Still freshly new to the Chapala area, Spencer Adams was luckily taken in hand by an Ajijic bruja (sorcerer) as his neighboring health supervisor – curing fevers attracted by gringo susceptibility, and of course la turista.
She also picked a maid for him, the almost 16-year-old Yolanda – Yoli – Rios.
Yoli was a shy, but lively, informant on all things Mexican. Spencer soon was getting along fairly well with her wary father, Anselmo – Selmo. Selmo was suspicious of young men, especially gringo military types, who were to spend a good part of the day alone with his nearly 16-year old daughter.
Selmo had never seen a gringo with such a rough, if fading, scars on his chest. Oddly, that changed some of his suspicion of this North American when alone in his house with Yoli.
Such young people in the nation’s capital, Mexico City, were up to something all together different. They were challenging the government of President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz. But not even the capital’s university students realized how seriously their cheerfully shaped challenges were going to be taken by that government.
Lavishly, Diaz Ordaz alerted the world to the fact that Mexico was enjoying the honor of being the host of the Olympic Games. As was the tradition, all the world’s leading nations were invited to participate. Diaz Ordaz vigorously, boastfully intended to demonstrate his nation’s ability to do so with a world leader’s élan. His administration was opulently demonstrating this in a chest-beating way for the burgeoning worldwide television observance. And it did not intend to allow a bunch of university students to spoil such a ripe opportunity for boasting.
Thus, the government’s lushly modeled repression of anything marring the sense of the presidency’s celebration of its autocracy. Yet, despite that, as October 1968 approached, most Mexicans were still generally pretty proud of their system of government and its accomplishments.
But Díaz Ordaz struggled to maintain peace as social tensions began to rise. As movements by labor unions and farmers fighting to improve their lot grew, he spent 150 million dollars on the Olympic Games. He wanted to present the country in a positive light without protests. His administration suppressed the unions and farmers, and was heavy-handed in trying to smooth the nation’s bumpy economy. In the end this conflict between reality and the president’s boastfulness resulted in the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre, a bloody disaster that would destroy government dreams forever.
One of Selmo Rios‘ cuñados – his wife’s youngest brother Mino – took part as thousands of students gathered in Mexico City to oppose the presidential fable structured on brutal suppression. Mino was so badly beaten by riot police for opposing the government’s Olympic “dream” that his mother didn’t recognize him when she finally found him in the capital. Mino was hard to find for he was in hiding, moving frequently to stay alive.
One of the results of the Tlatelolco Massacre – besides 300 official fatalities – was that a number of student “underground rebel armies” were formed by survivors such as Mino. Those to organize most quickly appeared in Chihuahua and Guerrero. But first, in the immediate wake of the massacre, rebel students were doctoring their wounds and recovering emotionally. Then they began to plan modes of secret existence, of collecting weapons, of clandestine methods of movement.
Yoli prized Mino. As a result, Selmo, Yoli and Spencer went to help him. But he remained so well hidden that it took time to locate him. Yoli cried when she finally saw Mino. He was in rough shape. And he was leery of a strange gringo’s’ presence. Yoli explained that Spencer was an ally. Nonetheless, Mino chose another place for their meeting. They circled back into Jalisco, riding into the small municipal center of Atoyac. That pueblito even today is pretty remote and threadbare. Population, according to recent official data, is 7,870. And, in 1968, the citizenry had no interest in anything any government source was up to.
Once Mino was convinced that Spencer was genuinely appalled at the government’s bloody treatment of its citizens, he wanted to talk to the Korean vet about foiling the administration’s search for him and his friends.
But first Yoli and her father worked to treat Mino’s wounds without attracting attention. Mino described his treatment at the hands of government forces. That brutality, in Spencer’s judgment, was a measure of how thorough government pursuit would continue to be. Spencer spoke intently of secrecy regarding weapons and ammunition, the use of grenades, also about well-located stores of supplies – food, weapons, ammunition – and about methods of clandestine transportation and contacts, sly movements and information gathering regarding government agents and forces. That was to impress on Mino the complexity of guerrilla warfare. Student resistance needed innocent-seeming “agents” within government ranks. They needed to serve as everything from janitors and errand runners to apparent pro-government inner-office help. All dangerous activities.
These maneuvers called for an outward change of personality and daily habits. Many young people found it hard to maintain such demanding behavioral change. The slightest error in maintaining that discipline could mean death, certainly torture.
The Rios family, and Spencer, preferred a different type of slyness – appearing, then disappearing. A guerrilla strategy at which they believed – and the future proved – they were well fitted.
(This is the third look at the 1960s student killings by the Diaz Ordaz and Echeverria governments.)