MASSACRE IN MEXICO

by Elena Poniatowska ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 1975

The shooting of Mexican students on October 2, 1968 has faded in the meories of most Americans and here, in a brief foreword, Octavio Paz mourns that in Mexico too its only legacy has been the snuffing out of an embryonic popular protest movement and a few token reforms that have buffed up the image of the governing PRI. Elena Poniatowska, journalist and novelist, has assembled a montage of testimony that recreates the chaotic optimism of the 1968 demonstrations, the terror (and shock) of mass jailings and beatings, and above all the blood-soaked massacre of Tlateloco--a boy screaming ""am I losing much blood?"", wounded Italian reporter Oriana Fallaci begging for an ambulance, a woman recalling ""I felt something sticky underfoot. I turned around and saw blood."" Earlier, in the same emotionally charged manner, Poniatowska interweaves statements of student protesters and their families and--with the exception of a few committed faction leaders-they reflect naive, hopeful generational rebellion, sounding on the whole more like Kent State than Latin America. Passionate and, while some may question the method--the splicing together of partisan memories recorded years after the event--this is a story that has not been effectively told before. Call it the grito of Tlateloco, a cry of protest and the subjective manifesto of Mexico's suppressed, potentially explosive, middle-class dissenters.

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1975

ISBN: 0826208177

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1975

Categories: NONFICTION