La UNAM y Tlatelolco Otra Vez

So we met at UNAM today for Contemporary México at 9:30. My apartmentmates and I met Miguel and Ana at the entrance to our apartment complex, and then we ran into Alejandro, Mac, and Ko on the way, who were waiting for Leti, Linda, and Rosalinda. We kept going once Paul and Oscar got there, because we didn't want to be let. I guessed that we'd be 5 minutes late, and Rebecca guessed 10. Rebecca was right, but if we had been walking my normal "I'm going to be late speed," perhaps I would have been right :p . We got a tour from an Architect who went to UNAM and perhaps works there now as a professor? I didn't catch that part. This campus was constructed in the 50s, and it's on a lava shelf, so earthquakes don't really hurt it. Students pay some number of cents (of pesos) per semester, and professors are paid less than the equivalent of $40 USD per month. Therefore, the professors are people who really want to be there. Here's another picture of the library, which I included when I first visited UNAM. The mosaic is made from rock from throughout México, and they are all their original color. It's quite impressive.

The Campus is HUGE. We walked around part of it, discussing how t was designed and such. There's a main plaza, that has a lot of the "colleges" around it, and they each have their own plazas; the idea being that people can all gather together as well as have more an more intimate spaces. Apparently there used to be one central cafeteria, but it was closed down because there were "too many" social movements coming out of it. We didn't get to the "Political and Social Science College" because it is pretty much as fart south as you can get. So quite a commute for peple going to that college as well as other ones (like me and many friends)....but wait, there's not just buses and walking as forms of transport here; they're bicycles! There are bicycle storage places in almost all of the colleges, and perhaps other places too, and if you show your credentials (ID?) you can borrow one and ride it to a different bike storage place. Pretty cool! Maybe I should buy a helmet. I didn't see any long uphills with parked cars but you never know.

There were quite a lot of cool places we saw on the tour, perhaps I'll see them again and take more pictures. Then we went to the cafeteria in the Architecture college, and some people got food. I got to read a really cool zine that Cat had just received from a friend, and a bunch of us sat and talked. Aleshia and Rebecca each got some lemon cake for dessert, which looked really good. Then the people I was sitting with realized that pretty much everyone else had headed back to school for Spanish, and so then we did. Luckily they knew where we were going.

In Spanish we talked about consumerism and co-ops. It was interesting. We were asked to read our homework, but I tend to just write things that are kind of private in my homework, so I ended up not reading mine. lol. again. Next class we're going to watch a movie, and then we're supposed to write a more extensive essay.

Then Rachel, Miguel and I headed to Tlatelolco to do more work on our project. We have to do a presentation next tuesday. Last time we went we didn't have enough time to see everything, so we were coming back to see the museum. It's at the Plaza de Las Tres Culturas (Plaza of the 3 cultures), so we had already seen the pyramids (representing the pre-hispanic), the church (representing colonization), and so we still needed to see the museum of the student movement of '68.

The museum was pretty amazing! It started with this written thing, which, roughly translated says: "The memorial doesn't claim to be the space of a definitive version of the big mobilization that that through the country into confusion, but to help the visitor participate in an exercise of collective memory of the country, that locates one on the threshold of truth." I trally appreciated that it wasn't framing the exhibit as the final word on what happened.

It began with locating the student movement within all that had been going on since the fifties all over the world. There was a time line with tons of different things, which really gave an idea of the context from which the student movement erupted. There were a lot of amazing actions and coalitions in the student movement here, and of course there was police and government oppression (as was happening all over the world at the time). The reason this memorial/museum exists is that on October 2, 1968, there was a massacre at La Plaza de las Tres Culturas of this movement.

People got really involved, and this was a collage of lots of the propaganda that art students from all over the city made to support their cause. It was pretty incredible.

I got pretty confused in the museum, because I didn't realize there was a downstairs, and so I thought the exhibit ended talking about a protest in the Zócalo, and I couldn't firgure out if that had been where the massacre was, but if so, what about Tlatelolco. Finally I went downstairs, and found out more about what happened. It was pretty intense. Right after the massacre, the press spread the word, but afterwards, the goverment restricted what was being said, and so then newspaper articles came out like this one. "Foreign Terrorists [Were Responsible]." Like often happens, the government tried to justify its violent actions by blaming it on "inherently violent people who provoked" the government. It's really interesting to me that "terrorist"was the word of choice, since I think of the 60s using words like communist or subversive to justify their actions. Of course, México's history was different from the U.S. It kept close ties with Cuba after the Cuban revolution, so It doesn't seem that there'd be such a fear of communism. But still, I think of terrorism being a recent justification.

It was eerie to stand near where students had stood, blood spattered, and missing clothes, as the police documented them in photographs. We left as the museum was closing, and headed back to our part of town on the metro. We're going to work on our project on Saturday at 3. I came home and made teriyaki pineapple with tofu, rice, and some veggies, yum. And I just finished my homework for Spanish, about drugs and narcotraficking, but I focus primarily on pharmaceutical companies.

Ale is feeling sick, and I hope she feels better soon. I'm worried I might get sick, and so is Rebecca, and so we each took one of her vitamin C pills. As a joke, right after I took it (she gave it to me) she said it was ecstasy (a drug). I freaked out, and she said she was joking. And then she proceeded to tell me a story about when someone tricked her similarly, and she freaked out and felt like she was on drugs and really sick for the next half hour, even though her friend told her it wasn't a drug. Of course, she hadn't remembered this until after she played the trick on me, so she then apologized. Then we went out to buy Ale a thermometor, since she had bought one that didn't seem to be working. The one we got, which was digital, since her normal one hadn't worked, wouldn't turn on. So now we have two non-working thermometers and Ale still feels miserable. Hopefully after sleep and drinking lots of liquids today with some rest, she'll feel a lot better tomorrow.

Well, it's bed time. I don't know what I'll do tomorrow, but hopefully lots of work on my paper. And i hope no mosquitoes bug me tonight. Last night one kept flying near my ear and waking me up.