The cast was familiar: an immovable government pitted against students suddenly intoxicated with their own force. The setting was Mexico City, bedecked with flags for the Olympics that were to show Mexico's modern, progressive face to the world. What was different about last week's cops-and-students scenario was that Mexico City's antagonists did their arguing with guns.
Casualty counts were treated as practically state secrets. But in a week of rioting and sporadic shootings, the toll reached at least eight and possibly 18 dead, with perhaps a hundred wounded on both sides, and more than 2,000 arrested. It was a heavy...