tlatelolco, ciudad de méxico, (2021)
A photography series documenting Plaza de las Tres Culturas, the site of the Tlatelolco Massacre carried out by Mexican Armed Forces against civilian protestors on October 2, 1968.
The massacre was assisted by the CIA and followed a series of large demonstrations enacted by the Mexican Movement of 1968 which protested the Olympic games being held in the city that year.
A broad coalition of Mexican students across the country had garnered widespread public support for political and social change. They protested the immense sums of public funding used to build Olympic facilities. The movement demanded greater political freedoms and an end to the authoritarianism of the PRI regime, which had held power since 1929.
The U.S.-backed PRI government headed by President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz violently repressed the student movement as they grew in momentum. The massacre took place ten days before the opening ceremony of the Olympics, which were carried out normally. Estimates of the actual death toll range from 300 to 400, with eyewitnesses reporting hundreds dead and over a thousand people arrested.
mateo-vargas.com 