"No Queremos Olimpiadas, Queremos Revolucion!" claimed thousands of Mexican students in response to the repressive activities of a government that was about to host the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. Many of those students would end up in prison or in the list of the more than 1,500 disappeared individuals during the "Dirty War" of the 1960s and 1970s. A yet unknown number of students and bystanders were murdered by government forces on October 2 1968, when thousands of protesters gathered in Tlatelolco Plaza in the heart of Mexico City.
40 years after the Tlatelolco massacre, the officials in charge of the infamous activities of government forces during 1968 have not been held responsible. Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, President of Mexico from 1964 to 1970 died in 1979. His minister of the interior and President of Mexico between 1970 and 1976, Luis Echeverria Alvarez, is not only a free man but has just contributed to a new book on his experiences as a high ranking official during those turbulent years.
Although the atrocities in Mexico are not of the same magnitude as in Chile or Argentina, it is remarkable that some sectors of Mexican society have not forgotten about the period. The memory of the events has been well kept by students at public universities, as well as by particular individuals like Rosario Ibarra, whose son disappeared during those years. Mrs. Ibarra ran for President in 1988 and is now a Senator.
Democratic transition is not always followed by democratic consolidation. Consolidation requires of a number of conditions, such as a solution to crimes committed by the forces that opposed or promoted political change. So far that has not occurred in Mexico.
