Collectivism after Modernism - autonomous learning - Blogs

174 Rubén Gallo
the unfolding of the massacre. Pani, like Moses, was a disciple of Le Corbusier,
and most of his projects aspired to the modernist ideal of rational,
efWcient urban planning. Tlatelolco was a case in point: the housing development
was erected on a piece of vacant land far from the city center
and was accessible only by the newly constructed high-speed roads. The
complex consisted of a dozen towers, separated by gardens. In interviews,
Pani explained how everything from the number of trees in the gardens to
the square footage of individual units was computed according to formulas.
Tlatelolco was to be one of the most efWcient, rational housing projects
in Mexico.
And also the most deadly. The Xipside of Pani’s architectural
rationalism was an obsession with crowd control: like most modernist complexes,
Tlatelolco had mechanisms of surveillance and control built into its
design. There were few entrances to the complex and a set number of designated
public spaces. A series of gates allowed guards to quickly and efWciently
cut off access to the buildings. During the student rally on October
2, 1968, these typically modernist elements transformed Tlatelolco into a
deadly trap: the students had assembled in a plaza that was one of the few
public spaces in the complex. When the Wrst shots were Wred, the guards
locked the gates, and the students were trapped. They became easy targets
for the military, whose soldiers were perched on top of the modernist blocks,
from where they had an unobstructed line of Wre. The students were in fact
standing in a modernist panopticon, where they could be surveyed from
almost any point in the complex.
It was the architecture of Tlatelolco that made the massacre so
deadly. If the students had gathered, say, on the streets of the Centro (where
Proceso Pentágono staged most of its actions), they would have had a million
possibilities of escape: they could have Xed though any of the numerous
alleys, passages, or even subway entrances; they could have easily disappeared
into the labyrinthine chaos of the Centro. But in Tlatelolco’s modernist panopticon
there was no exit. In the Centro, with its narrow streets and densely
packed buildings, the military sharpshooters would have never found a vantage
point with an unobstructed line of Wre.
Staged in the midst of these massively disruptive urban projects—from
freeways to modernist housing projects—Proceso Pentágono’s street actions
should be read as an effort to remind the city’s inhabitants about the devastating
effects of modernization: violent crime (the kidnapping piece), the
disappearance of the street as a space for Xaneurs (the trafWc accident performance),
and the rising sense of isolation and alienation (for a 1974 project,
the group placed a maquette of Mexico City inside a vitrine and then