Mexico’s President Apologizes for 1968 Student Massacre

In one of her first acts since taking office, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum issued a formal apology on Wednesday for the 1968 army killing of students.

“October 2nd will not be forgotten!” Sheinbaum, a former student activist who refers to herself as the “daughter of ’68,” proclaimed on the anniversary of the massacre.

Official numbers show that 30 people were killed when security forces opened fire on students conducting a peaceful march in Mexico City’s Tlatelolco district, just days before the country hosted the Olympics.

According to relatives and campaigners, over 400 people lost their lives.

Giving her first news conference after being sworn in Tuesday as Mexico’s first woman president, Sheinbaum said that a decree would be issued describing the killings as a crime against humanity.

Never again would the security forces be used “to attack or repress the people of Mexico,” she promised, hours before a planned protest in Mexico City to demand justice for the victims of the massacre.

Sheinbaum was born to Bulgarian and Lithuanian Jewish migrants in Mexico City during the turmoil of the early 1960s, when students and other activists were seeking to end the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s long grip on power.

Her mother lost her job as a university professor for denouncing the massacre.

Hours after Sheinbaum’s remarks, thousands of people took part in a traditional annual demonstration in memory of the fallen students.

Some protesters, known as the “black bloc” because of their black hooded clothing, threw stones and firecrackers at police officers guarding the Zocalo, Mexico City’s main square and home to the presidential palace.

“It is not enough to apologize. We want justice… You can give apologies to your friends, but not to us who gave our lives to change this country,” said Oscar Menendez, 90, who was present at the 1968 tragedy.

Angel Rodriguez, 76, who also took part in the student movement, said the apology goes some way in improving the relationship between people and the state.

She was not obligated to make that apology. “It should have been previous presidents, right after the massacre,” Rodriguez stated.

Sheinbaum, a chemist by training, won a landslide victory in the June elections on a promise to continue her predecessor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s left-wing reform agenda, with whom she is close.

Lopez Obrador left office last week after six years due to the country’s single-term restriction, despite an approval rating of over 70%, owing largely to his initiatives targeted at assisting poorer Mexicans.

Sheinbaum takes over a country where criminal violence, much of it tied to drug trafficking and gangs, has killed over 450,000 people since 2006 – an issue she will confront when she delivers her security plan next week.

AFP