1968: TLATELOLCO MASSACRE OF MEXICO

“ The Night of Tlatelolco” was a government massacre of student and civilian protesters and bystanders that took place during the evening of October 2, 1968, in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in the Tlatelolco section of Mexico City, 10 days before the 1968 Summer Olympics celebrations in Mexico City.
The Mexican president at that time, Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, ineptly strained tenuous conditions in Mexico in an attempt to preserve the peace. During his presidency, Mexicans endured the suppression of independent labor unions, farmers, and the economy.
Under Díaz Ordaz's predecessor in 1958, labor leader Demetrio Vallejo attempted to organize independent railroad unions, which the Mexican government quickly ended, arresting Vallejo under a violation of Article 145 of the Penal Code that made “social dissolution” a crime.
Although at first simply a response to the violent repression of fights between rival porros (gangs), the student movement quickly grew to include large segments of the student body who held general dissatisfaction with the regime of the PRI. It has been said that he students were united by a desire for democracy, but their understandings of what democracy meant were incredibly different.

Government propaganda and the mainstream media in Mexico claimed that government forces had been provoked by protesters shooting at them; however, government documents that have been made public since 2000 suggest that the snipers had in fact been employed by the government.

Although estimates of the death toll range from 33 to 300, with eyewitnesses reporting hundreds of dead, Kate Doyle—a Senior Analyst of U.S. policy in Latin America—was only able to find evidence for the deaths of 44 people.