Hotel Mexico

In 1968, Mexico prepared to host the Olympic games amid growing civil unrest. The spectacular sports facilities and urban redevelopment projects built by the government in Mexico City mirrored the countryÕs rapid but uneven modernization. In the same year, a street-savvy democratization movement led by students emerged in the city. Throughout the summer, the Ô68 Movement staged protests underscoring a widespread sense of political disenfranchisement. Just ten days before the Olympics began, nearly three hundred student protestors were massacred by the military in a plaza at the core of a new public housing complex.
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In spite of institutional denial and censorship, the 1968 massacre remains a touchstone in contemporary Mexican culture thanks to the public memory work of survivors and MexicoÕs leftist intelligentsia. In this highly original study of the afterlives of the Õ68 Movement, George F. Flaherty explores how urban spacesÑmaterial but also literary, photographic, and cinematicÑbecame an archive of 1968, providing a framework for de facto modes of justice for years to come.