Field Note #4

The first oral history interviews I ever did were before I knew what the field was all about and they were done in Spanish. Still today, all the interviews I’ve ever done have not been in English. It seems fitting then that I claim Elena Poniatowska as an oral history ancestor. The Polish and Mexican journalist composed “La Noche de Tlatelolco” a book of oral histories with the protestors and survivors of the Tlatelolco massacres in Mexico City. She wrote the book without institutional support and based on interviews in the days following the chaos. One of the primary reasons for doing so was the vast cover up the Mexican government engaged in to try to occlude and erase the truth.