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*Washington D.C., October 2, 2018*—Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of the notorious Tlatelolco massacre, when the Mexican government killed dozens of students and bystanders protesting the authoritarian regime in a public plaza at Tlatelolco, Mexico City. Across the country, citizens are commemorating the event with marches and rallies, *conferences, exhibitions, and performances* <http://ccutlatelolco.com/>. But even as Mexico acknowledges the legacy of the student movement of 1968 and grieves the long-ago slaughter of its young leaders, the Mexican government has quietly removed, censored, and reclassified thousands of previously accessible archives from that era. The General Archive of the Nation (AGN) defends its actions by citing a 2012 Archives Law and new, stricter requirements to protect personal privacy. But the results are heavy-handed to the point of absurdity, as even the most widely known and published records about Tlatelolco and other flashpoints of the dirty war have now been rendered illegible by censorship. The AGN’s reclassification project is a retreat to Mexico’s old, tired reflexes of disinformation and denial when it comes to politically threatening histories. It reflects the determination of State power to limit or distort what people understand about the past. And it goes hand-in-hand with five decades of impunity for those who planned and executed the crackdown on student protesters in 1968 and injustice for their victims. No one has ever been held accountable for the mass slaughter of civilians by Mexican military and security forces. At the time, President Díaz Ordaz lied about who was responsible, blaming radical students for igniting the confrontation by shooting at army troops that surrounded the crowd. In fact, independent investigations have concluded that Díaz Ordaz’s chief of staff – on the president’s order – placed snipers inside apartments overlooking the plaza to fire into the crowd. The ensuing chaos was intended to provide justification for sweeping arrests. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/news/mexico/2018-10-02/fifty-years-after-tlatelolco-censoring-mexican-archives-mexicos-dirty-war-files-withdrawn-public _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
