Luis Escheverría Álvarez: The Man Behind the PRI’s Death Squad
Alfonso Cuarón’s 2018 drama Roma shows the political and social turmoil in 1970s Mexico. Mexico’s president in the 70s, Luis Echeverría Álvarez, waged a war against guerillas and student protests. This campaign by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) government would be named “Mexico’s Dirty War” as the government would use police, military and covert forces to subdue, disappear, and kill thousands of Mexicans.
Beginning in the 1960s, student protests against the government who was seen as corrupt and ineffective, were frequent. The PRI would send local police to break up the protests but with little effect. 1968 was the year that started Luis Echeverría Álvarez’ formed the PRI death squad that would claim the lives of thousands of Mexicans.
Mexico had won the bid to host the Olympic games in October of 1968. Student protests and guerilla fighting increased drastically by August 1968. Security concerns were voiced by the international community about the safety and security of athletes and dignitaries. Mexico needed to address the security issue or else the countries would pull out or the Olympic games would be cancelled.
Mexico’s president, Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, instructed Luis Echeverría Álvarez to form a security group for the Olympic games. Batallón Olimpia (Olympia Battalion) was created as the security force for the Olympic games. The Olympia Battalion had a more nefarious role and would play a major part in the Dirty War.
Evidence at the National Security Archive at George Washington University shows the United States had knowledge of the formation of the Olympia Battalion in August of 1968 (Doyle, Tlatelolco Massacre). Olympia Battalion was tested at many protests across Mexico, until the fateful night of October 2, 1968. A protest moved into Tlatelolco Square, the Army and police cornered thousands of protesters, bystanders and residency of the nearby apartment complex. Tankettes moved in and a helicopter flew overhead. A flare was shot from the helicopter, what happened next was nothing short of a bloodbath.
Massacre in Mexico, by Elena Poniatowska is a compilation of interviews from eyewitnesses of the massacre (Poniatowska, Massacre in Mexico). Eyewitnesses claim seeing a flare from overhead and immediate shooting. Sharp shooters of Olympia Battalion had fired on the Army. Not knowing where it came from, the Army fired upon civilians. Olympia Battalion was described as wearing civilian clothes with white handkerchiefs or gloves.
Witnesses and members of Olympia Battalion stated they did not allow anyone in or out, allowing the Army to fire on innocent people. Protest leaders were rounded up by the Olympia Battalion, stripped of their clothing, humiliated, beaten and imprisoned. To this day, an exact number who were massacred is unknown. Some of the people who were killed are still unidentified.
In 1970, Luis Echeverría Álvarez became president. He took a harder stance against student protests and guerilla fighters. Olympia Battalion had been his creation and he looked to make it bigger and better. He instructed the formation of Los Halcones (the Falcons). This group was comprised of paratroopers and infantrymen from the Army with the sole purpose of controlling protesters.
The Mexico Project at the National Security Archive compiled by Kate Doyle and her colleagues found evidence that Echeverría Álvarez and the PRI government funded the creation and training of the Halcones (Doyle, Corpus Christi Massacre). Documents from the United States shows the Halcones were trained by the United States in tactics such as hand to hand combat and riot control.
The proving ground for the Halcones would come on June 10, 1971. As depicted in Alfonso Cuarón’s, Roma. Named the Corpus Christi Massacre for the religious holiday it happened on and also known as El Halconazo (the Falcon Strike). Protesters marched in support of students who protested in Nuevo León.
As the protest moved through the streets of Mexico City, a group of plain clothed men appeared out of military transport vehicles. They carried bamboo sticks, blunt weapons and guns. This group were the Halcones, they brutally beat and killed hundreds of protesters and bystanders as the police watched. Injured civilians were transported to the hospital where Halcones were waiting to murder them. An unknown number of civilians were killed with many more still missing or unidentified
Luis Echeverría Álvarez orchestrated the war on innocent Mexicans. Thousands were killed or went missing because of his death squads. He set the precedent for corruption in Mexico’s government which plagues the country to this day.
Kate Doyle, “Tlatelolco Massacre: Declassified U.S. Documents on Mexico and the Events of 1968”, National Security Archive at George Washington University, October 2, 1998.
Elena Poniatowska, Massacre in Mexico, (New York: Viking Press, 1975).
Kate Doyle, Isaac Costero Campos, Tamara Feinstein, Michael Gavin, “The Corpus Christi Massacre Mexico’s Attack on its Student Movement, June 10, 1971”, National Security Archive at George Washington University (June 2003).
