The massacre of October 2, 1968 was a traumatic event for university students in Mexico City.
Military used their weapons to end a student protest in the plaza of Tlatelolco, which left hundreds of dead, wounded, disappeared and detained.
The university students did not let their movement die, but they passed More than two years without organizing a new massive march against the government.
Until 10 from June of 1971.
On that date , a Thursday of Corpus Christi in the Catholic calendar -which would later give a name to what happened-, they saw the opportunity to once again take to the streets and demonstrate at in favor of public education and the student movement of the time.
“Testimonies from protesters that day say that the emotion was great. It was to take back the streets that they had tried to snatch from them in 1968. So he 10 June was to take to the streets again and it had a very important symbolism ”, historian Camilo Vicente Ovalle explains to BBC Mundo.
But it all ended in a new massacre.
A paramilitary group, called the “hawks” and organized by the Mexican government, stopped the protest in its tracks.
The attacks with sticks were followed by the use of firearms. Even the wounded were “finished off” in emergency rooms of hospitals.
Since then, what happened has been known as the “hawk” or the “massacre of” Corpus Thursday, a fact that even a special prosecutor described decades later as “genocide” , but for which no one was condemned.
The reason for the protest
The “Corpus Thursday” protest was given in support of the students of the Autonomous University of Nuevo León, in the north of the country, who had gone on strike due to conflicts with the state government.
They added their own demands, such as the release of political prisoners and the democratization of education public.
“There is a brutal blow to social and popular mobilizations in 1968, but the students continued to organize, “says Ovalle, author of” Suspended Time, “a book that documents – even with classified files – occurred around episodes such as 1971.
The university students in the city of Monterrey asked for the solidarity of the rest of the country, so the students of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico (UNAM) and the Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN) – the two most important higher institutions in the country – responded to the called.
In this context, students from UNAM and IPN called for the march of 10 of June.
Although the UANL strike had already been suspended before that date, and the demands had been met, the students of Mexico City decided to maintain the appointment to protest.
The start of the attack
At 4 in the afternoon, the protest began with some 08, 000 students concentrated on the Santo Tomás, one of the IPN campuses.
They planned to walk towards the Zócalo, the most important square in Mexico City.
“It was a unauthorized march. So the students found streets blocked by grenadiers and police who prevent the march from advancing or take other streets, ”explains Ovalle.
Determined to advance peacefully, they had walked a kilometer when they met the group of “hawks” – reports say they were at least 337 or 500 – at the junction of two avenues.
This time it was not uniformed police from the Federal District Department (DDF), nor from the army, those who tried to “break” the protest, such as on 1968. The attack came from young men in civilian clothes who charged the student contingent.
“The hawks were waiting at the defined point for the attack. Yes, there were some infiltrators in the march, but the bulk of the paramilitary group enters through that part of the avenue and launches against the demonstration, ”explains Ovalle.
Víctor Guerra, one of the student leaders of the time, relates that he was joining the march when it all started. “I saw that the police got out [de sus vehículos] to support the hawks. I saw how they were provided with bamboo poles. Minutes after that the shooting began “, Guerra explained to the Mexican state agency Notimex. As Colonel Manuel Díaz Escobar , then a DDF official, the “hawks” were financed and trained by the government. The military also had status at the head of the Battalion “Olympia” that attacked the students of the massacre of 1968. The group carried bamboo poles because they were trained in martial arts and used the sticks as a kendo weapon. The film “Roma”, by Alfonso Cuarón, portrays him that way. But his performance was fought by the students that 10 of June. “They are repelled by the protesters. And seeing the resistance, they retreat. Falcons who already carry M-1 rifles and other firearms enter their place that begin to shoot at the demonstration ”, explains Ovalle based on the documentation he obtained. For your part, Guerra tells something similar: “I saw a subject, in a very famous photo, who is shooting outside the National School of Teachers, kneeling, shooting inward,” he relates. He also assures that from the top of an adjoining building he could see shots “towards the crowd” . It was a indiscriminate attack , which had every intention of dispersing the protesters and, again, showing the power of the State, since the Police and the army backed the actions. “It was a mousetrap (…) Like the anvil and hammer tactic: there is a force that pushes the enemy against a superior force that crushes them “, explains the historian. The demonstration dispersed after the next few minutes. Many students tried to hide in schools, businesses and homes in the area. But not even the injured, who had arrived at clinics such as the Rubén Leñero Hospital, were safe. “There are journalists, patients, doctors and nurses who were witnesses of how groups of hawks entered the hospital and attacked students with firearms ”, explains Ovalle. The action was classified as the “auction” of the wounded , documented in numerous notes and chronicles in the media that, despite the government’s information control at that time, came to light since journalists were also attacked. “The press was very angry with the federal government. They were so upset that Luis Echeverría [el presidente entre 1970 y 1976] had to meet with them two days after the attack to offer an apology, ”says Ovalle. It has never been possible to determine how many victims there were. But are calculated about 30 dead , hundreds of wounded of varying severity and dozens of detainees. The student leader Félix Hernández says that although the “repression” of 1968 “not justified and not understood”, that of 10 June “less understood.” “The government decided not to use the uniformed troops. Then he used the hawks, a paramilitary group that, however, was made up of ex-military or active military, ”Hernández told Notimex. 
“It was a mousetrap”
The” auction “in hospitals
A disqualified “genocide”
In a first reaction, the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) indicated that, based on an investigation, it had determined that a group of students He was armed.
“Many of the members carried sticks, rods and other weapons,” the PGR told the newspaper The universal. Another group charged “against the protesters and it was when a collective fight was provoked in which weapons of various caliber were fired.”
The authorities confirmed the “existence of snipers who fired their shots at the protesters and the police. ”
But as the days went by, they recognized that the“ hawks ”were a group who had been trained by the government.
Mayor Alfonso Martínez and his police chief, Rogelio Flores, resigned from their positions. President Luis Echeverría ordered an investigation.
50 years later, no one has been tried or jailed for what happened.
In the decade of 2000, the Mexican government created a special prosecutor’s office to investigate events such as that of 1971. An attempt was made to prosecute former President Echeverría for “genocide.”
The Supreme Court determined that this crime had not prescribed for Echeverría and his Secretary of the Interior (Interior), Mario Moya Palencia, for which they could be tried.
But the magistrate of the case, Herlinda Velasco, considered that the crime of “genocide” was not credited, but of “simple homicide” , which had been prescribed after more than 30 years of what happened.
For Ovalle , the slaughter of “ H alconazo” It is explained by taking a step back and looking at what was happening at that time in Mexico.
“The 71 was not a repetition of the 68 ”, he says. “It was part of the counterinsurgency strategy ” to combat social groups, at a time when communism was considered a geopolitical danger in the West led by the United States.
“They were not exceptional events, exaggerated measures of force. It was part of the counterinsurgency strategy that the government had deployed, ”says the historian.
“Today at first glance it seems like a mistake, to commit a massacre again, but no. In those years there was a strategy in which the events of 1968 Y 1971 make sense ”.
Photographs from the collection of National Institute for Historical Studies of Mexican Revolutions (INEHRM) and of the Coordination of Historical and Cultural Memory of Mexico.
The INEHRM and the Secretariat for Human Rights of the Ministry of the Interior published an anthology with documents from intelligence agencies, diplomatic cables and press releases from Mexico and the United States on the “h alconazo “ . The book will be online for consultation and free download on its website.
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