Mexico charges ex-president for 1968 massacre

[Fountain79]

"MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican prosecutors filed long-awaited charges on Monday against former President Luis Echeverria for a 1968 student massacre by soldiers and police that was the bloodiest moment of a brutal crackdown on dissidents.
In the latest test of President Vicente Fox's pledge to punish those responsible for past repression, a special prosecutor presented genocide and kidnapping charges against Echeverria and seven others for the October 2, 1968, blood bath at a student rally in Mexico City."


http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050919/wl_nm/rights_mexico_dc

[Fountain79]

1. Puts a smile on my face...

As someone who has famiy in Mexico I am happy to hear this news. Fox has been a disspointment to some but I think he has done a somewhat decent of trying to correct what has been years of corruption at the hands of the PRI.(Institutional Revolutionary Pary)

[ShockediSay]

2. Some day, Dubya -

Some day.

Time is on our side. And so is history (not that you would know an awful lot about history).

[acmavm]

3. Not that he knows a whole lot about anything requiring intellect. But he

sure does have a keen instict for the shift, shady, immoral, and crooked. It must be a genetic thing that runs in the family.

[WhiteTara]

4. this sort of makes up for the Pinochet

getting off. :woohoo:

[Fountain79]

5. point to ponder...

I believe there are streets in Mexico named after this man. It would be interesting to see if those names are changed.

[burrowowl]

6. I aunt was teaching there when it

occurred, about time. I hope Echeverria gets sentenced!

[Judi Lynn]

7. Maybe this site can be of use:TLATELOLCO MASSACRE:DECLASSIFIED U.S. DOCUME

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.
(snip/...)

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB10/intro.htm

Here are some photos, which accompany a script in Spanish, and I'm so sorry I can't translate this. Maybe a DU'er with some time on his/her hands will summarize it for the rest of us. The photos indicate quite a few people got swept up in this sad right-wing ordeal:

http://www.lafogata.org/mexico/mexico1.htm



~Echeverria and Nixon~





The Tlatelolco Massacre
U.S. Documents on Mexico and the Events of 1968

by Kate Doyle

Research Assistance: Isaac Campos Costero
Additional Research: Tamara Feinstein and Eli Forsythe

Posted - October 10, 2003

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB99/

[Fountain79]

8. I was surprised...

Definitely interesting pieces of information. I will translate the latter text when I get some time. When I lived in Mexico for a short while it surprised me the strength of the government there and the level of corruption involved. I didn't act smug about it, thinking how great my country was. It pained me. It pained me to see a country with such potential, full of so many capable people being hamstrung by their own government. A government that until recently did not allow the President of Mexico to be made fun of on television.(Fox was the first) I keep looking on with hope that things will change there.

[Horse with no Name]

9. Very interesting

Poppy Bush's CIA had their dirty hands all over this one.
>>>>snip
n October 2003, the role of the U.S. government in the massacre came to light when the National Security Archive at George Washington University published a series of records from the CIA, the Pentagon, the State Department, the FBI and the White House which were released in response to Freedom of Information Act requests.

The documents detail:

* that in response to Mexican government concerns over the security of the Olympic Games the Pentagon sent military radios, weapons, ammunition and riot control training material to Mexico before and during the crisis.

* that the CIA station in Mexico City produced almost daily reports tracking developments within the university community and the Mexican government from July to October. Six days before the confrontation at Tlatelolco, both Echeverría and head of Federal Security (DFS) Fernando Gutiérrez Barrios told the CIA that "the situation will be under complete control very shortly".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlatelolco_massacre