¡SAL AL BALCON, CHANGO HOCICON!

[Horse with no Name]

Mexico had won her bid to be host country at the 1968 Olympics and the last thing the president wanted was the Olimpiada disrupted by street violence and student unrest. What probably made Tlatelolco inevitable was an August 27, 1968, demonstration ending with a mob of students marching on the presidential palace and shouting the words: ¡SAL AL BALCON, CHANGO HOCICON! -- "Come out on the balcony, monkey with a big snout!" Though Díaz was not rash enough to appear on the balcony, he did make his sentiments known to a writer friend. "Youth!" he exploded. "Those sons of bitches are not youth! They're nothing! Blood-sucking parasites! ... Stinking filth! And they don't even have the balls to really stand up and fight..."

But Díaz Ordaz did. The National Autonomous University, a hotbed of anti-establishment feeling, was occupied by army troops on September 18. On October 2, a week before the Olympics were scheduled to begin, a mass meeting began at 5 p.m. at the Place of the Three Cultures, in the Tlatelolco neighborhood. Tlatelolco, with a huge temple, had been one of the most important centers of the Aztec civilization. it was estimated that between five and ten thousand people were on hand.

Then the firing began. There were three groups of attackers -- police, uniformed soldiers and young men in civilian clothes wearing white gloves or knotted hite handkerchiefs as an identification badge. These were members of Batallon Olimpia, a paramilitary force trained to provide security at the Olympic games. Later, there were also attacks from helicopters. The firing died after six but started again before seven and didn't let up until eleven. Jean François Held, a journalist with the French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur, had been in Vietnam and in the Middle East. "Never have I seen a crowd fired on like that," he said.

How many died at Tlatelolco? Though official government sources admitted first eight, then eighteen, then forty-three deaths, unofficial estimates ran as high as four hundred. Nobody believed the official government version -- that the massacre began when "terrorists" in nearby apartment buildings fired on the police -- or the version in Díaz Ordaz's memoirs -- that the demonstrators were trying to seize the nearby Ministry of Foreign Relations.

Let me draw a couple parallels. Interestingly, right after Britain received the nod for the Olympic games, they had the bombings.
In August, angry students marched on the Presidential palace.
The President of the country was a coward and would not come to the balcony to speak with the angry people.
On September 18, the University was occupied by army troops.
Then, on October 2, the Tlatelolco Massacre occured.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB10/intro.htm
>>>>snip
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.
>>>>snip
If anyone is in doubt that we aren't "there yet", please think again.
Cindy Sheehan IS the catalyst for whatever is yet to come.
The pact between the United States government and the people of the United States has been breached. The political crisis IS upon us.
The question is are we going to allow this administration to go unchecked, or are we going to do something about it?

[Horse with no Name]

1. kicking this cause I think it is important

that we see the correllation.:shrug:

[Judi Lynn]

2. Thanks so much.I put off learning more about this as I've been in a rush

and didn't take the time.

You've made it very easy to start knowing more about it.

You're right, it's damned important. The U.S. has practically ignored the rest of this hemisphere forever, publically. We NEVER are informed what's happening there, right? It's as if we are floating alone in a sea of tranquility, surrounded by inferior "3rd world nations."

Americans going to other places suddenly realize THEY know about so much in shared world. They know about American events. We wonder around completely in the dark.

Our right-wing Presidents have lived off their misery since Eisenhower. It's about time we took responsibility and started looking into the history of this hemisphere.

Ignorance shouldn't be an excuse for completely half-assed views of Latin Americans. Time to wake up.

Thanks!