P
or the morning of July 26, 1968, In the corridors of the National School of Economics (ENE), I was with other students finishing painting the blankets that we would take in the afternoon to the march to commemorate the assault on the Moncada Barracks in Cuba, led by Fidel Castro in 1953. During the march, that started from the place known as Salto del Agua, on the street of San Juan de Letrán and Arcos de Belén, we participated in various student and political organizations. The National Congress of Democratic Students (CNED) stood out for their number and banners, an organization created and directed by the Communist Youth in Mexico (JCM), a group of the Mexican Communist Party (PCM). However, the students and young people who participated in other groups of Castro, Guevarist, Maoist, Spartacist, socialist, Trotskyist affiliation or with no other label than declaring themselves leftist, were many. We participated enthusiastically, tirelessly shouting slogans in support of the Cuban revolution, the freedom of political prisoners and the end to the repression of the government of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz.
When the contingent in which I was participating arrived at the corner of Madero and San Juan de Letrán streets and we were holding a rally in which Romeo González Medrano, from the National School of Political and Social Sciences, and I, from the ENE, spoke, a group of bloodied polytechnic students denouncing that the police violently prevented them from reaching the Zócalo to protest against the attacks they had received. We immediately express our solidarity and repudiation of the excessive police aggression and call to organize ourselves to advance to the Zócalo, from various points. Other polytechnic students who had come to the Alameda, after confronting the leaders of the National Federation of Technical Students (FNET), when Arturo Martínez Nateras was speaking at the rally on behalf of the CNED and the JCM, also received support for go to the Zócalo, where the grenadiers persecuted and beat students, mainly from Vocational 5.
Stepping on the Zócalo in the country’s capital was vetoed by the Díaz Ordaz government for protests from popular and left-wing organizations. The polytechnic students did not intend to arrive holding positions of the left, they only demanded punishment from the police. Our attempt to reach the Zócalo was also vigorously rejected by the police forces led by General Raúl Mendiolea Cerecero. This time, however, instead of backing away, we began to engage the cops with whatever we could. The sticks of the blankets and the cobblestones became our weapons
in the battle to respond and stop the violent police attacks, a situation that was used for one of the first appearances of the hawks, who dedicated themselves to destroying windows and facades of commercial establishments.
We did not make it to the Zócalo, but many groups approached its limits. There were injured students and also policemen. This confrontation continued for many hours, which, contrary to what the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) declared, had not been promoted by communists
or some other group extremist
. The decision to confront the police, using only sticks and cobblestones, arose spontaneously when the commitment of university and polytechnic students was sealed to respond to government arbitrariness and violence.
During the opportunities we had to regroup, it was proposed to go to our schools to report what had happened and call a general student strike in repudiation of the repression and for the freedom of the political prisoners, who that night were more with the raid of PCM militants. The next day, despite the fact that it was Saturday, we fulfilled our commitment from the night before and went to inform the schools of Ciudad Universitaria and the Polytechnic.
While with enthusiasm, illusion and ingenuity we began this rebellion, from the basements and spheres of power they prepared the response. On Monday, July 29, General José Hernández Toledo notified the parachute rifle battalion, established in Military Camp Number One, in the preparatory order number 1 of the Aztec Mission
that from that date All permits of any kind to leave the barracks will be suspended
. This order of a general who reported to General Marcelino García Barragán, in the first days of that rebellion, was part of others that were issued because, according to the Secretary of National Defense, of false and exaggerated information received by the then Secretary of the Interior
Luis Echeverria Alvarez.
Why? Later events, among others the traps and the massacre of October 2, and the files, would reveal it.
*Political prisoner for two years 11 months in Lecumberri prison and sentenced to 16 years in prison
