The 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre: The Cold War's Politicization and Internationalization of Everyday Life

Abstract

Although the colossal ideological struggle between the U.S. and the Soviets raged and ravished the peripheral nations of the world and left no space unaffected, perhaps no other country in the world responded, reacted to, and altered the context of the Cold War in a more complex fashion than Mexico. Within this encompassing global context, the mindsets of both the students murdered and those directing the killings in the Plaza of the Three Cultures were molded less by the dictates of Moscow or Washington than by the more decentralized and localized ideologies, plans of action, and policies which evolved in the shadow of the macro level of the titanic superpower struggle. In this shadow world, the discontent of students grew to be global, disaffected, and revolutionary. The consequences of Mexico's Cold War politicization and internationalization of everyday life unfolded throughout the summer of 1968 and culminated on the night of October 2nd at La Plaza de las Tres Culturas at Tlatelolco, Mexico City. On this night a student demonstration was to end in a hail of bullets. When the shooting ended, hundreds of people would lay dead or wounded; Army and police forces apprehended many of the survivors; now subjected to interrogation.