The early 1970s was a turbulent period in Mexico’s history: the arrests and repression that followed the student uprisings of 1968 and 1971 led to the formation of armed socialist organizations in different parts of the country, which evolved into splintered urban guerilla movements.
Many of these groups had their foundations in universities, as was the case in Guadalajara, where the People’s Revolutionary Armed Forces (FRAP)—an offshoot of the dissident University of Guadalajara student union known as the Frente Estudiantil Revolucionario—began to flex its muscles. In May 1973, Tapatios were shocked when the FRAP kidnapped the U.S. consul general in Guadalajara, Terrance Leonhardy, and demanded from then-president Luis Echeverría the release of 30 prisoners, in addition to a ransom of one million pesos. The diplomat was held for 76 hours before being released unharmed, but the incident did little to calm the nerves of Jalisco’s ruling classes.
Many of these diverse guerilla groups had already begun to agglomerate under an organization that called itself the Liga Comunista 23 de Septiembre. This Marxist-Leninist group soon began to up the stakes. On September 17, 1973, Monterrey industrialist Eugenio Garza Sada, the founder of the Tec de Monterrey university and owner of the Cuauhtémoc brewing empire, died in a failed kidnapping attempt carried out by the LC23.
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