Hotel Mexico

"In 1968, Mexico prepared to host the Olympic games amid growing civil unrest. The government built spectacular sports facilities and urban redevelopment projects in Mexico City symbolic of the country's rapid but uneven modernization. In the same year, a street-savvy democratization movement led by students emerged in the city. Throughout the summer, the '68 Movement staged protests underscoring a widespread sense of political disenfranchisement: rather than citizens, they were mere "guests" of the state. Just ten days before the Olympics began, nearly 300 student protestors were massacred by the military in a plaza at the core of a new public housing complex. In spite of institutional denial, censorship, and impunity, the 1968 massacre remains a touchstone in contemporary Mexican culture thanks to the public memory work of survivors and Mexico's leftist intelligentsia. In this highly original study of the afterlives of the '68 Movement, George Flaherty explores how urban spaces--material but also literary and cinematic--became an archive of 1968, providing a framework for de facto modes of justice for years to come"--Provided by publisher.