FRAME-UP OF "TROTSKYISTS" AT UNIVERSITY OF MEXICO ©
In thesearly hours of June 4, vandals dynamited the statue of. Miguel Aleman, former president of Mexico, on the campus of the University..of:: Mexico. The head of the giant statue was blown. off. and other: sections destroyed in successive explosions.
The police at once ascribed the vandalism to members of “the Trotskyist group":.in the Faculty of Political. and Social Sciences. They claimed that it involved about twenty youths whose names were known. Up to June 6, however, no arrests had been made.
Despite this, the police indicated a ‘surprisingly detailed knowledge of the crime.
"Comandante Leobardo Barajas, of the.Federal District Judicial police, said yesterday," according to the June 6 Mexico City daily Excelsior in a front-page story, "that it was known. that the dynamiters -- who numbered about 20 -- had indulged in intoxicating drinks , had broken open doors and padlocks of the administration offices in the basement of the Rectory building. and taken the tools, bars and picks which they used in their destructive work.
"They set off four sticks of dynamite. With the first two. at 45 minutes past midnight, they toppled the head of the statue. . After the explosion they hid for more than an hour. They returned — to place the third and fourth in the left arm and feet, which they set off after three in the morning.
"The Troskos' -- as the members of this student cette
group are known -- tried to destroy the whole monument, but they
failed because the statue is not a single piece but is made up of various enormous blocks of stone. It is suspected that to drill the’ statue, place the dynamite and set it off, they brought with them a ‘stone-cutter' skilled in this work.
"To climb up to the head and the middle of the statue, the dynamiters utilized the scaffolding recently placed around the monu— ment by the Department of Conservation of the University City.
"A group of workers were removing from the monument the splashes of paint and crude oil with which it was smeared when the student conflict began that culminated in the fall of the rector, Ignacio Chavez and the designation in his place of the engineer Javier Barros Sierra.
"The police details: investigating the crime “already 2 know the names of the dynamiters. They indicated they would make them public today. 'There are eight chieftains,' according to them. And it appears that 'they too will have their heads cut off.'"
Whatever group was involved (ultrarightists as well as many radical. tendencies are active on the campus) the case smelled a great deal like the one in New York in which a handful were arrested for plotting to blow up the Statue of Liberty.
Although some of the defendants in that case actually did arrange to get some dynamite, it turned out that the leading figure involved in the plot -- the one who first suggested it and pressed for it to be carried out -- was an agent sent into the group by the police.
Is this a Mexican version of that notorious case?
LUIS CARLOS