68 [Paperback]

Paco Ignacio Taibo Ii (Author), Donald Nicholson-Smith (Translator)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1583226087 | ISBN-13: 978-1583226087 | Publication Date: January 6, 2004

On the night of October 2, 1968, there occurred a bloody showdown between student demonstrators and the Mexican government in Tlatelolco Square. At least two hundred students were shot dead and many more were detained. Then the bodies were trucked out, the cobblestones were washed clean. Detainees were held without recourse until 1971.
Official denial of the killing continues even today: In the first week of February 2003, Mexico's Education Secretary Reyes Tamiz ordered a new history textbook that mentions the massacre-Claudia Sierra's History of Mexico: An Analytical Approach-removed from shelves and classrooms. (Public outcry led Tamiz to reverse his decision days later.) No one has yet been held accountable for the official acts of savagery.
With provocative, anecdotal, and analytical prose, Taibo claims for history "one more of the many unredeemed and sleepless ghosts that live in our lands."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Now available for the first time in English, Mexican author and essayist Taibo’s beautifully realized memoir of the Oct. 1968 Tlatelolco student massacre in Mexico City documents "The Movement" of students that, at one point, was half a million strong. Taibo begins more than a decade before the massacre, when the movement was inchoate and the "invisible enemy" was purely an intellectual concern. He evokes relationships, passions and arguments lovingly. (Relevant section titles include "Of Women and Mattresses," "And Sometimes We Believe in the Informative Value of Tremors Running Through the Atmosphere" and "In Which the Virtues of the National Anthem Are Rediscovered.") The Cuban revolution and the Vietnamese resistance galvanized democratic idealists across Mexico, and The Movement turned to action: widespread propaganda dispersion, silent demonstrations, flash rallies, community organizing and the 123-day strikes in high schools and universities across the country. Then, as the impact of the student revolt in Paris in May 1968 reverberated throughout the world and governments became increasingly reactive, 200 protesting students were murdered in Tlatelolco Square by government military police, and hundreds more were arrested and jailed. In the days and weeks following, the corpses of the slain students disappeared, the facts were contorted by government-controlled media, and reality turned to myth. Today, over 35 years later, much of the truth remains uncovered, but Taibo’s memoir goes a long way toward setting the record straight.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Born in Gijón, Spain, PACO IGNACIO TAIBO II has lived in Mexico City since 1958, when his family fled Spanish fascism. His numerous literary honors include two Dashiell Hammett prizes, one Planeta prize for the best historical novel, and the Bancarella Prize for his biography of Che Guevara.

Product Details

• Paperback: 136 pages
• Publisher: Seven Stories Press (January 6, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1583226087
• ISBN-13: 978-1583226087
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #405,517 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Effective Document Of Memories., February 7, 2008

By 

Mr. Fellini "Fellini" (Orange County, California United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: 68 (Paperback)

Paco Ignacio Taibo II, considered by many to be Mexico's greatest modern writer, dives into his memories of 40 years past to recollect a time when the world was turning upside down, when political movements were more than just slogans, and when revolution was something the young deeply aspired to. "68" is a powerful, fascinating look at 1960s Mexico, while America was celebrating flower power, Latin America's own youth was inspired and captivated by the possibility of socialist revolution inspired by events in Cuba and figures like Che Guevara. The mass student movement culminated in a notorious chapter of Mexican history: The October massacre in Tlatelolco Square where hundreds, possibly thousands of people were shot down by government troops in an even still shrouded in mystery and official denial. Taibo is the perfect choice to write on the subject considering he lived through it, he was one of the students marching in the streets of Mexico City that year and still a Leftist, having written the definitive Che bio, "Guevara, Also Known As Che." His chronicle here is a nostalgic, interesting, never boring slice of memory. He meticulously captures the culture of the time, not just politically but socially, showing us a conservative country rattled by the emergence of hippies and miniskirts, with students studying Marx and traveling to Havana to drink in the idea of utopian revolution. He also captures the dark side of the times, the brutal government repression, troops invading campuses in ways that make the 60s campus battles in the U.S. seem like child's play. There are comic side stories that dip into the more light-hearted side of youth and discovery, but always full of intrigue, consider Taibo lamenting his girlfriend leaving him for a "student" that turned out to be a government informant. "68" races along with the urgency of memory, of a writer trying to get it all down before memory and official history begin to fail. 40 years later the bloody events of 1968 will no doubt be revisited in Mexico, and in times just as interesting with the new rise of the Left in the region impulsed by Venezuela. But the beauty of "68" is how it is just such a well-written, fascinating moment in time, a universal story of being young and having ideals, fighting authority and hoping for something better. The hope and terror are all here, "68" is not confined to it's era and finds itself at home in our own decisive moment in history.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The real Thing, March 13, 2010

By 

T. Porges (Washington DC, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: 68 (Paperback)

This is what primary-source, first-person history is supposed to be like, and it's written with regret -- regret, specifically, that Taibo II finds himself alone as the memorialist of the rebellion and massacres of 1968. History has made Mexico City into the empty center of the events of that year, and the place where so much of what was to follow, from the Dirty War in Argentina to, ultimately, the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas, found its beginning. This is essential history; a book that every school library should have.