A-Infos (en) Ex-President Testifies About '68 Mexico Massacre

[Tom Burghardt <tburghardt@igc.apc.org>]

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     A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
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     EX-PRESIDENT TESTIFIES ABOUT '68 MEXICO MASSACRE
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     Politics: In probe seen as further death knell for old
     system, Luis Echeverria is questioned.
 
     Los Angeles Times
     NATION & WORLD
     http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/NATION
     Wednesday, February 4, 1998
     By MARY BETH SHERIDAN, ROBERT RANDOLPH, Special to The Times
 
     MEXICO CITY--For the first time in modern Mexican history, a
former president testified Tuesday before a congressional
committee, as legislators plunged into an investigation of one of
this country's most painful events: the army massacre of student
protesters in 1968.
 
     Former President Luis Echeverria, 76, was asked to clarify
the mystery still surrounding the military attack--an assault so
bloody it started the gradual decline of Mexico's one-party
state. Echeverria was the powerful interior minister at the time
and was president from 1970 to 1976.
 
     But more striking than his testimony was the fact that the
investigation was taking place at all. The probe was launched by
the country's first opposition-controlled Chamber of Deputies, or
lower house. It was seen as an attempt to change a political
system that long considered presidents sacrosanct and tight-
lipped discipline more important than disclosure.
 
     "This is very important for history," said Armando Lopez, a
member of the congressional committee, as he shook the former
president's hand before the hearing. It was a striking reversal
of roles: Lopez told reporters that he had been a student
demonstrator in the Mexico City plaza on the night of the
massacre.
 
     But the session disappointed those who were hoping for new
information. Echeverria gave a rambling half-hour speech in which
he spoke sympathetically about the students. When the legislators
tried to close the session to the public in order to begin asking
questions, Echeverria asked for a postponement.
 
     As the hearing ended, a reporter asked the former president
how many people had died in the massacre.
 
     "I don't know," replied Echeverria, who as interior minister
had been in charge of public security. "It's being cleared up.
Why are you so curious?"
 
     Despite the powerful symbolism of a president being
questioned, critics noted that the investigating committee has
limited powers and cannot subpoena witnesses or offer immunity
for testimony. Some questioned whether the truth would ever
emerge. "This will serve to keep the theme in the media and
ratify its historical importance," said Carlos Monsivais, a noted
social critic. "I don't think it will serve for much more."
 
     While many books and articles have been written about the
Mexico City massacre, the government has divulged few details
about its actions.
 
     What is known is this: On the evening of Oct. 2, 1968,
shortly before the Olympic Games opened here, the Mexican army
and riot police opened fire on demonstrators who had thronged the
historic Plaza of Three Cultures to demand more democracy. The
government said 50 were killed; historians put the figure in the
hundreds.
 
     The massacre was a turning point in Mexican politics. For
many people, it stripped the legitimacy from a one-party system
founded on the ideals of the Mexican revolution, a system that
until then had provided political stability and impressive
economic growth.
 
     The government of then-President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz said
students started the shooting and the army responded. Diaz Ordaz
blamed an international left-wing conspiracy. But historians have
discarded such accounts. For years, they have demanded, in vain,
access to government files on the event.
 
     "Within the culture of secrecy and private decision--often
secrecy for life--that marks the modern Mexican political system,
will we ever have a list of the men who were responsible?" wrote
anguished historian Enrique Krauze in a best-selling recent book,
"Mexico: A Biography of Power."
 
     Members of the congressional committee say the moment may
finally have come when they can learn the truth. The committee
was formed in October, after elections in which the Institutional
Revolutionary Party, or PRI, lost control of the Chamber of
Deputies for the first time in seven decades.
 
     The new, opposition-controlled house has declared it will
launch unprecedented investigations into past cases of corruption
and abuse of power. Already, it has unearthed dozens of alleged
cases of payoffs and payroll-padding in the past Congress.
 
     But how far it will get with the 1968 massacre is unclear.
Legislators said it was the first time a former president had
ever appeared before a congressional committee. The members also
want access to army files and intelligence information compiled
by the United States and other governments.
 
     But Monsivais, the social critic, said he believes the
military files have already been destroyed.
 
     Critics also noted that Echeverria was not under oath in
Tuesday's hearing and faced no prosecution. The congressional
committee was so deferential it even interviewed the former
president at his home.
 
     But others said the probe could mark the end to a tradition
in which political memoirs were seen as treason to the system and
Mexican leaders took their secrets to the grave.
 
     "We all have an enormous responsibility to advance in this
investigation, to reach the limits of what is humanly possible,"
wrote political scientist Federico Reyes Heroles, in a column in
the daily Reforma. "How many mysteries are we Mexicans prepared
to tolerate at this democratizing end of the century? Very few,
and '68 is not on the list."
 
     Copyright Los Angeles Times
 
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