Today in Labor History October 2, 1968: The Tlatelolco Massacre occurred in Mexico City. 15,000 students were demonstrating at the Plaza of Three Cultures against the army’s occupation of the University. The army, with 5,000 soldiers and 200 tanks, ambushed the students, opened fire, and killed nearly 300. They also arrested thousands. This occurred ten days before the opening of the Olympics, the same Olympics where Tommy Smith and John Carlos raised their gloved-fists in a Black Power salute. The U.S. contributed to the massacre by providing the Mexican military with radios, weapons, ammunition and riot control training. Furthermore, the CIA provided the Mexican military with daily reports on student activities in the weeks leading up to the massacre.
Chilean film maker Alejandro Jodorosky portrayed the massacre in his film “The Holy Mountain” (1973). Chilean author Roberto Bolano referenced it in his 1999 novel, “The Savage Detectives.”
Today in Labor History August 29, 1970: LAPD brutally attacked 10,000 Chicano antiwar demonstrators, killing three, including journalist Ruben Salazar. The attack led to a week of rioting. Salazar was portrayed under the name "Roland Zanzibar" in Oscar Zeta Acosta's 1973 novel “The Revolt of the Cockroach People.” Oscar Zeta Acosta, himself, was portrayed in Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” as his “Samoan attorney.” Salazar wrote for the L.A. Times and was the first mainstream journalist to cover the Chicano community. He covered the 1965 U.S. occupation of the Dominican Republican, as well as the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre in Mexico City. He often wrote critically about how the local L.A. government treated Chicano people, particularly during and after the school walkouts.
Today in Labor History July 31, 1968: Students protested the Olympics in Mexico City. They occupied schools and began a General Strike. Cops violently attacked them. The violence culminated with the Tlatelolco massacre, October 2. As a result, the cops slaughtered 350-400 people, using snipers. They arrested and tortured over 1,300.
Alejandro Jodorowsky dramatized the massacre in his amazing film, “The Holy Mountain” (1973). In it, he showed birds, fruits, vegetables and other things falling and being ripped out of the wounds of the dying students. The late author, Roberto Bolaño, recounted the massacre in his novel “Amulet” (1999). He also retells the story in his novel, “The Savage Detectives.”