MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) --A Mexican magazine has published photos
showing that paramilitary forces hired to provide security during the 1968 Olympic
games apparently participated in a massacre of student protesters -- something past
Mexican governments have denied.

On October 2, 1968, shortly before the Olympics began, Mexican authorities opened
fire on a largely peaceful student demonstration in Mexico City's Tlatelolco Plaza.

The government claimed about 24 died, but witnesses described a blood bath and
most historians say about 300 students died, caught in a cross fire while police and
troops blocked the exits.

The government of then-President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz accused students of
instigating the violence. Successive PRI governments backed the claim and denied
reports by witnesses that the so-called Olympic Battalion had been involved.

More than 20 photos in the December 9 edition of Proceso magazine show students
being rounded up, searched and held at gunpoint by men in civilian clothing. One of
the photos, displayed on the magazine's front page, shows a student badly beaten
and dressed only in his underwear.

Some of the men rounding up the protesters wore white gloves on their left hands,
the uniform of the Olympic security team.

"These are not just any photos, because they clearly prove the presence of the
Olympic Battalion," said an article accompany the photos. "These photos ...
demonstrate that all of the documentation necessary to know who committed the
Tlatelolco killings exists in the official archives."

The magazine said that an employee of the Interior Department at the time submitted
the photos to a magazine reporter based in Madrid, Spain.

Then-Interior Secretary Luis Echeverria, who formed the squad, became president
in 1970. He has denied any responsibility for the massacre.

A spokesman for President Vicente Fox, who is under pressure to investigate human
rights violations of the past, said Tuesday that the president's office would not have
any comment on the photos at this time.

The massacre scarred a generation of Mexicans, hurt the standing of the governing
Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and convinced thousands that peaceful
protest was impossible, driving them into small armed rebel groups.

The PRI lost last year's presidential election to Vicente Fox of the National Action
Party, after 71 years in power.

In honoring the victims of the massacre in a ceremony last month, Fox promised to
open secret government archives about the event. That has not yet happened.

He also said that his government "recognizes the events of October 2, 1968, as one
of the most important events in the democratic struggle of Mexicans" and one that
led to his opposition-party victory.

Fox recently opened files on the disappearance of hundreds of leftist protesters in
the so-called "dirty war" of the 1970s and 1980s said he would name a special
prosecutor to investigate reports that 275 vanished while in government hands.

Fox also promised during his presidential campaign to create a truth commission that
would reveal and punish those responsible for past human rights abuses.

But he is leery of antagonizing the PRI, which holds a majority in Congress.

In an interview with executives and directors of The Associated Press in June, Fox
said there are some events -- such as the massacre of 45 Indians in Chiapas in 1997
-- that most Mexicans want investigated, but there are others -- such as the Olympic
massacre -- that many may want to let lie.

"We should do something that is limited ... because otherwise it's a mess, and many
of these truth commissions have not worked before, have created more problems
than they have solved," Fox said at the time.

Copyright 2001 The Associated Press.