Tlatelolco Massacre (1968)

Wed Oct 02, 1968

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Image: University students are held at gunpoint in Tlatelolco. As many as 300 people were killed, but most Mexican media published the army’s figure of 27. Photograph: AP

On this day in 1968, ~10,000 university and high school students gathered in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas of Tlatelolco, Mexico City were fired upon by the Mexican military, killing hundreds. More than 1,300 people were arrested.

The crowd, which also included non-students such as residential neighbors, bystanders, and children, had gathered to protest the government’s actions and listen peacefully to speeches.

Although the Mexican government stated gunfire from the surrounding apartments prompted the army’s attack, multiple eyewitness accounts claim they saw a military flare go up as a sign to begin firing on the crowd. The government also had hidden soldiers with machine guns in the apartment buildings they claimed they were fired upon from.

Estimates of the total killed range from 300-400, and over 1,300 people were arrested. The event radicalized Subcomandante Marcos, who later became a prominent member of the Zapatistas, an indigenous group that fights for liberation from the Mexican government.

The massacre also led CIA agent Philip Agee, an eyewitness to the violence, to resign from the organization in protest and author “Inside the Company: CIA Diary”, which detailed his work on behalf of American imperialism and caused him to be deported from the United Kingdom.