THE FALCONAZO: EVENTS, CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES - HISTORY - 2025

The Halconazo or Thursday massacre of Corpus Christi, known for the participation of paramilitary forces known as Los Halcones, was a student massacre that occurred in Mexico on June 10, 1971. That same date was the Corpus Christi festival, which gave its name to the massacre.

The Falcons are said to have had extensive military training and were trained by the CIA and the United States Department of Defense. This event was never condemned: none of those allegedly involved took the blame. With the State being the main apparent culprit, there was no clear evidence to bring the president to trial.

Luis Echeverría, President of Mexico at the time of the Corpus Thursday massacre

The students had taken to the streets to protest the events that occurred at the University of Nuevo León, located in Monterrey. It is estimated that on the day of the massacre there were a total of 10,000 people exercising their right to protest and 120 protesters were killed, with hundreds more injured.

Although a forceful sentence was never delivered due to the lack of evidence, the then president of Mexico, Luis Echeverría, was found guilty of the fact in 2006. He was legally exonerated of all guilt in 2009 for lack of tangible evidence, but his Guilt is a secret known to everyone.

Causes and antecedents

Luis Echeverría Álvarez, who was the president of Mexico at the time of the massacre, had been the secretary of the government of the president responsible for the management prior to his: Gustavo Díaz Ordaz. That management had been marked by various signs of repression and any protest against the government had been highly repressed.

In 1968, university authorities of the most important institutions in Mexico and members of civil societies launched a movement that aimed to "reestablish" democracy in the country.

They called for an increase in civil liberties and the release of all political prisoners who had been arrested after demonstrating against the government; especially college students.

The Tlalelolco Massacre

At the end of that year, Echeverría conspired with Díaz to dissolve the movement before it gained more strength. In October they carried out a massacre in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, which went down in history as the Tlatelolco massacre.

There, the Mexican secret police, in conjunction with the armed forces and a paramilitary group that bore the name of the Olimpia Battalion, killed a significant number of protesters in the plaza.

Luis Echeverría Álvarez was accused of two genocides in his political career, this being the first and, in turn, the one that led to the execution of the second: the Corpus Christi massacre.

Awakening of the students

The events of 1968 sowed fear in the students who took to the streets in protest, which caused a significant decrease in public demonstrations against the government.

This was shaping up to change when the presidential term of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz ended, since Echeverría (who succeeded Díaz in office after winning the elections) acted in favor of the freedom of the Protestants and in favor of the freedom of expression at the beginning of his regime.

When Echeverría won the elections in 1970 and came to power, he released all the students who had been jailed after the 1968 protests. He also asked the expatriate students, who had been removed from Mexico as politically persecuted, to return to Mexico. Central American country.

Students and opponents welcomed these measures, and once again felt the hope of returning to the streets to demonstrate peacefully against the government.

The conflict at the University of Nuevo León

Shortly after Echeverría took office and with the pro-democracy measures already in place, a problem occurred between government and university authorities at the University of Nuevo León, in Monterrey.

The students and university authorities had protested against a law of the local government and, consequently, the university budget was reduced and autonomy was taken away from the university.

Enraged, the students and teachers went on strike, calling on all the country's universities to join them in protesting the attack on Mexican education. Students across the country decided to join the protests and a demonstration was called for June 10, 1971: Corpus Christi Day.

Pacifying law

Two and a half weeks before the massacre broke out, an agreement seemed to have been reached. The Echeverría government had passed a law that restored autonomy to the University of Nuevo León and put an end to the conflict.

This pacifying law had been promulgated by Echeverría himself against the wishes of the governor of Monterrey, who resigned from his post shortly thereafter.

The students decided not to stop the protest, although student opinion was quite divided. On the one hand, some students were of the opinion that the protest no longer had any grounds and would be no more than an excuse to protest unnecessarily.

The other group of students, who happened to be between 7,000 and 10,000 people, saw the need to protest as necessary to pressure the government to resolve other conflicts afflicting the nation.

The Corpus Christi Massacre

The June 10, 1971 protest would be the first significant demonstration by students after what happened in Tlatelolco. Many Mexicans hoped that this would be the protest that would revive the student movement, which had been stopped almost entirely after what happened in 1968.

Determined to carry it out even after the Echeverría peacemaking law, 10,000 students left the National Polytechnic Institute in Santo Tomás.

Entry of the paramilitaries

At around 5 p.m. on the day of the protest, dozens of men were dropped off from buses on San Cosme Avenue, where the protest was passing at that time.

All the men exiting the buses were dressed in ordinary civilian clothes, but they brought wooden sticks, chains, and batons with them. His clear objective was to stop the protest with violence. They mercilessly attacked the students, while all the policemen surrounding the area stood watching, doing nothing more.

Events were clearly set to unfold that way: the police knew what was going to happen and had orders not to intervene, no matter how many students died.

The Hawks

Shortly after, the men who got off the buses were identified as Los Halcones, the paramilitary group that the CIA would have trained with the support of the Echeverría government. They had been trained for the sole purpose of repelling the student movement, which the government knew would revive.

The paramilitary group was commanded by Manuel Díaz Escobar, who held an important position in the Echeverría administration. At the beginning of 1971, the Secretary of Foreign Relations of Mexico asked the United States, under President Echeverría's orders, to train the paramilitary group commanded by Díaz Escobar.

The role of the paramilitary group was clear and they acted under orders from their superiors. In fact, its creation always had the sole purpose of repressing students.

They were founded in 1968 after the demonstrations that led to the Tlatelolco massacre, carried out at that time by another government paramilitary group known as the Olimpia Battalion.

The Federal District government was the one that armed all these "hired killers", who murdered 120 people on the day of the Corpus Christi festival in 1971.

Witnesses and historians attest to the horrible events that occurred that day, and say that the brutality with which Los Halcones attacked the students was unprecedented.

Featured events

When Los Halcones abandoned their vehicles and began attacking the students, it was not just bladed weapons they used against the protesters.

There was a shootout that lasted several minutes; the assassins fired long weapons at several protesters, who tried to hide from the paramilitaries.

The number of wounded that day on the streets of Mexico was brutal, and many of those who were taken to hospitals and clinics could not be treated, as the paramilitaries chased them and gave them the coup de grace while they were being operated on.

During the shooting, several civilian vehicles and trucks that appeared to be from the Green Cross supported the paramilitaries, indicating where the retreating youths were and providing new weapons and ammunition to the murderers. Among the young people killed, it is worth highlighting the loss of a 14-year-old.

Reactions

After the massacre, President Echeverría appeared on national television announcing how shocked and affected he was by what happened that day in his country.

These statements began a series of actions by the government and the United States itself to cover up those responsible for the massacre.

Alfonzo Martínez Domínguez

The person in charge of directing Los Halcones, Alfonzo Martínez Domínguez, was the mayor of Mexico City. After the massacre, he publicly denied that Los Halcones were involved in the movement. In fact, he originally denied the existence of Los Halcones, but after pressure from the public and the press, he had to acknowledge their existence.

When the mayor accepted that Los Halcones were the perpetrators of the massacre, the Echeverría government stripped him of his post. This was nothing more than a move by the government to wash its hands of what happened.

The forced resignation of Martínez Domínguez helped Echeverría to stay in the country's political leadership. Having expelled the mayor simply served to create a scapegoat to shed himself of guilt and shield himself from it, thus avoiding any responsibility for the murder of the students.

Convenient dismissal

It was easy for the Echeverría government to get rid of the mayor, since not only was he one of the president's accomplices in carrying out the massacre, but Martinez had a reputation as a corrupt politician, who did not hesitate to use police brutality to obtain what he wanted.

It is said that with the massacre Echeverría took the opportunity to get rid of Martínez, because the president had tried to maintain a positive image of himself during his term and the actions of the mayor did not help this.

Cover-up of the United States

The United States was partly to blame for what happened, as they trained the paramilitary group after having been given clear instructions to the CIA of what they were aiming for.

When the Mexican foreign minister contacted the Americans and they agreed to train their paramilitaries, the Los Halcones commander stated that they wanted to learn how to deal with student protests, crowd control and hand-to-hand combat.

Despite this, they were given the training requested by the Mexican country. It was important to the United States to ensure that its relationship to the massacre did not come to light, and they helped the Echeverría government cover up the events of 1971.

In fact, even declassified documents from the United States tried not to mention anything related to the massacre.

Consequences

The student movement took a completely different stance after the movement.

Many of the students willing to continue protesting after the 68 massacre decided not to come out again, while the number of deaths and the government's actions encouraged many others to create guerrillas that would dedicate themselves to fighting the Echeverría regime.

There was a group of students who maintained their posture of peaceful protest and demanded a series of reforms to favor the universities. These include:

- The democratization of the Mexican educational system.

- An absolute control of university funds in a unit between professors and students.

- Various improvements were requested in the nation's educational system, demanding that peasants and low-income people have better access to it.

- The end of the student repression by the government was demanded in the political sphere, since everyone knew that the culprits of the massacre had been Echeverría and his administration.

References

1. The Corpus Christi Massacre, The National Security Archive, Kate Doyle, June 10, 2003. Taken from gwu.edu
2. El Halconazo, San Francisco University High School, (nd). Taken from sfuhs.org
3. The 1971 Student Massacre That Mexico Would Rather Forget, Tim Smith, June 12, 2014. Taken from vice.com
4. El Halconazo: 45 years of impunity; painful anniversary, Andrea Meraz, June 10, 2016
5. El Universal - Tlatelolco Massacre. The universal. Taken on February 1, 2018.
6. Corpus Christi Massacre, (nd), December 20, 2017. Taken from Wikipedia.org
7. Halcones, (nd), January 25, 2018. Taken from Wikipedia.org
8. Mexico 68, (nd), November 5, 2017. Taken from Wikipedia.org