Troops Fire on Students at Tlatelolco

On the afternoon of October 2, 1968, thousands of university and secondary school students assembled in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Mexico City. They were joined by local apartment residents, bystanders, and children outside the Chihuahua apartment building to protest the authoritarian administration of President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz. The rally took place merely ten days before the scheduled opening of the 1968 Summer Olympics, an event the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party had prepared at great expense to showcase Mexican modernization to the world.

Student mobilization had accelerated over the preceding summer following the violent police suppression of a clash between youth factions in late July. In response, students formed the National Strike Council to direct civil demonstrations and advance democratic demands. Díaz Ordaz and his Minister of the Interior, Luis Echeverría, viewed the expanding strikes as a severe disruption to public order. Determined to present an image of complete domestic tranquility before the international games commenced, the administration mobilized thousands of troops, accompanied by trucks and armored vehicles, to seal off the plaza.