Former President Zedillo part of Mexico's '68 student movement?

Mexico’s El Universal newspaper has an interesting online special on Mexico’s student movement of 1968. There are several online photo galleries that are worth looking at, even if you don’t read Spanish too well. (Once you are on the website, there are 5 red bullet points with links to the galleries on the left hand side of the page).

The ’68 student movement in Mexico had some profound consequences for present day politics in Mexico. While the Mexican state was authoritarian at the time, it was not known for being particularly repressive, but the arrival of the Olympics in 1968 seemed to have led the government to repress the students in order to show to the world that Mexico was a stable and orderly country. Most well known is the October 2, 1968 massacre of students at the Plaza of Tlaltelolco by the military and police. This massacre of the students was a key event in the slow push towards democracy in Mexico. It demonstrated that the ideals of the Mexican Revolution were bankrupt, and revealed to the world that Mexico’s electoral authoritarianism was really a sham. The number of students killed on that day is still a mystery, but in the last few years new information is coming to light on the state’s response to the movement as well as the subsequent dirty war the Mexican government fought against various radical groups throughout the country.

I’m certainly no expert on the events of this time, but I thought these photos were interesting to look at. While most Latin American countries were engaged in their own dirty wars in the 60s and 70s, Mexico’s repression is still somewhat shrouded in mystery.

I’d like to point out two photos in particular in part IV. The first photo is supposed to be Mexico’s president, Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000) being attacked by the police when he was 17, and the second photo looks to be him as well, although he is only identified as a student of Mexico’s National Polytechnic Institute (IPN). This is the first time that I have ever heard that Zedillo was involved in the student movement, and I find the second photo to be a little questionable as the information I have found suggests Zedillo didn’t enroll in the IPN until 1969. If these photos are accurate, it’s somewhat ironic that Zedillo was a victim of the repression in 1968, then was president over the repression of Zapatista communities after the 1994 uprising. In both instances, the students and the indigenous Zapatistas were reacting against political exclusion, but it seems Zedillo had a selective memory.