Home > Redeeming the Olympic Martyrs of 1968

Redeeming the Olympic Martyrs of 1968

by Open-Publishing - Sunday 25 September 2005
15 comments

Edito Movement Discriminations-Minorit. USA History

By Dave Zirin

1968. There was never a year when the worlds of sports and politics collided so breathlessly, without mercy or respite. It was the year Muhammad Ali, stripped of his heavyweight title for resisting the draft, spoke on 200 college campuses and asked the question, “Can they take my title without me being whupped?” It was the year Bill Russell’s Boston Celtics became champions once again, yet the player-coach saw his house vandalized by bigots. This led Russell to call the city of Boston a “flea market of racism,” and say “I am a Celtic, not a BOSTON Celtic.” It was the year the Detroit Tigers won the World Series, playing in a city that carried the specter of insurrection with riots in the hood, snipers on the roofs, wildcat strikes in the auto plants, and Martha and the Vandellas’ "Dancing in the Streets" ringing throughout the projects.

And most famously, it was the year that Tommie Smith and John Carlos took the 200-meter medal stand at the Mexico City Olympics to raise their black gloved fists in a demonstration of pride, power, and politics. Smith and Carlos were part of the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR) and they made their stand because of what was happening outside the stadium: the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King; the growth of the Black Panthers, the May strikes in France, and most recently in their thoughts, the slaughter of hundreds in the country where they were being feted with gold.

On October 2, 1968, right before the start of the games, Mexican Security police murdered as many as 400 students and workers at La Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco, Mexico City. Today we remember that violent echo of 1968. We remember those put down like dogs for the crime of peaceful assembly. We can remember at long last, without tears, because of news Monday that a measure of closure may finally be coming for the families that have waged a 37-year quest for truth, justice, and a pound of flesh. Mexican prosecutors announced that they were finally acceding to a four-decades-long campaign, and filed long-awaited charges against former President Luis Echeverria for ordering the Tlatelolco bloodbath. Echeverria was interior minister and head of national security at the time of the massacre. "It has been almost 37 years of impunity and justice denied," prosecutor Ignacio Carrillo told Reuters. "Now for the first time it is possible that the justice system may perform its duty." The Tlatelolco killings were fatally intertwined with the oncoming Olympics. Student strikes had rocked Mexico throughout the year. This was a time of mass struggle from the Yucatan to Tijuana. But the students and their supporters, despite previous clashes with the state police, could not have foreseen the fanatical desire of Mexico to “make their country secure” for the coming Olympic games.

Echeverria’s Olympic clean-up, not the actions of panicked police, rogue officers, or indiscriminate trigger happy shooters, were responsible for the deaths. Recently declassified documents paint a picture of a massacre as cold and methodical as Echeverria’s instructions, and the blood in his veins. As Kate Doyle, director of the Mexico Documentation Project describes, ”When the shooting stopped, hundreds of people lay dead or wounded, as Army and police forces seized surviving protesters and dragged them away. Although months of nationwide student strikes had prompted an increasingly hard-line response,...no one was prepared for the bloodbath that Tlatelolco became. More shocking still was the cover-up that kicked in as soon as the smoke cleared. Eye-witnesses to the killings pointed to the President’s ’security’ forces, who entered the plaza bristling with weapons, backed by armored vehicles. But the government pointed back, claiming that extremists and communist agitators had initiated the violence. Who was responsible for Tlatelolco? The Mexican people have been demanding an answer ever since.”

Thousands of people have marched in the streets every year demanding justice for what is seen as Mexico’s Tiananmen Square. And while it is certainly welcome to see Echeverria doddering in cuffs, this arrest should not be seen only as an epilogue of the past but a warning for the future. The Beijing Olympics in 2008 and the British Olympics of 2012 both hold the potential for crackdowns that could make Tlatelolco seem mild in comparison. At the very least in China, where human rights and trade union organizing are a daily battle in normal times, the Olympics will hit those struggles with the force of a hurricane (a metaphor I don’t use lightly.) We need today to organize a new Olympic Project for Human Rights so people in China who want to resist the corporate monolith and state repression which trail after the Olympics like so much detritus, have the political space to do so. It would be a true, living justice, if the martyrs of 1968 can be resurrected to haunt a new generation of Echeverrias already planning security operations in Beijing.

Dave Zirin is the News Editor of the Prince George’s Post in Prince George’s County Maryland, for which he writes the column Edge of Sports. His work can be read at www.edgeofsports.com. To have his column sent to you every week, just e-mail edgeofsports-subscribe@zirin.com.

Contact the author at dave@edgeofsports.com

Forum posts

  • 1936 was the year of Joe Lewis, and Jessie Owens two legendary black men who gave the Third Reich and MR. Hitler a case of major indigestion and salvaged a lot of pride for their white brothers while living in a segregated America.
    cheers, jt

  • Black Americans should deny to perform under the flag of the U.S.. The mean way they have been treated all along give them any right to do so. Moreover it will show that the majority of medals was won by brave black or colored Americans. The events in New Orleans can no longer seen as a unified country experience. Under the Olympian flag the segration should be operated, to teach the white supremacist Americans what scum they are and to show the world that division.

    • Your the best, they be better off too, moving out of the USA all together, we got Mexico in the pocket.

      LOL

    • I can’t wait for the Mexicans to take over, where are you negro’s going to go then?

    • With professional sports the tenth largest industry in the US I don’t think Blacks, Yellow, White, Gays or Green people are going to give up the windfall wages that their skill and hard work has entitled them to.
      And why should they.
      I don’t understand the comment about "having Mexico in our pocket’.?
      Did you know that in biology there is no such thing as Race, insignificant differences exist, both in the structure of DNA and at the molecular level between peoples of all colour, sizes and shapes throughout the world. In science we are all brothers from the same family.
      Race is a social construct which allows some individuals or societies to elevated themselves above others for, philosophical, social, psychological, religious or economic gain.
      Through an ordinary or high powered electron microscope ones skin colour or ’race’ can not be determined.
      Martin Luther King thought his religious belief discovered what scientists have know for some time.
      Bad new for racists, of all stripes but then again knowledge never has much effect on prejudice. But it often helps little men to feel big without taking that little blue pill.
      cheers, jt

    • LOL I rather have a mexican anyway!!! LOL at lest they work..

      Clay was a joke,,he was very vein and very easy to handle, which the muslins did to this day.

      time warp days anyway.......LOL

    • Here is what Martin Luther King taught the younger ’whites’ of his time?

      Whites are the cause of most and all problems to the blacks; in fact they cause all the problems in all races. He said many times that we would in time, over come the white hate. So I guess that ’all’ white people do is hate.

      How can a black person today like a white person by his teaching or better yet how can a white persons ever trust a black person because he has been told that all blacks are depress because of whites.

      He never thought about what he was doing in his talking ‘up’ the black person then, he only care to bring the blacks up by putting down the white persons.

      He did a fine job and created a greater divide in this country and in Europe then many before him.

      How can a white person look at a black person and not see the hate in the black persons eyes cause by him. He and X started something that is going to have lasting effects for the worst and in the end he will be blame for it.

      There is no holiday in the USA today named after a person but Kings birthday who was a member of the Red Communist Party. GA. USA and the New York Stock Exchange still observe Washington Birthday not Presidents Day.

      I think the holiday of King should have been call Civil Rights Day instead.

    • Your incomprehensible understanding of history is only equalled by you inability to express yourself in a coherent and logical manner.
      J Edgar Hoover (a homosexual) ran wire taps on King for years, like the ones on Kennedy, he was to get some dirt regarding extra martial affairs, for which he seemed to have a prurient interest in.
      Given his sexual preference which I think he is entitled to, I can only assume these tapes were for purposes of blackmail and to maintain himself in power.
      Forget the comic book version of The Big G man. He didn’t believe that the Mafia existed either, perhaps that was just a small part of the chicken shit nature of his character. Or was the G man running out of guts.
      He certainly imagined a commie just about everywhere..(kind of like you)which says more about his imagination than his intelligence
      Where did the thousands of whites who marched and supported King come from.
      Why did that Texan, LBJ send in the troops...so kids could go to school
      Why have the Black people not been compensated for basically building America.?
      I can understand you liking Washington, not only was he a slave owner but he thought the country should be run by those that owned it.
      This makes sense for his point of view. ( all men are born equal but some are born more equal that others, wouldn’t you agree.?)
      Now the US is virtually owned by a handful of White Men. To join the club this year you must be worth at least $900 million rather than the 750 entrance fee last year.
      Forbes magazine states that since the limit has been upped there are now more members that last year. So enjoy your $100. tax rebate as GWB’s rich friends are enjoying their $1 million windfalls
      Kings great unpopularity came when he condemned the Vietnam war as being about an Empire gone berserk which included both conscripted white and black men. The free speaking Blacks like Paul Robeson, Malcolm X, Cassius Clay aka M.X as well as Angelia Davis were the real workers, opposed to killing yellow folks abroad.
      Harry Belafonte recently had Colin Powell tagged as a "House Nigger" a title that could equally fit Condoleezza Rice.
      As you know the history of slavery, you might get a chuckle out of that.
      Keeping working on your history and as a foreigner I will assist in what ever way I can.
      cheers, jt

    • As the saying goes:

      "Its hard to be humble when your number one."
      enjoy.

      cheers jt

    • Viva La Mexico! President Fox is a hero, he stood up to the black pimp race hustlers. Viva La Mexico.

    • Black Americans will always hate ’all’ white people every where. They have been lead to do so.

      This post proves my point.

    • Civil War 2 by Thomas W. Chittnm

      Blacks and non whites will be at each neck just to eat.

    • Educated in America, former head of that Yankee company Coke in Mexico.
      His hatred of minorities in Mexico (Chiapas in particular) is equal to his disdain for minorities in other countries.
      He and GWB have a lot in common beside belt buckles, cowboy hats and dude ranches.
      They both like cheap labour.
      They are both from the upper classes...ops I forgot there is no class system in American.
      (Its just that some are born more equal than others, which shouldn’t have much to do with anything ...right..?)
      Foxes and weasels are also from the same animal family.
      With the numbers of Mexicans (through immigration, illegal and otherwise) it won’t be long before they become the majority, taking back those Southern states which were stolen from their grandparents a while back.
      That type of justice should please you.?
      I guess your children have registered in Spanish classes.?
      Viv La Mexicano Norte.
      cheers, jt

  • Can we get a picture or some reading on ’White’ power, I like to see some reading about this.

    Maybe 4 or white guys standing up together.

    whites are about 80% of the poplulation in the US.

    • CIA updated report September, 2005

      White 81.7%
      Black 12.9%
      Asia 4.2%
      Native 1.0%

      Does this help ?

      cheers, jt.