This document describes a curriculum unit that used oral histories to teach students about the 1968 student movement in Mexico City. Students explored primary sources including eyewitness accounts compiled in the book "La noche de Tlatelolco". Using technology, students virtually visited places where protests occurred and read dramatic interpretations of eyewitness narratives. They collaborated to build a memorial altar honoring victims, which they displayed publicly. The unit aimed to teach culture and history through meaningful first-person perspectives and performance of oral histories.

1. First Person: Performing Oral History in the World Languages Classroom
We face challenges of context in the World Languages classroom, especially at
the intermediate and advanced levels. We have the challenge of teaching culture
within a meaningful historical context, avoiding the errors of essentialist and
racialized notions of national identity. We have the challenge of teaching history
in the context of a compelling narrative structure. Where grammar is taught, we
have the challenge of teaching students to communicate and interpret meaning
within a context that is meaningful in itself. Finally, as we teach students to
explore narrative in the target language, we have the challenge of conducting
that exploration within the context of a challenging and personally significant
performance task.
One medium that can help us rise to all those challenges is oral history. Oral
history is the documentation and study of history through videotapes, audiotapes,
or transcriptions of the narratives of individuals who experienced the events
directly. Usually these narratives are collected in the form of interviews. These
interviews provide vivid first person perspectives on historical events unavailable
from other sources.
I wrote a curriculum unit through the Yale National Initiative last summer that
employed oral histories of the 1968 student movement in Mexico City compiled
by Mexican journalist Elena Poniatowska in the book La noche de Tlatelolco. My
students and I explored this subject matter in the fall of 2011. This presentation
will share some of our results.
The revolution you've never heard of: 2 de octubre no se olvida
It was the summer of 1968. From Paris to Prague to Chicago, students took to
the streets and turned whole cities upside down. The young people of Mexico
City did not sit on the sidelines.
There was a long standing rivalry between the students of the
vocational-technical high schools and the students of the prep schools that fed
into UNAM, the National Autonomous University of Mexico. On Monday, July 22,
1968, fights broke out between kids at one of the tech schools and students of
one of the prep schools. This was not unusual, but the ferocity of the police
response was. That Friday, July 26, a throng of students protesting the police
repression of interschool rivalry happened to meet up with a group of leftist
students commemorating the Cuban revolution. The preps, the votech kids, and
the campus radicals fused together with the purpose of overturning Mexico's
state security apparatus. They took to the streets. Their parents took to the
streets with them.
Within two and half weeks, the movement put 150,000 marchers in the streets of
Mexico City. Within thirty days the number doubled. On September 13, a quarter

2. of a million Mexicans conducted a silent march to deprive the authorities of any
pretext for reprisal.1
Mexico was at the time effectively an authoritarian single party state. The
government of President Díaz Ordaz, preparing to host the first Olympics outside
the First World, mounted a crushing police counterstrike, detaining hundreds.
Nonetheless, the Olympic Committee threatened to cancel the games if Díaz
Ordaz could not guarantee order.2
October 2, 1968, ten days before the start of the 1968 Summer Olympics, the
remnants of the student movement--around five thousand souls--gathered in the
Plaza of the Three Cultures at Tlatelolco to plan their response to the
government. The police, military, and special paramilitary police surrounded the
plaza in full force. Presidential bodyguards stationed in high rise buildings fired
on the soldiers. Thinking themselves under fire from the protestors, the security
forces attacked with rifles, tanks, and bayonets. The official death toll is 39. The
best count of the fallen is probably around 325. Over two thousand were
arrested, stripped, and detained.3
Setting the stage
My students began their experience by exploring the events through
documentary photographs available online. To create an immersive classroom
experience, we studied photographs and recreated the signs the students
carried. Once we had created our immersive classroom environment, we used
technology to explore the actual setting.
The scene of the crime: using Google Maps to bring history to life
First we looked at the places the marches took place. Then, we explored the
Plaza de las Tres Culturas in great detail. Familiarity with the physical setting and
the terrain made the students' exploration of the first person narratives vivid and
real. All history is local; events take place in specific places. Students reported
that seeing the physical location from multiple perspectives greatly enhanced not
only their comprehension of the narratives they read, but also heightened the
personal impact. One young woman reported:
When I read the girl talking about running through the ruins while
bits of rock were raining down on her from all the bullets bouncing
1
Red Escolar ILCE. "Cronología del moviemento estudiantil de 1968." Historias de la historia.
http://redescolar.ilce.edu.mx/redescolar/act_permanentes/historia/html/mov68/cronologia.htm
(accessed June 25, 2012).
2
John Ross. El Monstruo: dread and redemption in Mexico City. New York: Nation Books, 2009.
255.
3
John Ross. El Monstruo: dread and redemption in Mexico City. New York: Nation Books, 2009.
257.

3. off the walls, I felt like I'd really been there. I could see it, you
know? The rest of the day my contacts were driving me crazy--I
kept thinking I had rock dust in my eyes.
Performing History
I selected individual narratives representing a broad spectrum of perspectives on
the events. Students practised dramatic readings of these narratives in groups or
pairs and recorded their results. Their grade was based on a portfolio of their
three favorite recordings.
The beauty of reading aloud for expression rather than reading silently for
comprehension is that students paid close attention to reading for nuance. Less
advanced students sought the help of highly proficient students in parsing the
syntax, morphology, and pragmatics. While the project was not designed as an
exercise to teach structure, a number of students reported it was the most
memorable lesson in language structure they had experienced.
Students recorded their readings in pairs, using either their own cell phones or
cameras loaned by other students. While large numbers of the students did not
have personal access to smart phones, a "stone soup" approach elicited a high
degree of volunteerism and cooperation.
In addition to the dramatic readings students performed, students also learned
one of the songs sung by the 1968 marchers. A group of student musicians in the
class learned the song and provided live accompaniment.
The Days of the Dead
The final component of the unit was for students to share the experience with the
wider community. My students of all levels of Spanish collaborated to build a
memorial ofrenda (commemorative altar) for display in the community Days of
the Dead celebration held at the Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte,
North Carolina. The ofrenda memorializing the dead of October 2, 1968
incorporated the reproductions of marchers' posters the students made earlier.
Students transported the altar to the festival, assembled it, and stood by to
explain the events the altar memorialized to members of the public. Several
students met and spoke with members of the community who lived in Mexico City
during the events and who shared with students their own memories and
experiences. Festival organizers and members of the public were moved by the
students' awareness of the events of 1968. My students won third place in a
people's choice competition among the ofrendas.

4. Works Cited
Red Escolar ILCE. "Cronología del moviemento estudiantil de 1968." Historias de
la historia.
http://redescolar.ilce.edu.mx/redescolar/act_permanentes/historia/html/m
ov68/cronologia.htm (accessed June 25, 2012).
"El movimiento en México de 1968." historia68.
www.palimpalem.com/2/historia68/userfiles/Tlatelolco_foto_2.jpg
(accessed June 26, 2012).
Richman, Joe, and Anayansi Diaz-Cortes. "Mexico's 1968 Massacre: What
Really Happened? : NPR." Radio Diaries.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97546687
(accessed June 26, 2012).
Ross, John. El Monstruo: dread and redemption in Mexico City. New York:
Nation Books, 2009.