This is a land of ravishing beauty but also menacing peril. Of glorious beaches on Pacific and Atlantic shores where the sun-seeking rich are waited upon by an impoverished majority. A nation alive with pulsating music but too frequently held hostage to the deadly drumbeat of the drug cartels.
No real surprise, then, that in this country of extreme contradiction the preludes to global sporting events range from mass murder to natural disaster. Nor has that changed as Mexico makes more history this week as the first three-time hosts of the World Cup, even as tens of thousands of its citizens are searching for kidnapped relatives.
The fatal attraction between sport and criminal gangs began 18 months before the 1970 World Cup finals — and 10 days prior to the opening ceremony for the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City.
On October 2 that year, the then president, Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, fearing that the Republic was teetering on the brink of a second revolution, sent heavily armed battalions of militia and police to put down a demonstration led by tens of thousands of university students. They were joined by the general public in an increasing volume of dissent against political and social repression. Specifically on this occasion they were focusing against Mexico spending billions of dollars on staging the Olympics instead of feeding, housing, schooling and employing the masses.
The Massacre Of Tlatelolco was as unspeakable as the location is unpronounceable by those of us not versed in the Aztec language. The Plaza of the Three Cultures, as the name of the main square translates, was turned into a death trap of deceit.
The United States backed Diaz Ordaz as the latest president of the ruling PRI — Institutional Revolutionary Party — which had held power since 1929. The CIA endorsed the Mexican government line that ‘only’ 44 people were killed that tragic evening. Washington has since amended its position in the light of mounds of bodies shown to have been piled up on the ground at the time as well as evidence and testimony gathered later that upwards of 400 perished and almost a thousand were seriously wounded.
Demonstrators are cleared from Mexico City’s Central Plaza ahead of the 1968 Olympic Games
Pele and Bobby Moore exchange shirts and an embrace after the 1970 World Cup match in Guadalajara which Brazil won 1-0
The collateral damage included by-standers, journalists and children. None of whom were armed. Nor were any of the students found to be carrying weapons. Yet they were accused of opening the firing.
Archive film and photographs would tell a different, more sinister story. It hinges around two flares launched over the square by army helicopters. The first appeared to signal rooftop snipers to open fire in the direction of their own un-warned city police, who had taken up positions among residents of a multi-storey apartment block. As the police fired back at the crowd whom they suspected of that attack no fewer than 5,000 troops joined in the shooting. The scene was set for the students to be falsely blamed.
On the release of the second flare a squadron of mini-tanks sealed all exits from the plaza until well over a thousand had been arrested. There were no claims of casualties among the security forces. The Mexican Movement, which had been cranking up months of ever larger demonstrations, was broken.
Ten days later the Olympics opened but was not without its own rather different protest. At the 200 metres medals ceremony US sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos stood with black-gloved hands raised aloft in denunciation of racial prejudice and poverty in America. Their team-mate Bob Beamon contented himself with flying through the thin, less resistant air at high-altitude Mexico City to break the world long jump record by an incredible 55cm.
The revolt against autocracy, which had echoes in student rebellions around the world, had been crushed here. The remembrances and the repercussions have kept the spirit of those heady days of youth, sunshine and hope alive.
Every October 2nd, groups of relatives and friends gather in Tlatelolco for silent reflection beneath a plaque bearing the names of the fallen. More pointedly, 10 days before the 1970 World Cup kicked off, opposition was voiced in that square against the lavish expenditure incurred by Mexico’s hosting of the tournament.
England’s journey to that tournament was a nightmare of a different order. During a warm-up tour of South America the players looked for presents for their wives in the Green Fire jewellery shop located in the lobby of the team hotel in Bogota. As Bobby Moore and Bobby Charlton left empty-handed a sales girl ran after them claiming an emerald bracelet had been stolen.
The accusation was as confused as it was preposterous. When the finger finally pointed at Moore his arrest prevented him boarding the flight to Mexico with the rest of the squad. World-wide sensation. Innocent protestation. England’s World Cup-winning captain under house arrest in Colombia with the first match of the defence of that title only days away.
Yet so suspicious was the case that on each of the four mornings of his stay at a diplomat’s villa he woke the two guards sleeping in the doorway by bringing them milk cartons picked up on his 6am runs.
Moore leaves court in Bogota, Colombia, after answering questions about an emerald and diamond bracelet stolen from a hotel shop. The drama stopped him flying to Mexico with the rest of the England squad for the 1970 World Cup
England goalkeeper Gordon Banks pulls of his miracle save from Pele’s header in the 1970 World Cup match in Guadalajara
Victim of a scam by the shop or target of a Latin plot to disrupt England’s defence of the World Cup? Both theories were given plenty of air-time. Manager Sir Alf Ramsey was certain of only one thing. That if there was one footballer in the world who could fly in at the 11th hour for the biggest show on earth utterly unruffled by such an ordeal and ready to go, then it was his Captain Cool.
Moore barely had time to limber up before putting in his usual composed, dominant performance in a 1-0 win over Romania.
Brazil would be next. Pele et al. Moore at his commanding best and Gordon Banks with the gravity-defying fingertip Save of the Century kept the great man at bay but could not prevent him setting up Jairzinho for the only goal.
The immortal photograph of Moore and Pele changing shirts, Czechoslovakia subsequently defeated. Bring on West Germany in the quarter-final. And bring back the conspiracy theorists.
Banks fell sick over night and was forced to pull out. England went two up. As his replacement Peter Bonetti was beaten three times and England knocked out the cry went up that the greatest goalkeeper in the world had been poisoned. The seasoned travellers among us who had sampled the more fiery varieties of Mexico’s wonderful food diagnosed Montezuma’s Revenge.
Germany’s Kaiser, Franz Beckenbauer, went with a more reasoned alternative for their great escape. He had this to say of Ramsey’s suicidal substitution, with England 2-1 up, of his nemesis Bobby Charlton, ostensibly to save his aging legs for a semi-final which never came: ‘I couldn’t believe my eyes.’
That did not spare Bonetti large helpings of the blame. Nor England the blight of another controversy. Errors of judgement with two of Germany’s goals gave rise to wicked whispering that he had been distracted by scabrous rumours linking his wife with a flamenco guitarist in Guadalajara.
Let us put that one to bed, pardon the phrase. Frances Bonetti, on her first England tour abroad was chaperoned by the wise first ladies of the pre-Wag era, Tina Moore, Judith Hurst and Kathy Peters to whom no such scandal was ever attached.
Germany went on to semi-final defeat by Italy, who would be Pele-dazzled by Brazil in an epic final. Mexico went back into agonies of soul-searching. Diaz Ordaz ended his Presidency by taking up appointment as ambassador to Madrid. A convenient and safe exile. Other leading politicians were either accused, arrested or jailed briefly on charges ranging up to genocide.
Bobby Charlton attacks Franz Beckenbauer in the World Cup quarter-final in Leon, Mexico in 1970. England were 2-1 up when Charlton was taken off and went on to lose 3-2
Pele celebrates leading Brazil to victory over Italy in the 1970 World Cup final in Mexico
And what of the emerald bracelet?
Years later, after Bobby had been formally and fully exonerated and as he and I were working on his biography over a few cans of Heineken, he provided the definitive answer: ‘One of the squad played a foolish prank and hid it behind a cushion on a hotel sofa.’
Then he bound me to keeping that secret until he and the culprit died. At the very earliest.
