Mexico: Bodies From 1968 Maybe Found (massacre of student protesters)

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Forbes/Associated Press

Mexico: Bodies From 1968 Maybe Found
Associated Press 07.11.07, 1:53 AM ET

The bodies of several student protesters gunned down by police in a massacre four decades ago may be buried under a Mexico City hospital, according to an architect who helped renovate the building.

Rosa Maria Alvarado Martinez said that police had threatened her not to come forward in 1981 after human remains and a bullet were found at General Hospital 27, which she was helping renovate.

"They told me that if I didn't keep quiet I would never again see my son, who was 3 years old at the time," Alvarado told a news conference on Monday.

Alvarado said she has filed a legal complaint asking federal prosecutors to investigate the remains, which she said were reburied in the foundation.



Read more: http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/07/11/ap3901691.html

---

See photos beneath the short remarks, at the website. Too intense to post here:

2 October 1968: Massacre at Tlatelolco
Published at October 8, 2004 in México.
Tags: México, Tlatelolco.

On 2 October 1968, one of the saddest days in Mexican history occurred. The Mexican government led by Gustavo Diaz Ordaz and his secretary of the interior, Luis Echeverria conspired to neutralize the supposed threat that student protesters created for the government. Mexico was on the verge of hosting the 1968 Olympics and in no way could the elitist government suffer through the embarrassment of social unrest days before their intended commencement. The government unleashed the oppressive forces of the military and the police on student protesters at the plaza of Tlatelolco. The protesters were surrounded and many massacred. Many estimate that at least 300 people were killed on this day. Many simply vanished off the face of the earth. To this day families mourn the loss of their brothers, sisters, sons, daughters; the innocent that were fighting for social justice.

http://www.gustavorojo.com/2004/10/08/2-october-1968-massacre-at-tlatelolco-2/

[Judi Lynn]

1. TLATELOLCO MASSACRE: DECLASSIFIED U.S. DOCUMENTS ON MEXICO

TLATELOLCO MASSACRE:
DECLASSIFIED U.S. DOCUMENTS ON MEXICO
AND THE EVENTS OF 1968
By Kate Doyle
Director, Mexico Documentation Project
Mexico's tragedy unfolded on the night of October 2, 1968, when a student demonstration ended in a storm of bullets in La Plaza de las Tres Culturas at Tlatelolco, Mexico City. The extent of the violence stunned the country. When the shooting stopped, hundreds of people lay dead or wounded, as Army and police forces seized surviving protesters and dragged them away. Although months of nation-wide student strikes had prompted an increasingly hard-line response from the Diaz Ordaz regime, no one was prepared for the bloodbath that Tlatelolco became. More shocking still was the cover-up that kicked in as soon as the smoke cleared. Eye-witnesses to the killings pointed to the President's "security" forces, who entered the plaza bristling with weapons, backed by armored vehicles. But the government pointed back, claiming that extremists and Communist agitators had initiated the violence. Who was responsible for Tlatelolco? The Mexican people have been demanding an answer ever since.

Thirty years later, the Tlatelolco massacre has grown large in Mexican memory, and lingers still. It is Mexico's Tiananmen Square, Mexico's Kent State: when the pact between the government and the people began to come apart and Mexico's extended political crisis began.

To commemorate this thirtieth anniversary, the National Security Archive has assembled a collection of some of our most interesting and richly-detailed documents about Tlatelolco, many recently released in response to the Archive's Freedom of Information Act requests, all obtained from the secret archives of the CIA, FBI, Defense Department, the embassy in Mexico City and the White House. The records provide a vivid glimpse inside U.S. perceptions of Mexico at the time, and discuss in frank terms many of the most sensitive aspects of the Tlatelolco massacre which continue to be debated today: the political goals of the protesting students, the extent of Communist influence, Diaz Ordaz's response, and the role of the Mexican military in helping to crush the demonstrations.

But while the declassified U.S. documents reveal new details about Tlatelolco, perhaps most important is the challenge their release poses to Mexico today. Thirty years after the massacre, the Mexican government continues to deny its people basic facts about what happened -- refusing to open Army and police records to public scrutiny on the grounds of "national security," denying Congress the right to hear testimony by agents of the state who were present at Tlatelolco. The valiant investigative efforts by reporters, scholars, historians, and an official congressional committee have helped clarify the events of 1968 enormously. But Mexico's secret archives are also critical for a full understanding of Tlatelolco -- and until they are opened, doubts about the truth of the Tlatelolco massacre will linger on.

http://www.mexconnect.com/mex_/history/tlatelolco/nsaintro.html

Documents available through the efforts of the National Security Archive.

[yardwork]

6. Nixon and Kissinger were in this up to their eyeballs.

[blondie58]

2. what a tragedy

and so reminiscent of Tiananmen Square, even Ohio State in our country. These were just kids. :-(

[InkAddict]

3. Did you mean "Kent State" as in 5 Dead in O-HI-O n/t

[blondie58]

4. thanks for correction, Ink Addict

yep, that is right. It was a little before my time to really know much about it- but geeezz- they were all just kids. It could have been anyone's daughter or son.

[Acadia Blue]

5. I was there at that time and friends in Mexico took me to a spot

where they said students were shot and then put in the back of an army truck and hauled off like dead animals.
People used to write on the wall next to where it happend and condemn the corrupt government.

This is the country that GW is enabling by letting people who might try to change their horrible exixtence come here. Its like a pressure valvue W is helping the corrupt right wing oligarchy treat its citizens as badly as the Soviets did and are probably doing again.

Why do they hate us? We only support democracy in the USA and now Shrubery does not even do that. Cheney wants a bloody monarchy.

[burrowowl]

7. My Aunt was a professor of mathematics there

and she was sickened by this!
May Justice be Served!

[lonestarnot]

8. Maybe Jimmy is under there?

[burrowowl]

9. Somebody kick it to 5

PLEASE!

[Judi Lynn]

10. NY Times: Bodies Found in Mexico City May Be Victims of 1968 Massacre

Bodies Found in Mexico City May Be Victims of 1968 Massacre


Bettmann/Corbis

Mexican federal police officers opened fire on student demonstrators in October 1968; thousands were arrested, above, and hundreds were killed.


By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
Published: July 11, 2007

~snip~
The architect, Rosa María Alvarado Martínez, said late Monday that she was forced to keep quiet about the grisly discovery after men identifying themselves as police officers said they would kidnap and kill her son if she went public.

The three bodies were discovered in 1981 as Ms. Alvarado and a construction crew were remodeling a Mexico City hospital that had previously been a vocational school where radical students clashed with the federal police and soldiers.

The federal authorities and the president’s office did not immediately respond to Ms. Alvarado’s accusations, which prompted calls for an investigation from human rights advocates and the families of students who disappeared.

Ms. Alvarado said workers were digging up a small garden to expand the hospital’s cafeteria when they discovered a cement layer. After breaking through the cement, they discovered a grave with at least three skulls, a tangle of other large human bones and at least one slug from a military rifle, she said.

Plainclothes police officers, who never showed any identification, arrived at the hospital and interviewed the people in charge of the renovation in separate rooms. Ms. Alvarado said that four officers spent several hours trying to convince her “there was no reason to file a complaint because these bodies were not important.”

As the day wore on, she said, the engineer in charge of the job and the hospital director both pleaded with her to do as the officers said. She said the officers told her “to quit being foolish and put the remains back.” Finally at 4 p.m., one of the officers said her 3-year-old son would be killed unless she cooperated.

“He said, ‘If you don’t do it, we will make your son disappear,’ ” said Ms. Alvarado, 52. “ ‘It is very easy to make him disappear.’ ”

More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/world/americas/11students.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[Blue_Tires]

11. ttt

too late for me to rec, sadly...