October 2, 1968: The Mexico City Massacre

October 2, 1968: Mexican troops fire on student demonstrators in Mexico City. It becomes known as the Tlatelolco Massacre.

As in America, 1968 was a year of social unrest in Mexico. There was gang violence, and there were student protests, against a national government much more oppressive than America's: While not Communist, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, or PRI) basically ran Mexico as a one-party state.

On October 2, a group of unarmed civilians was protesting the country's vast spending on the upcoming Olympics, in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in the Tlatelolco section of Mexico City. The Mexican government, and the Mexican media which they tightly controlled, claime dthat the Mexican Armed Forces had been provoked by protesters shooting at them, but government documents made public since 2000 show that rooftop snipers had been employed by the government.

With the world watching for signs of unrest during the Olympics, the Mexican government managed to clean things up, and stage the Games as if nothing had happened. Much of the world didn't find out for years.

The number of deaths resulting from the event is disputed. According to U.S. national security archives, American analyst Kate Doyle documented the deaths of 44 people. Estimates of the actual death toll range from 300 to 400, while the head of the Federal Directorate of Security reported that 1,345 people were arrested.

The PRI, established in 1929, continued to run Mexico as what Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa called a "the perfect dictatorship"... "because it is camouflaged dictatorship" until losing the 2000 election. It held power again from 2009 to 2018, when it had its worst electoral performance ever.

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October 2, 1968 was a Wednesday. Czech tennis player Jana Novotná, who won Wimbledon in 1998, was born.

There was one score on this historic day: The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Detroit Tigers, 4-0 at Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis, in Game 1 of the World Series. Bob Gibson, the Cy Young Award winner in the American League, with a 22-9 record and a 1.12 ERA during the regular season, not only outpitched Denny McLain, the Cy Young Award winner in the National League, with a 31-6 record, he struck out 17 batters, setting a World Series record that still stands. I have a separate entry for this event.

Football was in midweek. The new NHL season was 9 days away; the new NBA & ABA season, 13 days.