1968 MEXICO CITY OLYMPICS

“The worst crime in Olympic history, the Tlatelcolco massacre of October 2, 1968, carried out by the Mexican government to guarantee ‘Olympic peace’, remains unknown to the vast majority of well-informed people.”
(The Olympic Crisis, p. 1)

Mexico was the first (and only) ‘Third World’ country to have hosted the Olympic Games.

On October 2, 1968 at the plaza of the 3 cultures in Tlatelcolco apartment complex, over 10,000 mostly students filled the area. Some 300 tanks and armoured personnel carriers with some 5,000 soldiers surrounded them. Shortly after 6 PM, police & soldiers began firing on the unarmed protesters. Among the soldiers was the Olympia battalion, an elite force in charge of security for the Olympics.

The heaviest gunfire, from automatic weapons, rifles and pistols, lasted from 60 to 90 minutes, although shooting continued throughout the night as soldiers & cops hunted down protesters in the streets and apartments. In the end, as many as 1,000 may have been killed, hundreds more wounded, and hundreds arrested. Those arrested suffered harassment & torture in the jails.

The government claimed ‘agitators’ in the crowd had first opened fire on soldiers, claiming they had returned fire in an act of ‘self-defense’.

The goal of this repression was to brutally control & intimidate a growing opposition movement in Mexico City, which had mobilized hundreds of thousands of people into the streets demanding democracy, freedom for political prisoners, an end to government corruption & oppression.

On July 26, 1968, a large student protest was attacked by police in Mexico City, with many arrested and two protesters killed. A National Strike Council was organized with some 70 schools & universities, in response. They organized forums, protests, and a student strike, demanding freedom for political prisoners, dismissal of police commanders, abolition of the Grenadiers (military riot police), compensation to the families of dead and wounded, and a determination of who was responsible for the repression.

In August, the movement continued to grow. On August 13, some 200,000 protesters took to the streets; on August 28 there were 400,000, and again on Sept. 13 there were 250,000. On Sept. 18, the autonomy of the National University (UNAM) was violated for the first time in 50 years when 5,000 soldiers invaded and arrested some 2,000 students, professors, and parents.

On Sept. 20-23, large protests turned into riots with barricaded streets, Molotovs, burning buses, tear gas, hundreds of wounded, and as many as 20 protesters killed.

According to Octavio Paz, in his book The Other Mexico: Critique of the Pyramid (1972), on October 2, 1968,
“At the end of the meeting, when those attending it were about to leave, the plaza was surrounded by the army and the killing began. A few hours later it was all over. How many died? No newspaper in Mexico dared to print the number of deaths. Here is the figure that the English newspaper, The Guardian, after a careful investigation, considered the most probable: 325. Thousands must have been injured, thousands must have been arrested. The second of October, 1968, put an end to the student movement…
“In order to gain international recognition of its transformation into a modern or semi-modern country, Mexico requested, and was granted, the designation of its capital as the site of the 1968 Olympic Games… But, in the context of the student revolt and the repression that ensued, these celebrations seemed nothing but gaudy gestures designed to hide the realities of a country stirred and terrified by governmental violence…”
(quoted in The Olympic Crisis, pp. 13-14)

“The massacre was an ambush. The government carried it out in a conscious and planned manner. The 5,000 soldiers with hundreds of tanks completely surrounded the plaza… the intense crossfire lasted 30 minutes… Old people, children, students and parents fell. Perhaps a 1,000 were killed or wounded.”
(Mexico Under Siege; Popular Resistance to Presidential Despotism, p. 100)

Students had expected global condemnation of the massacre and of the Mexican government, a cancellation of the Olympics, a boycott, but nothing came of it. Instead, the IOC’s only concern was that the Games go ahead without interruption:
“We have conferred with the Mexican authorities,’ reported Avery Brundage, then the IOC’s president, ‘and have been assured that nothing will interfere with the peaceful entrance of the Olympic flame into the stadium nor with the competitions that follow.”
(The New Lords of the Rings, p. 41)

Over 3 decades later, the extent of US involvement and participation in the massacre began to become more well known:

“In 2002, it emerged that America had played a key role in the massacre. Amidst fears the riots would disrupt the Olympic Games the CIA had been monitoring the student actions in Mexico daily. As a result they sent military radios, weapons, ammunition and riot control training material to Mexico before and during the crisis.”
(BBC News, www.bbc.co.uk)

On October 17, 1968, two Black athletes (John Carlos and Tommie Smith), representing the US, accepted their medals and then gave Black Power salutes while on the podium (clenched fists held in the air). Although nowhere near as intense as the massacre that had occurred two weeks earlier, the IOC was outraged and immediately expelled the two athletes.

According to John Carlos,
“It was in my head the whole year. We first tried to have a boycott (of the Games) but not everyone was down with that plan. A lot of athletes thought that winning medals would supersede or protect them from racism. But even if you won the medal, it ain’t going to save your momma. It ain’t going to save your sister or children. It might give you 15 minutes of fame, but what about the rest of your life?... to me the medal was nothing but the carrot on a stick…
“We wanted the world to know that in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, S. Central Los Angeles, Chicago, that people were still walking, back and forth in poverty without even the necessary clothes to live…”
(www.historylearningsite.co.uk/mexico_1968.htm)

An IOC statement on the Black Power salutes repeated the Olympic Industry’s mantra that the Games have nothing to do with politics:

“The basic principle of the Olympic Games is that politics plays no part whatsoever in them. US athletes violated this universally accepted principle… to advertise domestic political views.”

Both athletes were expelled from the Olympic Village, stripped of their medals, suspended by the American Olympic Committee, and ordered to leave Mexico City. In contrast to the IOC’s response to the massacre the previous week, the Black Power salutes of Carlos & Smith drew the strongest punitive measures the IOC could take (against athletes), an act which itself reveals that the Olympic Industry is very much about political views (the racist fascist kind).

Sources

Mexico Under Siege; Popular Resistance to Presidential Despotism, by Donald Hodges & Ross Gandy, Zed Books, New York 2002

The New Lords of the Rings, by Andrew Jennings, Pocket Books, London 1996

The Olympic Crisis; Sports, Politics, and the Moral Order, by John Hoberman, Caratzas Publishing, Co., Inc., New York 1986

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