The Mexican Movement of 1968 or Movimiento Estudianti was a student movement and series of protests demanding greater civil liberties, democracy and a reduction of economic inequality in Mexico in 1968.
Background
Since the end of the Mexican Revolution, Mexico had been an authoritarian one-party state that repressed dissenters. However, the country had been going through an economic miracle and the population became more education and urbanised, leading to rapid discontent with the government. Inspired by a recent wave of strikes in the mid-1960s and the global unrest in the late 1960s, people began to dissent against the government. In addition, the 1968 olympics were to be held in Mexico, and many felt that the money would be better spent elsewhere.
Events
On the 22nd and 23rd July, 1968, a series of fights between students at the Vocational Schools 2 and 5 affiliated with the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) and the Isaac Ochoterena High School, a preparatory school affiliated with National Autonomous University of Mexico. Police violently broke up the fights, arresting students and entereing the schools. Students and communist protesters organised against the repression on the 26th of July, in memory of the 26th of July Movement in the Cuban Revolution. Soon, frustrated protesters set fire to empty buses, leading to hundreds of injuries and arrests. Students hid in a school and with the police claiming them to be a threat to national security (due to communist links) they destroyed the door (from the 18th century) with a rocket launcher.
This is eventually led to a massive student march and the formation of the National Strike Council, which coordinated protests for social, educational and political reforms. They also formed brigades (group of six or more students) who distributed leaflets on the street, markets and on buses about various issues in the country and spoke about government corruption and repression. Most drivers and passengers sympathised with them, and they organised an even larger protest march, and in response the military occupied the National Autonomous University of Mexico. The military attempted to occupy two more campuses as students used small arms and molotov cocktails.
The students held the campuses for more than 12 hours and 15 people were killed and over a 1,000 bullets were fired. Afterwards a popular assembly of 10,000 people was held in a major city plaza in Mexico City, before several helicopters dropped flairs and massacred between 300 and 400 people. This was the starting point of the Mexican Dirty War and radicalised many people, including the future organisers of the EZLN.