Mexico offers public apology for the Tlatelolco massacre

The Government of Mexico, through the Ministry of the Interior (SEGOB), offered a public apology this Wednesday -in the name of the State- for the repression of October 2, 1968, and announced a decree that formalizes the pardon, the first in the Administration of President Claudia Sheinbaum.

“I am writing to you to speak out on behalf of the Mexican State, for the acts of violence committed on October 2, 1968,” said Rosa Icela Rodríguez, head of the SEGOB.during the first morning conference of the new ruler. “This crime against humanity was executed by the highest authority of public power,” added the secretary.

Prior to this, Ernestina Godoy, legal advisor to the Presidency, read the decree – which will come into force after its publication in the Official Gazette of the Federation (DOF) – which instructs people to contribute to the historical memory of this massacre and so that the State politically recognizes the acts perpetrated in October 1968, which – Godoy said – were “constitutive of a crime against humanity” committed by the then president, Gustavo Díaz Ordaz (1964-1970).

Likewise, the SEGOB is instructed to offer a public apology for this “government atrocity” and establishes a commitment not to repeat an event of this type, that is, not to repress the population through the use of violence.

Previously, Sheinbaum spoke of what he considered “one of the greatest atrocities” that occurred in Mexico in the second half of the 20th century, which left more than 300 people murdered and hundreds of political prisoners. “Personally, for me, it is an obligation today. I have said on other occasions that I am a daughter of ’68, my mother participated in that student movement,” she said.

On the other hand, the president highlighted that “the student movement of 1968 opened the door to the political participation of many young people and society as a whole for a more democratic country” and that “the triumph of that movement, for me, was in 2018 with the (electoral) triumph of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, which recovers freedoms, democracy and justice for the people of Mexico.”

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