Elena Poniatowska’s chronicle of the 1968 massacre at Tlatelolco is an astounding book. An estimated 325 unarmed students were shot and bayoneted that night by Mexican police and Army troops after what had been a peaceful protest about the lack of political freedom and the one-party government.
La Plaza de las Tres Culturas has been called Mexico’s Tianamen Square. The President at the time was Gustavo Diaz Ordaz.
Ms. Poniatowska calls Massacre in Mexico “collage of voices bearing historical witness” and truly it is. The book is packed with first-person accounts and interviews from witnesses, students and people anxiously looking for their children, wives, husbands and friends.
In startling, sometimes grainy, black and white photos, Poniatowska takes us there, back in time to that bloody October. There are photos of bodies lying in pools of blood, of police hauling students off to jail, of people crying, in agony, in despair.
Be prepared to cry, to rage, to be haunted for this is a brutally honest look at what happened in Mexico City that day. The voices beg out for justice, they ask why and they grieve. Some of the stories are just so heartbreaking that I have to stop, catch my breath and wipe my eyes.
Given the fact that recently the Mexican government calmly issued a report acknowledging that former administrations used violence, torture, massacres, rape and murder to silence political opponents from the 1960s to the 1980s this book is even more poignant, more important and much more real.
Octavio Paz wrote the touching forward to this amazing chronicle. Massacre in Mexico is a must for any library, especially a Chicano one.
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