An image destroyed: Diaz Ordaz and Tlatelolco
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."
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