The Tlatelolco Massacre

The government became increasingly authoritarian in the years leading up to the massacre, despite party officials’ insistence that Mexico 's government was a democracy. Although it appeared that the PRI was less militaristic than previous regimes, Mexico 's citizens still faced harsh repression if they tried to protest against unfair government policies. Tensions rose in the 1960s as well-educated children of the Mexican Revolution grew dissatisfied with the PRI and demanded reforms. The growing student movement not only undermined the government’s control over mass organizations, but also threatened its reputation on a global scale; Mexico was hosting the 1968 Summer Olympics, the very first games to be hosted in a Latin American

The Tlatelolco Massacre is just one example of the authoritarian PRI regime growing increasingly brutal in its response to growing social unrest, echoing the conditions that led to the Revolution in the first

What the PRI accomplished (or rather, failed to accomplish) had a profound impact on rural Mexico. Despite all of its attempts at modernization, Mexico remained a largely rural nation. However, the economic growth achieved by PRI policies “primarily benefitted manufacturing, export agriculture, tourism, and the border region” (Joseph & Buchenau ch. 7); the rural, indigenous South still had to rely on subsistence farming as a way of life. Additionally, the new agricultural techniques of the Mexican Miracle “did not increase crop yields for domestic consumption,” but instead aided large-scale production for the sake of export, further harming the small-scale farms that dominated rural Mexico (Padilla ch. 4). The Revolution was intended to help the rural majority who had been neglected by past governments; the failure of the PRI to follow through with these aspirations (implementation of land redistribution policies; social and labour legislation; the expansion of the population 's access to education and to political representation) to the satisfaction of the people resulted in the creation of a new political movement in the countryside: the Jaramillista. Led by Ruben Jaramillo, a campesino who fought in Zapata’s army during the Revolution, the Jaramillista was the party of the poor, rural Mexicans. They “campaigned against the incomplete nature of revolutionary reforms, the pervasive poverty in the countryside, and the persistent exclusion of campesinos from the decisionmaking