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| |  | | Luis Echeverría Alvarez | | | context : | Mexico  | | judgement place : | Mexico | | status : | Investigations underway | | particulars : | Charges of genocide and forced disappearances dismissed by a Mexican federal court on 12 July 2007 | | position : | Minister of interior, then President of Mexico |
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| | | | Luis Echeverria was born on 17 January 1922 in Mexico city.Luis Echeverría joined the faculty of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1947 and taught political theory. He rose through the ranks of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and eventually became the Private Secretary of the party President, General Rodolfo Sánchez Taboada. Echeverría was the Mexican Interior Secretary under President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz between 1964 and 1970.
He maintained a hard line against student protesters throughout all of 1968, at the time the Olympics were being held in Mexico City. He ordered the transfer of 15% of the Mexican military to the state of Guerrero to counter guerrilla groups operating there, and under Echeverría's ministry, the air force allegedly used napalm against rural communities in Guerrero. Clashes between the government and the protesters culminated in the Tlatelolco massacre in October 1968. In 1970 he was elected President, a position he held until 1976. It was during his presidency that the Corpus Christi massacre occurred.
Tlatelolco Massacre:
The Tlatelolco massacre took place on the night of 2 October 1968 in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco, Mexico City. The death toll remains uncertain but most sources report 200-300 deaths. Many more were wounded, and several thousand arrests were made. The massacre was preceded by months of political unrest in the Mexican capital, echoing student demonstrations and riots all over the world during 1968. The Mexican students wanted to exploit the attention focused on Mexico City during the 1968 Olympic Games. President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz however, was determined to stop the demonstrations and, in September, he ordered the army to occupy the campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico the largest university in Latin America. Students were beaten and arrested indiscriminately.
However, the student demonstrators were not to be deterred. The demonstrations grew in size, until, on October 2, after student strikes lasting nine weeks, 15,000 students from various universities marched through the streets of Mexico City. By nightfall, 5,000 students and workers, many of them with their wives and children, had congregated in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco.
The massacre began at sunset when army and police forces — equipped with armoured cars and tanks — surrounded the square and began firing live rounds into the crowd, hitting not only the protestors, but also other people, including children, who were there by chance for reasons unrelated to the demonstration. The killing continued throughout the night.
The official government explanation of the incident was that armed provocateurs among the demonstrators, had positioned themselves in buildings overlooking the crowd, and had been first to open fire by taking aim at the security forces that had no other choice but to return fire in self defence.
Corpus Christi Massacre:
On 10 June 1971, under the presidency of Echeverría, 42 student demonstrators were killed and dozens more wounded while demonstrating in Mexico City over education funding. This incident is known as the Corpus Christi Massacre after the feast day on which it took place. It is also known by the name of Halconazo - Falcon Strike - since the Special Forces involved were called The Falcons. Though dressed as civilians, the perpetrators were known to be members of the state security forces.
Various reports indicate that during the Mexican government's”dirty war” against leftists in the late 1960s and 1970s, a total of 530 people were forcibly "disappeared”, and that the majority of them were eventually murdered. | |     click for more... | | Trial Watch would like to remind its users that any person charged by national or international authorities is presumed innocent until proven guilty. | |  |  | | nationality : | | | Mexico | | | date of birth : | | | 17.01.1922 | | | last time seen : | | | Mexico City | | | charges : | | | Forced disappearances
Genocide | | | profile last modified : | | | 24.01.2010 |
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