Hearsay news is that Luis González de Alba committed suicide last Sunday. At least novelist Ángeles Mastretta and political analyst Héctor Aguilar claim he went under by his own hand.
Whatever the cause of death, dead he is and my question to myself is, why am I even mentioning a fellow I never physically met and worse still, whose ideology I didn’t agree with?
Really, his name brought back the name of Saúl Álvarez, a companion of Luis González de Alba in true distress as they were companions in the political arrests perpetrated by the Mexican Army as ordered by then President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz on October 2, 1968 for about 100 leaders of that movement.
Both, González and to a much lesser extent my beloved friend Saúl Álvarez, spent two years as political prisoners at the once infamous Lecumberri Prison on charges of sedition. In fact, and this was the first time I heard these words, beyond sedition they were charged, in Saúl’s words, of “lesa patria,” which is not sedition, but tantamount to treason. By the way, the word “lesa” is not listed in the bilingual Webster’s Dictionary. But treason is.
Both, Luis and Saúl, probably met each other at prison but they joined the 1968 anti-government movement spurned by the events in France and the United States.
In the summer of 1968 I was a student at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in New York and got to witness first-hand the Mark Rudd-led Students for a Democratic Society movement. And by the time October 2 came I was working as an apprentice reporter at KQED-TV in San Francisco. I mention this because at the time I was keenly aware of the worldwide student movements.
But I was not ready for the news, when they broke, about the Mexico City massacre of students at the Tlatelolco popular residence units. In fact, when I was asked about the name “Tlatelolco” — these guys expected me to be familiar with Mexico City — I spelled it wrong and wrote “tlaltelolco” which is not bad for an ignorant man, but piss-poor for a would be professional journalist. I was an apprentice, and indeed I learnt my lesson.
But back to Luis González and Saúl Álvarez I must say that Luis was one of the leaders of that movement and Saúl turned out to be a wonderful philosopher of the way in the then — and still — reigning “perfect dictatorship” Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) came into being in 1928, and governed seamlessly until year 2000.
Saúl Álvarez’s tiny book called “Alta Política” (High Politics) perfectly describes how it was that Mexico’s strong man during the 1920’s, Plutarco Elías Calles, managed to bridle the savage forces that wrought the Mexican Revolution into a coherent government, with a chance for the many war factions to have a shot at governing the nation.
Saúl wrote his theory book in prison. He had been an official in the Mexican Navy and had an inside view from the military.
As for Luis González de Alva, whom I never met, all I know that he was a radical Communist who got tangled up in a movement that was originally promoted by the Cuban and Russian embassies in Mexico City which finally led to the Tlatelolco massacre masterminded by President Díaz Ordaz in order to salvage the Olympic Games that were to start on Oct. 12, 1968.
In any case, Luis González and Saúl Álvarez were student rebels who were sternly chastised by the Mexican political system who in their moments of moving out of this life, at least in their nation, remain as revered revolutionaries.
October 2, 1968 has many names, but those who spent time at Lecumberri Prison stand out as the victims of “the perfect dictatorship” imposed by the PRI. Back then, of course, the current one is also “perfect.”
PS: A forensic team at Guadalajara, where Luis González de Alva lived, Monday confirmed the former leader of the 1968 student movement shot himself in the stomach with a .22 caliber gun.
