Mexican Student Movement

The Mexican student movement lasted from July 23 to October 2, 1968, when the Mexican Army massacred many of the participants in a political rally in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas (Plaza of the Three Cultures) in Tlatelolco, a housing development in Mexico City. Although this movement emerged in the same year, 1968, as movements in Paris, Prague, and Chicago, its origins were quite different. Mexican students were fighting against repression within an authoritarian political system. The movement began when a fight broke out between students, one from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and the other from the Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN), two of the principal higher education institutions in Mexico. A police riot squad (granaderos) chased students onto the university grounds, beating up several students and a professor. Because universities in Mexico were autonomous from government intervention, the incursion of police onto the campus enraged students. In protest, the students' executive board of the College of Political Science from the UNAM declared an indefinite strike.

On July 26, when students from the National Federation of Technical Students were protesting the invasion of the higher education schools, the riot squad again attacked and beat them up. The next day, students from three UNAM campuses occupied several university buildings to protest police repression. The same day, the School of Economics called for a general strike. As a response, students throughout the IPN system declared an indefinite strike until two demands were met by the government: the resignation of the top police authorities and the disbanding of the riot squad. The IPN's strike committee met with those of other universities and a longer list of demands was [Page 950]drawn up, including the release of incarcerated students and the abolition of penal article 145 that criminalized social protest.

As clashes continued across the city, the army was called in to help the riot squad control students. The Mexican interior secretary under President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, Luis Echeverría (who later became president), stated that students had subverted the social order, which justified the intervention of the army. The president of the UNAM protested the army intervention and led a march in which more than 100,000 people participated. On August 2, many of the main higher education institutions in Mexico City organized a national strike committee to protest the violent reactions of the government riot squads and to force the government to meet their demands.

Students organized into small brigades for informing civil society about the movement, because the mass media was not including students' perspectives in the news. These students' actions obtained social support for the movement. At this point, the government called for establishing a dialogue with students, who insisted it be transmitted on national TV. The government rejected this demand. In response to the government's rejection of public dialogue, students organized a march and rally that was attended by 400,000 people.

On September 1, the president's State of the Union address was a reprimand to the students. He stated that he would take any necessary actions in order to defend the country against the external and foreign forces that were manipulating Mexican students. After the State of the Union, all politicians from the political party in power supported the president and publicly attacked the president of the UNAM and the student movement. Students refused to enter into dialogue with the government while the army was attacking them and the tanks were in the streets.

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