Mexico: La Noche Triste

There was no warning, beyond ominous arcs of green flares overhead. In Mexico City’s Plaza of the Three Cultures, a student speaker had urged his 6,000 listeners to “please go home after this meeting is over. We do not believe in useless bloodshed.” Suddenly, from one corner of the plaza, the troops appeared. They formed a cordon around the crowd and moved in — shooting and bayoneting as they went.

A 60-year-old woman was bayoneted in the back; a 13-year-old boy died with a bayonet wound in the head. Others were shot at such close range that hospital attendants found powder burns on their clothes. As some in the crowd fled in panic and others dived to the ground, student snipers opened fire on the troops from surrounding apartments. For ten minutes, massive gun fire reverberated through the plaza, and sporadic gunfire continued for another hour. Italian Authoress Oriana Fallaci, on assignment for L’Europeo magazine, was shot in the back and leg; two men standing beside her were killed. In all, at least 33 civilians and one soldier died, at least 500 were wounded, and 1,650 people were arrested.

Revived Rebellion. Thus in la noche triste, or the sad night as it was immediately named, Mexico City’s students and the government reached a tragic climax of the quarrels that began last July. It was at least partly the result of a miscalculation. The students had planned a mass march to one of their campuses occupied by the army, but called it off at the last moment when they heard there were troop concentrations along the route. However, the army, under strict orders to crush the demonstrations at any cost, moved in anyway.

By its harsh and unnecessary repression, the government succeeded chiefly in drawing anger toward itself and provoking sympathy for the students. Quite possibly the army’s actions may have revived a campus rebellion that was beginning to peter out. A Chamber of Deputies commission had announced itself ready to meet the students, who were still pressing a list of demands, most notably 1) changing ill-defined antisubversion laws and 2) disbanding the city’s riot cops. Now, such hope for accommodation lay blasted in the plaza.

Violated Constitution. It was a classic case of overreaction. Mexico’s students are neither hard-core revolution aries of the Paris model nor U.S.-style dropouts from society. What they do have in common with students everywhere is disenchantment with the Establishment. Mexico’s government is more established than most, and the all-powerful Partido Revolucionaro Institutional suffers from the arteriosclerosis of absolute power held too long. While proclaiming the high ideals of revolution embodied in the constitution of 1917, it has turned increasingly to the power of the army to put down revolts in the impoverished countryside and to quell demonstrations of dissent. As one student leader puts it: “The constitution has been violated more times than a Parisian streetwalker.”

Until the shooting last week, most students seemed almost as anxious as their government not to spoil the scene for the Olympic summer games that open this week. The government, after crushing the demonstrators, began rounding up student leaders. On the day following la noche triste, the International Olympic Committee decided that the games will goon, since “we have been assured that nothing will interfere with the peaceful entry of the Olympic flame, nor with the competitions that follow.” Considering the students’ renewed anger, that could turn out to be a hollow guarantee.