Although we will never know the exact number of those killed on that afternoon in the Plaza of Tlatelolco (a site—it should be remembered—where human sacrifices were performed in pre-Hispanic Mexico) there is no doubt that what happened was mass murder, a useless and unpardonable sacrifice, an act of state terrorism against a student movement that had launched radical demonstrations but never resorted to the politics of violence. The Mexican political system had been widely praised during the early 1960s, as a supposedly “miraculous” mechanism, combining economic growth with a “very light” variety of political authoritarianism based on patronage and a measure of corruption but nevertheless with authentic social roots. The Tlatelolco Massacre revealed the true face of the system and pointed toward the eventual end of the Institut...
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