45 years since Tlatelolco, ¡2 de octubre, no se olvida!

For the first time since 2010, I’m not in Mexico City for the late September through early October days of commemoration for ‘fallen comrades’ of 2 October 1968 — the day security forces under the command of the Institutional Revolutionary Party fired on young activists and bystanders who had gathered in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco, killing more than 300 people (or, at least, this is the consensus among historians). (A recent blog piece on the happenings of that day in 1968 can be found here.) For anyone who has been following Mexico City’s youth politics of late, the violence and arrests around yesterday’s commemorative march from Tlatelolco to the Zocalo will be no surprise (more here). I have argued elsewhere for interpreting confrontations (enfrentimientos) like these as restorations of police order, and at the same time as consolidations of a ‘police conception of history’ (the phrase is Kristin Ross’). In yesterday’s enfrentimientos we arguably see an enactment of history conceived as a continuous series of chingaderas (unspecified ‘fucked up’ events) against which activism has in the past been and should today be pitched.

Update (October 5): More on the situation of the detained activists and a video compilation of the October 2 police action can be found here.