Authorities and protesters in Mexico commemorated on Thursday the 50th anniversary of the so-called Corpus Thursday massacre, perpetrated during a student mobilization on June 10, 1971.

The protesters, demanding punishment for those responsible, marched down the same avenue in Mexico City where students were attacked with firearms and sticks by a shock group known as “Los Halcones”, organized by the government 50 years ago. .

The undersecretary of Human Rights, Alejandro Encinas, pointed out that the massacre, also called “El Halconazo” and in which he said 37 students lost their lives, will not be forgotten.

During a ceremony, Encinas pointed out that “the students had a very simple demand: democracy.”

“It is an unwavering commitment of the government of Mexico, it is the will and the instruction of President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador that these ominous events in the history of our country are not silenced or forgotten,” he added.

In 1971, students set out from a teacher’s school west of central Mexico City, for what would be one of the first large-scale protests since the massacre of hundreds of protesters in a major massacre on October 2. from 1968 in the Tlatelolco neighborhood. But they had only gone a few blocks when they were attacked by paramilitaries in plain clothes.

The massacre was included in a passage from the film “Roma” by Alfonso Cuarón, winner of the Oscar for best film in a foreign language in 2018.

The main protagonists of “Roma” turn out to be incidental witnesses to the massacre when they went to buy baby furniture in a store near the scene. Unexpectedly, both meet whoever was the protagonist’s boyfriend, a man who in the film participates in the repression.

Despite the public’s attention to this date, the chances of punishment for those involved are almost nil five decades later.

In July 2005, a magistrate exonerated Luis Echeverría, who was president from 1970 to 1976, of the genocide charge for the 1971 massacre. In that case, the judge pointed out that the only crimes attributable to Echeverría were simple homicides, but had been prescribed since 1985.

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