Commemoration of Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico City

October 2nd was the 44th anniversary of the Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico City when troops opened fire on a student protest ten days before the 1968 summer Olympics. Student protestors as well as bystanders were massacred. The government insisted students opened fire first & most of the Mexican media dutifully reported that. One headline on October 3rd read: “Criminal Provocation at the Tlatelolco Meeting Causes Terrible Bloodshed.”  Most prominent, sycophantic Mexican intellectuals & politicians (with the exception of Octavio Paz & Carlos Fuentes) blamed the students for the massacre. It’s now known a special military unit called the Brigada Olympica, formed for securing the Olympics & armed & trained by the US Pentagon, opened fire on unarmed protestors. No one has ever been held to account for the massacre. Official government reports say 25 people died; another report confirms 44 deaths, but human rights activists claim as many as 350 people were murdered. But once again, the martyrs come back to haunt justice at this October 2nd anniversary protest in Mexico City.

The despicable Avery Brundage, president of the International Olympics Committee, would not let the matter of a massacre stop the games. This is the same creep who didn’t let German fascism interfere with the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. It was at the 1968  Olympics that Black US athletes, Tommie Smith & John Carlos, members of the Olympic Project for Human Rights, gave the Black power salute (what Smith has said was a human rights salute) during the Star Spangled Banner. Brundage immediately suspended both athletes & evicted them from the Olympic village. (Photo by Eduardo Verdugo/AP)