MEXICO CITY.
David Roura has on the floor of his pores and skin, on the tip of his tongue, within the recent reminiscence of what he lived 50 years in the past within the streets of the Santo Tomás and Santa María la Ribera colonies. It was an illustration of college students in assist of the Autonomous College of Nuevo León. A shock group generally known as Los Halcones, educated expressly to cease the coed and social rage that had aroused in 1968, significantly on October 2 in Tlatelolco, turned that June 10, 1971 into the second bloody chapter of a steep, tough, street to democratic life.
Roura, who has been an actor, poet and journalist, 50 years in the past was a younger 18-year-old scholar from Mixcoac Excessive College and a member of a Excessive College Preventing Committee, as he says, dedicated to the battle that the scholars had given in 1968 and that, already then, they’d been launched from jail. “We felt we had an ethical obligation to proceed the battle,” he mentioned in an interview.
The activist mentioned that the Mexican State and a bunch of intellectuals, together with Carlos Fuentes and Octavio Paz, from half a century in the past, “after the wound left by Tlatelolco, it was very tough for them to grasp what the coed motion had been.”
It refers primarily to then-president Luis Echeverría Álvarez, “I assumed it was a clear slate … however no. The disproportionate response of the State in opposition to the residents on October 2 prompted a really traumatic rupture, ”he mentioned.
Participant, like lots of of college students, within the occasions of 1968 and a front-line actor in what occurred 50 years in the past, he was wounded within the nostril. Roura affirmed that the state’s repression in opposition to society, however primarily in opposition to college students, continued. And as a context of what occurred in Santo Tomás, he recalled:
In January 1969, the repression intensified, the arrests, and nearly all these arrested ended up in jail. First they handed via Navy Camp Quantity One and, later, the companions to Lecumberri and the companions to Santa Martha Acatitla. These of ’68 had been in course of, there was no sentence, they had been on a starvation strike, which little was recognized within the press, and, in the meantime, we had been in frequent contact with the households of political prisoners.
We went to Lecumberri to go to the prisoners, for instance, Raúl Álvarez Garín, Fausto Trejo, the instructor (José) Revueltas; they gave us communications, they despatched us tips and this was mentioned in assemblies of the Wrestle Committees that had been put in within the colleges, each on the Polytechnic, the UNAM and Chapingo ”, he mentioned.
He accepted that within the Combat Committees of the totally different colleges there have been a sequence of ideological variations and in addition within the dynamics of the battle, “however once we all acquired collectively there was a Coordinating Committee of these battle committees and it was about going to a single goal : that the Pupil Motion reply to the vanguard of the group of organized battle ”, commented Roura.
He recalled that when Echeverría turned president, he supplied democratic openness and dialogue. “All this he did with a demagogic goal. As a result of they had been moments of nice repression ”.
The previous scholar, half of the Excessive College Preventing Committee, mentioned that the youth of that point already had contact with the world, “we had data and we had been very organized, though not very structured. What’s a truth is that we weren’t keen to proceed supporting this paternalism of the federal government. Stepping on the meadows of the gardens was against the law and children ended up within the police station; However enjoying on the street was additionally forbidden, the Julia handed by (a van-type truck) and carried youngsters; contact with the police was at all times brutal and, above all, with the group of grenadiers ”, he recalled.
Roura mentioned that, confronted with the federal government’s closure, the younger folks of 50 years in the past responded in keeping with their time.
He talked about that once they had been within the works of the Preventing Committees, it was when the scholars of the College of Nuevo León got here to them, who requested them for his or her assist to hold out an illustration, a joint act from Monterrey and Mexico Metropolis, as a result of the governor had imposed on a rector. “That was the primary try and privatize the College of Nuevo León, after which the assemblies within the colleges started to lift the attainable march.”
As half of Echeverría’s demagogic acts, remembers Roura, on the identical day of Christmas Eve in 1970, 23 days after his inauguration as president, Luis Echeverría launched Ignacia Rodríguez and Salvador Ruiz Villegas. “They started to offer protected conducts, there’s a cascade of these launched, who had sentences of as much as 17 years in jail. Revueltas and, as half of the 68 calls for, Demetrio Vallejo and Valentín Campa had been additionally launched. With that, Echeverría wished to offer a picture of the left, that he was a democrat and widespread and that he would put an finish to the vices of the PRI of the previous, ”mentioned Roura.
Decided to hold out the march in assist of the college college students of Nuevo León, Roura recalled, “the comrades who organized the march on June 10 had been very skilled within the marches; there have been methods for the place to the place and the axes of the march started to be mentioned. On this, Echeverría dismisses the rector and the governor of Nuevo León. He declared ‘the left is me’, an absolutist ”.
He revealed that there have been scholar sectors that didn’t wish to assist the march, together with Salvador Martínez Della Rocca, El Pino, however that Gilberto Guevara Niebla and Manuel Marcué Pardiñas, historic 68, had been on the forefront. And one thing that appeared unusual to him was that the Communist Social gathering additionally signed up.
On the morning of the day of the march, I used to be making preparations with artists from the cultural group wherein I used to be, Colectivo Arte en Acción, the place the painter José Hernández Delgadillo, Judith Reyes, José de Molina participated, as a result of I used to be a hyperlink between some of these intellectuals and the Committee, as a result of they had been going to hitch the march.
Within the auditorium of the College of Organic Sciences of Santo Tomás – Roura continues – there was a powerful dialogue, Gilberto Guevara and Marcué Pardiñas mentioned sure to the march and the contingents started to reach. They began making the blankets. One of our slogans was ‘We’re out once more, no no, sure we’re, we’re out once more!’ That day that slogan was born. And one other ‘We don’t need openness, we would like revolution!’ And a transparent and direct message to the president ‘Che-Che-Che-Che Guevara, READ READ the fuck!’. We weren’t keen to fiddle with the political system. “
Roura talked about {that a} important quantity of Los Halcones had gave the impression to be college students, in actual fact, he mentioned that a number of had been joints in numerous colleges and knew the actions of the scholars.
On the street of Lauro Aguirre the grenadier vans had been full, and we mentioned ‘let’s see how the hell we’re going to transfer ahead’. Little by little, Marcué and Gilberto, who had been within the open, started to advance and when the march handed in entrance of Channel 11 and reaches Avenida de los Maestros and turns proper, a bunch of grenadiers intervenes and a colonel of the police say ‘cease! Dissolve, the march is against the law’. Marcué Pardiñas argued with him, he says ‘there is no such thing as a allow, we would not have to ask for permission, the march goes to happen, we’re exercising our proper to reveal’ and the wall of grenadiers is trickily opened; then one other thicker intervention of the grenadier fence returns; They are saying once more that the march is against the law; Marcué mentioned, ‘they don’t perceive causes’. We started to sing the Nationwide Anthem; We thought that the grenadiers had been disconcerted they usually opened towards the japanese half of Avenida de los Maestros, however no, it was their plan to allow us to move, and once we arrived at México-Tacuba we started to listen to some shouts, ‘Che, Che , Che, Guevara, Che, Che Guevara! ‘. I used to be going with Hernández Delgadillo and Leopoldo Trejo, and in that, I instructed Hernández Delgadillo, ‘I feel they’re from the favored highschool’. We stayed with that, however once we circled they had been hitting everybody with kendos, electrical batons, chacos and karate kicks.
We defended ourselves with the sticks of the banners. There we noticed that the hawks recoiled and commenced to shout ‘hawks, hawks!’, To acknowledge themselves and relocate after the dysfunction that arose from the assorted skirmishes that occurred; From throughout the neighborhoods on Avenida de los Maestros, Sor Juana, Lauro Aguirre, hawks got here out and attacked the column, ”he mentioned.
In accordance with Roura’s testimony, there was a police communication to the impact that the column had been cut up in two. “They got here with the technique of dividing and atomizing us. These of us who had been within the vanguard and had acquired the primary blows, the strongest, counterattacked, however from a constructing beneath building the place the Regular Metro station is positioned, within the southern half, teams of hawks started to return out and commenced to shoot; They opened some outlets and from there he distributed weapons to them, they gave high-powered rifles to those that had beforehand been with kendo rods, they usually started firing on the group, at floor degree and from above. When the hawks recoiled, they armed them, and the assault was deadly in opposition to us, ”he mentioned.
The ex-student, now 68, recalled that, within the midst of this chaos, the group managed to show towards Río Consulado – at the moment there was no inside circuit – and within the Cosmos cinema the confrontations continued, as did El Carrillón and in lots of streets alongside the Mexico-Tacuba.
In accordance with Roura, the federal government’s repressive forces had three plans: one of them to make public opinion imagine that the violence unleashed by Los Halcones was nothing greater than a rupture of the group of college students, who had been for and in opposition to the March.
The second, utilizing firearms in opposition to the protesters, as he acknowledged, occurred from totally different rooftops across the Regular College of San Cosme. And, the third, the rescue of the wounded on his facet, since they seized the amenities of the Inexperienced Cross, the place, in keeping with Roura, it was mentioned on the time, there have been two lifeless falcons.
I noticed navy vans full of troopers able to assault us, as in Tlatelolco; They had been on the road of Carrillo Puerto, however fortunately it didn’t occur ”, mentioned Roura, who ends with a mirrored image:
The Mexican state realized one thing from a lot repression: the necessity for a gap. Maybe that’s the reason (Jesús) Reyes Heroles carried out the political reform in 1977. And it’s that on June 10, 1971, folks from the Espartaco League had been within the march, they had been already in semi-secrecy, Los Guajiros, and that day they mentioned that there was no democratic path, that it was a dream. Then, a sequence of teams launched into revolutionary motion and, shortly after, the Communist League September 23 was based … Already when Echeverría ends and López Portillo begins, Reyes Heroles understands, very neatly, that there’s a democratic path they usually open the well-known political reform and, there, many comrades come to the political events, I significantly didn’t become involved, “mentioned Roura.
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