted soldiers with machine guns and rifles in their hands advancing upon them in riot formation.
Contrary to the version in most of the Mexican newspapers, there are no rifle shots yet, either from the buildings surrounding the plaza or from the roofs. However, plainclothesmen can be seen in the crowd with white gloves on their left hands signaling for the soldiers to fire on the demonstrators. The horror begins. We jump over embankments nine feet high; the panic is on.
The soldiers advance toward us, forcing us back towards the church. From the buildings once again, plainclothesmen seem to be directing the advance and the movements of the soldiers by signs. Soldiers are coming at us from all the streets. There are more than five thousand of them and three hundred tanks, and they are shooting to kill. The majority of the students help the women to flee and protect them. Night falls, a torrential rain drenches us. The tanks ramble towards us. They go first of all to block the entrance to the Chihuahua building. It is 7:15 now. The fusilade continues, and a bazooka shot sets fire to the Chihuahua building. The lights in the building have been put out and we can no longer see anyone moving inside. We are to find out later, that many of the apartments are full of refugees crouched on the floor in the dark. The prisoners pass with their hands behind their heads shoved along by soldiers who are beating them. A certain number of them are completely undressed and are made to lie naked on the terraces which form the roofs of the building. The Plaza of the Three Cultures is strewn with wounded and dead, many of them children. Those arrested, myself among them, are lined up with their hands in the air along side of the church. The men are ordered to throw down their belts, the women their umbrellas. By 8 or 8:15 the fusillade has ceased. The most striking thing about those arrested is their courage and their determination. There is an impression of anger but at the same time of calm. For them Díaz Ordaz alone, the President of the Republic, is responsible. For according to the constitution, he alone has the right to give the army the order to fire. But those who are lined up there know very well that for a long time the constitution has been nothing but a simulacrum.
10:30, the fusillade begins again. This time the shooting is aimed at one of the buildings located on the other side of Nonoalco district where it is plain that sharp-shooters are hiding. This second fusillade lasts 20 minutes. Behind the church the beatings are intensified. Several women plead with the soldiers to let them enter the church. But it is not until two hours later that we are allowed into the convent next to the church and there almost three thousand of us are shut in.
The whole quarter is occupied by tanks and soldiers. It is only at three o’clock in the morning that myself and a young French woman are allowed to leave after our papers have been verified. The city is filled with cries and ambulance sirens. The strike committee has been decimated. But how much? The anger, the astonishment, the anguish, and the horror are at their peak. Since 1914, the date of the coup d’etat of General Huerta against President Madero, there has not been a massacre like this in the Mexican capital. But at this very moment the Minister of Defense, General Marcelino Garcia Barragan, declares: “I am the responsible commander. A state of siege has not been decreed. Mexico is a country where liberty reigns and will continue to reign…”
But the editorial writer for “Excelsior”, whose photographers had been wounded by the army, wonders about the reason for the massacre of innocents.
