Sheinbaum dedicates the first morning to commemorate October 2

President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo dedicated her first morning conference to the commemoration of October 2, 56 years after the massacre of students in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, in Tlatelolco, an event that she described as one of the greatest atrocities that Mexico experienced in the second half of the 20th century.

GALLERY: They pay tribute to victims of October 2, 1968

The President expressed yesterday: October 2 is not forgottenmoments before on behalf of the Mexican State, the Secretary of the Interior, Rosa Icela Rodríguez, asked for forgiveness from those who lost family members in that repression, ordered in 1968 by the then supreme commander of the armed forces, President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz.

“Public apologies for a crime against humanity, as President Andrés Manuel López Obrador did with the Yaqui peoples, magnify the people and the governments; recognizes crimes like this and, at the same time, puts a stop to it and says: ‘never again’ (…) It is not sweeping a fact like this under the rug,” he said.

Also present at the event were the legal advisor of the Presidency, Ernestina Godoy; the Undersecretary of Human Rights, Population and Migration of the Ministry of the Interior, César Yáñez Centeno; as well as the head of the Financial Intelligence Unit, Pablo Gómez, a political prisoner of the student movement at that time. Sheinbaum Pardo confirmed that she is daughter of ’68.

The Government of Mexico City reported that about 8 thousand people participated yesterday in the march that was held to commemorate the 56th anniversary of the massacre of students in Tlatelolco. They reported white balance. Photo Alfredo Dominguez

For me, he stressed, It is an obligation today (yesterday). He narrated that his mother, being a professor at the National Polytechnic Institute, participated throughout the movement helping students and was later expelled from the institution.

In the family it was something we experienced personally. When I was seven years old, I went to visit Pablo and other prisoners in Lecumberri. It’s something we grew up with, very painful.

But he also stressed that this student movement “opened the door to the political participation of many young people and society as a whole for a more democratic country.

The victory of that movement, for me, was the triumph in 2018 with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who recovered freedoms, democracy and justice for the people of Mexico.

In the Treasury Room of the National Palace he showed an 11-minute video about what was the student movement of ’68, which called for freedom, democracy and the release of political prisoners. Díaz Ordaz was pointed out in the documentary as the person responsible for everything that happened that October 2.