1968: Lessons Learned Did the left learn from 1968? Dissent asked veterans of a turbulent year
Krauze, Enrique
HISTORY HAS issued a definitive verdict on the events of October 2, 1968, in the capital city of Mexico, at least for its horrendous moral significance. Although we will never know the...
...Recall that the Mexican left in '68 had no representation in Congress, where the PRI ruled with an absolute majority...
...With a focus on these crucial themes, a modern and liberal left could count on a majority of the vote (surely including mine) and gain the presidency...
...Though the process would unfold across three decades, the government's actions in 1968 were the real beginning of the end for the vaunted "Mexican political system...
...In the mass assemblies, we voted by "raising a hand...
...In its heart of hearts, a radical sector of the Mexican left continues to believe that only social revolution (albeit perhaps in its milder, softer, low-intensity form) is the driving force of history...
...Although we will never know the exact number of those killed on that afternoon in the Plaza of Tlatelolco (a site—it should be remembered— where human sacrifices were performed in pre-Hispanic Mexico) there is no doubt that what happened was mass murder, a useless and unpardonable sacrifice, an act of state terrorism against a student movement that had launched radical demonstrations but never resorted to the politics of violence...
...Unfortunately this did not happen, and in large measure its failure was due to the intrinsic conflict between "democracy" and "revolution" that marked the student movement of '68 and is evident in the very name of the Party of Democratic Revolution...
...The problem is that—like the rigidly doctrinal right, its twin in this respect—the left observes reality through ideological blinders...
...Forty years on, we still do not have a complete and reliable picture of what really happened...
...It was a movement averse to prudence, tolerance, self-criticism, negotiation, rationality...
...But such a modern and liberal left is not yet supported by a majority of those who consider themselves leftists...
...The psyche of President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz had a decisive influence...
...But many other factors influenced the process and eventual outcome of these events, factors independent of the personality of the president...
...His psychological flaws functioned like a cracked magnifying glass, distorting the actual situation...
...These almost cosmic mutations have—together with the emergence of India—redesigned the economic map of the twenty-first century...
...In a country that had been officially "revolutionary" for decades but in which obedience and silence toward authority were the norm, the insistence of the student movement on the public discussion of problems was in itself an extraordinary novelty...
...In contemporary Mexico, thanks to '68, we have freedom of expression, a press that can analyze and comment on and protest government actions...
...But beyond the political anatomy of '68 and its cruel lessons, there is an aspect of that student movement that is still relevant for all of us who participated in the upheaval of forty years ago: the democratic legacy of '68...
...20 n DISSENT / Spring 2008...
...It then appeared that the conditions were favorable for a final chapter that would complete forty years of development and that the Mexican left would peacefully arrive at the pinnacle of power...
...And there is one important additional point...
...Less clear is the complex web of passions, interests, errors, and calculated actions that led to the massacre...
...The movement of '68 was festive, irrational, generous, romantic, expansive, argumentative, destructive, irreverent, and Manichaean in its view of reality...
...The Mexican left (as is true in much of Latin America) has not shed its blinders, because, among other factors, it is very weak on self-criticism...
...And this lack of conclusion is highly unfortunate because only a modern, liberal left can transform Mexico into a country that is less poor, less unjust, less deprived of equal rights for all its citizens...
...Certainly no one now proposes the adoption of the Cuban model, but many admire the forms and achievements of Hugo Chavez and support that model as the best option for Mexico...
...This article was translated from the Spanish by Hank Heifetz...
...Today's Mexican left is the natural heir to the movement of '68 and therefore the major historical guardian of its legacy...
...THERE WAS, of course, something intrinsically democratic in the very existence of that great act of negation, that gigantic chorus of "NO" that the student masses unleashed against an autocratic government...
...Except for Echeverria, who is still alive but largely ostracized, almost all the politicians who had an important role in those events are now dead...
...If changes of such magnitude have not altered the fixed ideas of many Mexican leftists on the economic roles of the state and the market, perhaps nothing will...
...Nevertheless, though '68 was—at least potentially—an attempt at revolution, there was no justification for the savage repression unleashed against its participants...
...It was in fact the option favored by the charismatic presidential DISSENT / Spring 2008 n 19 SYMPOSIUM candidate Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador...
...It wanted all or nothing...
...The Mexican political system had been widely praised during the early 1960s, as a supposedly "miraculous" mechanism, combining economic growth with a "very light" variety of political authoritarianism based on patronage and a measure of corruption but nevertheless with authentic social roots...
...in the marches we believed that we were "representing" the people of Mexico...
...It does not cease to be left if it becomes liberal, as in Chile, Brazil, and Uruguay...
...For many years it seemed to me a simple and irrefutable truth that the movement of '68 had been the embryo of Mexican democracy, a process in which no one had complete faith until the beginning of the eighties but that would acquire a growing and irresistible power in the final years of the twentieth century...
...The Tlatelolco Massacre was followed by a period of repression that was in SYMPOSIUM turn followed by the birth and growth of a genuinely free press, with a number of important newspapers and periodicals founded by veterans of '68...
...The party has won mayoralties and governorships and is the second-largest party in the Congress...
...And thanks to '68, Mexican women—who were numerous within that student movement—could enter public life with energy and impact, a great historical achievement in a country with Mexico's machista traditions...
...These concepts, even the political ideal of a valid vote, were foreign to our movement...
...When the movement of history turned against the authoritarian systems and closed societies of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union and changed their very nature while, no less surprising, a vigorous market economy arose in China, our left refused to study and deeply discuss the enormous significance of these events...
...WE STUDENTS of the '68 movement were intent on revolution, not on democracy...
...Never, for instance, was there a proposal for the creation of a new political party, which certainly could have been formed at that time...
...THE MEXICAN LEFT still has not decided which road to follow, the path of tumultuous and violent revolution or that of a commitment to the construction of a genuine Mexican democracy, which is still very much a process in progress...
...our favorite slogan was unete pueblo!—"People...
...I continue to believe that the student movement of '68 was a fundamental moment for the coming of democracy to my country, but I now think that the nature and dimensions of this contribution should be subjected to a more refined analysis, specifically because its problems continue to be those of the contemporary Mexican left...
...A modern, liberal left in power could be an excellent counterpart to a possible new government, by the Democratic Party, in the United States...
...It paid no attention to complex arguments, to the shadings of real life...
...Cuauhtemoc Cardenas then made a decision that had not interested the student movement of twenty years before...
...A government that murders its civil dissidents is a dictatorship pure and simple...
...Opposing positions are invariably dismissed as "right-wing...
...In an atmosphere of extreme polarization, there is no place for moderation or debate...
...It was a position viewed with fear and suspicion not only by those considered to be on the Mexican right, but by Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas himself...
...The left does not cease to be left if it modernizes, as in Spain...
...According to reliable accounts, he was deprived of the victory he had earned by fraud that was orchestrated through computer manipulations by the PRI...
...ENRIQUE KRAUZE is the author of Mexico: Biography of Power and editor of the magazine Letras Libres...
...but the Mexican people would have needed much more to unite with our movement: a structure, an institution, a firm direction, a political party...
...In the dissidence and idealism of the young, he only saw the darkest of communist conspiracies against Mexican society...
...On the contrary, it completely rejected the established order...
...And the Mexican Communist Party was banned...
...Certain key questions still await truly definitive answers: the role of the army for instance or the creation and operations of the Bata116n Olimpia (a paramilitary group under the command of Diaz Ordaz's minister of the interior, Luis Echeverria), the possible role (during the 18 n DISSENT / Spring 2008 height of the cold war) of international provocateurs, agents of both the Soviet Union and the U.S...
...We cannot wait till 2018—which will be the fiftieth anniversary of '68—for all this to happen...
...In Mexico, a left of this kind could have the power to convince entrenched union and bureaucratic institutions of the need to carry out reforms that the country requires in order to emerge from its stagnation and grow economically...
...In radical circles of the Mexican left (especially in the universities and the more doctrinaire press) a position of "Zero Tolerance" prevails...
...It could not conceive of a constructive project of political transition for its own participants and for Mexico...
...In 2006, the PRD seemed on the verge of electing a president...
...And the left has played a decisive role in the political transition of Mexico since 1988, when—for the first time—it united to contest an election, led by Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, a respected man of the left and the son of Mexico's most famous president, Lazar° Cardenas...
...The students never considered electoral democracy as a valid solution for Mexico...
...These two men represent opposed visions of the role of the left in Mexico (and by extension throughout Latin America...
...It is an aspect of special concern to the various leftwing groups who were the real force behind that movement and who, for the last twenty years at least, have exercised a constantly growing influence on Mexican political life...
...From then on, thanks to the PRD, the ascent of the left has been impressive...
...The Mexican left, or at least very much of it, continues to be trapped within that dilemma and therefore the legacy of '68 is still an incomplete, inconclusive inheritance...
...Join us...
...The upheaval of '68 was a revolutionary movement, though a "gentle" rebellion rather than one committed to extreme violence...
...The Mexican inclination toward hard-line ideology is a remote echo of the scholastic teachings of Spanish colonialism, which saw opposing opinions as crimes...
...The Tlatelolco Massacre revealed the true face of the system and pointed toward the eventual end of the Institutional Revolutionary Party's long-standing one-party rule...
...It could persuade Mexico's powerful business corporations to participate in relieving the numerically immense problem of poverty and social backwardness...
...And this impulse toward liberty took hold...
...It was inspired by the idols and ideals of the Cuban Revolution and was confronted by the tanks of a government that continued to claim historic legitimacy based on that other, by then mythical, Mexican Revolution...
...For the last ten years the bastion of its power has been Mexico City itself...
...And we may never have it...
...He founded a political party, the Party of Democratic Revolution (PRD...
...But we need to make a precise distinction: rebellion for the sake of liberty is one thing, but the construction of a democratic mode of government is another, different thing...
...Together they might be able to create a renewed and long-lasting version of the Alliance for Progress...
Vol. 55 • April 2008 • No. 2
