‘68: The Mexican Autumn of the Tlatelolco Massacre

A firsthand account of the shocking Tlatelolco Massacre, still denied by the Mexican government.

In Mexico City on the night of October 2, 1968, at least two hundred students–among thousands protesting election fraud and campaigning for university reform–were shot dead in a bloody showdown with government troops in Tlatelolco Square. Hundreds more were arrested, and imprisoned for years. Yet these events are nowhere to be found in official histories- that very night the bodies were collected and trucked away and the cobblestones washed clean, and government denial of all involvement began. To this day no one has been held accountable for the official acts of savagery.

One member of the crowd that night, Paco Taibo, would become an international literary figure; ‘68 is his account of the events of October 2, and of the student movement that preceded them, in the first English-language translation, with a new epilogue by the author. In provocative, anecdotal prose, Taibo here claims for history one more of the many unredeemed and sleepless ghosts that live in our lands.