A seasoned politico will shrug off the most damning indictments of his record and policies. But make unflattering comments about his appearance and he'll turn into an avenging fury.
Such was the case on August 27, 1968, when a howling mob of student demonstrators stood outside the presidential palace and hurled insults against President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, most of them touching on his less than prepossessing physiognomy.
To be fair, Diaz Ordaz was not completely humorless about this deficiency. In a friendly setting, he was quite capable of treating that bad break he got from nature with self-deprecating humor. At a banquet for U.S. President Lyndon Johnson, he remarked that political enemies had accused him of being two-faced. "If I had two faces," he quipped, "do you think I'd be wearing this one?"
But it was one thing to engage in good-natured banter with a friendly U.S. president and another to hear a mob screaming Sal al balcon, chango hocicon! -- "Come out on the balcony, you big-nosed monkey!" The students were protesting army occupation of part of the National University (UNAM), a move justified by Alfonso Corona del Rosal, Regent of the Federal District, as necessary to thwart "a carefully planned action of agitation and subversion caused by elements of the Communist Party."
The president's rage at this barrage of personal derogation new no bounds. "Youth!" he exploded to one of his confidantes. "Those sons of bitches are not youth! They're nothing! Bloodsucking parasites! Beggars, cynics, illiterates! Stinking filth!"
The balcony confrontation irreversibly set into motion events that would lead to the October 2 massacre at Tlatelolco, considered the worst high-profile atrocity by armed government forces until it was overshadowed in 1988 by the slaughter at Tiannamen Square. Adding to Diaz Ordaz's rage was his fear that massive student unrest might impact unfavorably on the 1968 Olympics, due to begin October 9.
Extending an olive branch, the National Strike Committee (CNH) issued a statement August 31 calling for a national dialogue and denying any attempt to disrupt the Olympics. The following day came the president's informe, or annual report. In it he accused the students of robberies, economic upheavals and even rapes. On September 13 came the "Silent Demonstration" (when 200,000 young people marched with handkerchiefs tied over their mouths) and on September 18 the army occupied the entire university.
The meeting at Tlatelolco was scheduled for early evening of October 2. Soldiers and tanks surrounded the square but this was not considered menacing because the army had been in the streets since July 26, when University Rector Javier Barros Sierra supported the strike and marched with the demonstrators. But the students were disturbed when they saw a group of short-haired young men circling around the area. These new-comers, obviously paramilitaries, wore white gloves or knotted white handkerchief on their right hands. At 6:20 p.m. two attack helicopters swooped down on the square and dropped flares. This was a signal for the carnage to begin. Jean-Francois Held, correspondent for the Paris weekly Le Nouvel Observateur, had been in Vietnam and the Middle East but Tlatelolco something new. "Never have I seen a crowd fired on like that," he wrote.
To the end, Diaz Ordaz was unrepented. In his memoirs, he made the fantastic claim that the students had fired on their own comrades and the completely false one that the soldiers had fired to prevent demonstrators from seizing the Foreign Relations Ministry. Today, he is remembered as a president in the tradition of another Diaz -- Porfirio -- whose repressive regime sparked the Mexican Revolution.
It could have been very different. Though politically authoritarian, Diaz Ordaz was a prudent fiscal conservative and had the good sense during his term to retain the services of Antonio Ortiz Mena, the gifted finance minister who had served under Diaz Ordaz's predecessor, Adolfo Lopez Mateos. The 12-year period between 1958-70 was known as "The Stabilizing Development." Inflation was lower than the United States, the average annual increase was 6 percent for the GNP and 6.4 in buying power and the peso was one of the world's most stable currencies. Diaz Ordaz's successor, Luis Echeverria, had been interior minister at the time of the massacre. Once in power, he gave a perfect imitation of a felon attempting to cover his tracks. To wash his hands of Tlatelolco and gain student and popular support, he abandoned the enlightened economic program of his predecessor and embarked on a suicidal coarse of wasteful public spending. Ironically, this ruinous trend was intensified by the discovery of oil and the reckless gambling economic policies of Echeverria's successor, Jose Lopez Portillo. Then came the oil glut and the worst financial crisis in Mexico's history. But back to Diaz Ordaz.
If he had matched his concern for Mexico's economic health with the most minimal concern for human rights, he might today be remembered as one of his country's greatest presidents.
This article was first published in the Reporter in October 1999. The author, historian Jim Tuck, died in 2007