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Since then, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Christiane Burkhard, who filmed and directed the documentary, in her Mexico City home. The interview was for the Los Angeles Times, the edited version of which you can see here.

Below is a longer version of the interview with more insights from Burkhard.

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

THE BORDER REPORT

Is Caborca, Sonora, changing hands? If so, the latest would-be owners want everybody out, the narcos, the cops and the mayors of the Pinacate. And the new guys are backed by Macho Prieto, Mayo Zambada’s security chief.

What happened here last week was a sheer massacre, the carnage going far beyond what now passes for normal along the Mexican border.

The incident started with a mass kidnapping of four people in Plutarco Elias Calles, late Wednesday night. What happened next was pure Macho M.O., down to the matching cars, reminiscent of the Bazucaso de Obregón in early ‘05. On Thursday afternoon, a convoy of five Yukons stopped outside the state police substation, gunmen attacking the building with machine guns fired from the sunroofs. Nothing more than intimidation; only two hundred rounds and no serious injuries. The coup de grace came Friday when a Yukon blew past a federal checkpoint, headed north. The Policia Federal Preventiva chased the Yukon and found it abandoned on the side of road heading north to Sonoyta and the U.S. border. Inside the SUV, police found the bodies of eleven men, nine had been burned and chopped to pieces, the heads, arms and legs removed.

Read on….

Thousands of Mexicans took to the streets yesterday to demand justice for the victims of a mass-killing by Government troops on the night of October 2nd forty years ago.

Survivors of that bloody night and Mexicans who had not been born then joined forces, chanting “Dos de octubre! No se olvide!” (Oct. 2! Don’t forget!) as they converged on the downtown Zocalo plaza, report Tracy Wilkinson and Deborah Bonello.

But the protests in Mexico City had a bitter end, with a small number of participants exchanging blows with police, breaking shop windows and spraying graffiti on walls.

El Universal reports that 20 people were arrested by plain-clothes policemen, and that one person injured, in a fracas that happened in the Zocalo, where the march was scheduled to end.

Pictures on the web site of the newspaper Reforma (subscription only) show youths lobbing empty cans and spraying aerosols at by-standing police, who the newspaper said had been ordered not to respond to aggression from protesters.

Other images picture young protesters breaking the window of a convenience store, and then entering it to help themselves to the goods inside.

October 2nd is still dreaded by some Mexicans as a day of potential disaster after the mass-killing 40 years ago in which hundreds of men, women, children and students were fired upon indiscriminately by Government-sent police and soldiers. No one has even been held responsible for what is one of the bloodiest episodes in recent mexican history.

As our report notes, some parents kept their children home from school yesterday in fear that something bad could happen.

The annual march is held in memory of those who died on October 2nd, 1948. But the event has become a date that many groups use to champion other causes and dissenting political views. The nature of the tragedy 40 years ago – in which helicopters, soldiers and plain-clothed policemen descended on a peaceful protest and massacred those taking part – mean that hostility and resentment is often directed towards the police sent to watch over the memorial protest.

Read yesterday’s report on the march in memory of the hudreds who were killed on the night of October 2nd, 1968 here.

Click here for more on Mexico.

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Image: Protesters in Mexico City yesterday walking in memory of those murdered in a mass killing on the night of October 2nd 1968 carry a banner which has the word “Terrorists” emblazoned over the silhouette of a tank. Survivors of that night say that tanks rolled over the dead and wounded in La Plaza de las Tres Culturas, Tlatelolco. Deborah Bonello / Los Angeles Times

Today, people of all ages will march in memory of a massacre that took place forty years ago in Mexico City – an event that remains one of the darkest in the country’s recent and bloody history.

On October 2nd 1968 the country was gearing up for the opening of the Olympics here in Mexico City but Mexico – like many other nations around the world – was in the midst of a student movement.

Hundreds of peacefully protesting students, men and women were shot dead by government forces in Tlatelolco’s Plaza de las Tres Culturas near the city’s center that night.

The Mexican authorities have yet to establish the facts of what happened on October 2nd 1968, despite efforts on the part of the families and groups representing those killed.

Earlier this year, an exhibition opened just off La Plaza De Las Tres Culturas in Mexico City in memory of the events of that night.

You can watch a video about that tragic night, and the new show in its memory, below. Tomorrow, we’ll have words and pictures from today’s marches across the city.

[bliptv Dbonello-LosAngelesTimesMexicosBloodyMemoriesOf68497]

Click here to see other MexicoReporter.com dispatches about Tlatelolco, including a report from last year’s march.

Image: A monument in the center of La Plaza de las Tres Culturas, Tlatelolco, Mexico City remembers the hundreds of people killed of “disappeared” on the night of October 2nd, 1968. Deborah Bonello / Los Angeles Times

It’s been a few days since I returned from the bomb site in Morelia, Michoacán. I visited there on Wednesday; two days after a double-grenade attack in the city’s centre during its Independence Day celebrations killed eight people. The death toll rose from 7 to 8 at the weekend when a 13-year-old boy died from him injuries.

During that trip, my colleague and I visited both sites where the grenades detonated. One went off in the city’s central plaza – the other a few blocks away on a street corner.

Since then, I’ve had some time to reflect on the question everyone is asking: who is responsible for those bombs? And perhaps more importantly, I’ve had time to speak to ordinary Mexicans about their thoughts on what it going on.

I’ve always felt, during my time here in Mexico that because I was a foreigner there was always a fog hanging over the world of politics and public life. That maybe there are subtleties that I just don’t get because Spanish isn’t my first language.

But what I’ve found this week is that the fog is there for everyone – Mexican or not. Not many people have much of a clue of what’s going on in this country, and are reduced to speculating or drawing up their own hypothesis based on their own, limited, personal experiences to provide answers.

The possible culprits over dinner or drinks over the last week have ranged from the obvious to the ridiculous, and included President Calderon and his party the PAN, various factions of drug cartels, and the PRI – looking to destabilize an already fragile democracy.

Meanwhile, while speculation runs wild, the theatre that is Mexican public life goes on.

The head of public security in Michoacan – Mario Bautista Ramírez – said that Morelia’s police arrested and then let go three suspects on the night of bombing. And ten police officers who were meant to be patrolling the investigations in plain clothes apparently never turned up for work.

Before the weekend, authorities cleared a different three men who had been arrested in connection with the bombing in the northern state of Zacatecas. La Familia in Morelia – a drug gang based in the state of Michoacan – were the most obvious suspects following last week’s attacks but managed to get past security and put up signs across the city denying responsibility for the explosions. Instead, they passed the blame onto the Zetas – a paramilitary gang that’s the hired muscle of the Mexican Gulf Cartel.

The most important thing that occurred to me as I’ve perused other media’s coverage, my own, and the scene itself, is how frighteningly informal the attitude of the authorities is to the crime scene itself.

When we arrived on Wednesday, the main plaza – as you can see from my stills – was uncovered. Officials in white boiler suits were walking all over it, taking pictures. There have also been reports that officials were seen pouring water over their hands to wash themselves in the plaza – and letting the water spill over the floor of what is a crime scene.

Remember I mentioned the corner of the streets Madero and Guzman, where the second grenade went off? That I recalled seeing a pool of dried blood with a lock of hair in it – how will they know where that lock of hair come from now that the crime scene has been open to the elements all week? Did it fall into the blood during the explosion? Did is blow in after the event? Does it a belong to a victim, the perpetrator, or an innocent bystander? Does it mean ANYTHING?

I know nothing about forensics or the science of a crime scene, but I’ve seen enough American police dramas to know that the first thing one does in a crime scene is cover it up to protect it from the elements and to stop any alterations of where things dropped and where and how. On the corner of Madero and Guzman the only measures that seem to have been taken to protect the crime scene was plastic police tape, which marked delineated a limit around where the grenade had gone off. That and an armed soldier, standing guard.

It was all just so informal – how can the authorities be serious about tackling crime when they don’t even seem to know how to treat a crime scene? And a serious one at that. It doesn’t look like they are going to be the ones to discover the answer to the question on everyone’s lips: who threw those grenades? And is it going to happen again?

Image: Officials inspect the central plaza in Morelia, Mexico on Wednesday of last week. The Monday before, seven people were killed and more than a hundred injured by two bombs that went off during the city’s independence day celebrations. An eighth person – a 13-year-old boy – died of injuries sustained by the bombings over the weekend. Deborah Bonello / MexicoReporter.com

Rafael Bucio, a 30 year old car-parking attendant, was out with his wife and two small children in Morelia, Mexico on Monday night enjoying the Independence celebrations when two grenades went off.

Bucio’s wife Gloria Alvarez, 32, was holding their three-month old son Uriel in her arms when the explosion happened. She died from her injuries in a public hospital. The baby somehow escaped unharmed.

Watch Bucio tell his story of that night in the video below.

Meanwhile, Ken Ellingwood reports that three arrests have been made in connection with the two bombs which went of in Morelia on Monday night, killing seven people and injuring more than a hundred.

This video and post were made for La Plaza.

Behind him, his wife Gloria Alvarez stood in the street with their three-month old child in her arms and their seven-year old daughter Jannyfer nearby. The three of them watched the fireworks going off, looking up into the cool night sky, whilst their father waited for their grandmother.

They didn’t know that their lives were about to change forever.

“Lots of ambulances and patrol cars started to pass by going to the center – to the cathedral,” explained Bucio Wednesday afternoon from a hospital bed, broken bones in his arm and leg held together by pins. Blood seeped through the bandages onto the white cotton sheet covering the bed.

He was moving closer to his wife, away from the street corner, when he heard a thump.

“There was a patrol car parked in the street blocking the cars – a transport patrol – and I heard something hit the patrol car. So I turned round to see and something rolled…when it stopped I realized that it was a grenade.

It went off, catapulting Bucio back two meters and onto the ground.

When he came to, he could see his wife unconscious on the street in front of him, and Jannyfer on her knees, her face covered in blood, screaming for him to help her.

“I saw my wife and I thought that she was already dead but no – she was still alive. She died here, in the emergency room.”

Gloria Alvarez was one of seven lives that were claimed by the two explosions in the city – evidence of which was still obvious to my colleague and I when we arrived there Wednesday to report on the bombs’ aftermath.

The main plaza, where the first bomb had exploded, was sealed off to the public. Heavily armed soldiers guarded the perimeter. Beyond them, men in white boiler suits picked their way around shoes, socks and more unrecognizable debris and mess left by the grenade blast that went off when Governor Leonel Godoy gave the traditional cry of independence “Viva Mexico!” on Monday evening.

The majority of people on the plaza that night didn’t even realize that there had been an explosion – the noise of music and fireworks hid the bang that sent projectiles flying into the feet and legs of people crowded.

Eerily, television pictures from that night show how the music kept playing and the fireworks kept firing whilst paramedics picked their way around the dead and injured just a few meters away from revelers.

Bucio, who was hit by the second explosion a few blocks away, didn’t know that the first grenade had gone off minutes before. He said the fireworks got confused with the bangs from the bombs.

On Wednesday, the street corner where his wife had been fatally wounded and he seriously injured had been cordoned off by plastic tape. There was what looked like old, red tar on the street, starting about a meter out from the kerb. It was dried blood – when it was fresh it had been spilled in the road and then run down the little hill towards the gutter.

On the pavement were more bloodstains. In one of the small patches of sticky, red gunk was a long lock of dark, curly hair – one end stuck hard in the red glue and the other moving around in the wind.

Bucio thinks that the person who threw the second grenade was aiming for the police, but that it bounced off the patrol car and into the crowd. Two people died from that blast – Bucio’s wife and another person, as yet unidentified, who fell down next to her.

In the wall of the curtain shop in front of which the grenade went off, shrapnel marks were visible in the stone – where pieces of the grenade had flown off and dug in.

Who is responsible for the attack? The favourite culprit is Mexico’s big bag narcotraffickers, who you can’t have helped but notice are the focus of a crackdown by President Felipe Calderon who has dispatched 40,000 soldiers and 5,00 federal police to try to secure vast swathes of the country.

But setting off two bombs in a public place seems an odd thing to do for illicit networks that rely on the cooperative silence of significant parts of the civilian population to survive. It would seem they are shooting themselves in the foot by targeting innocent civilians – no matter how desperate they are to deal a heavy blow to Calderon, who is from the state of Michoacan – one of Mexico’s most drug-ridden.

The drug-cartels have access to cash and weaponry that could create an attack far more sophisticated than a simple grenade. The whole set-up from Monday night – during which a man dressed in black moved through the crowd saying “Perdoname, perdoname (forgive me, forgive me),” before throwing the first grenade – seems far too amateur and unprofessional.

Then again – maybe that could be part of their strategy, making the attack look like a fudged, low-budget affair.

It could just have been a couple of whackos, or perhaps even a whole new network in Mexico that we yet know nothing about.

Sadly, as is so often the case in this country, all one can really do is speculate. At the time of writing, the authorities had made three arrests in connection with Monday’s bombing.

Due to the pressure that Calderon is under to provide a head for the attacks – pressure which builds each day that his administration proves itself so useless in improving the level of security in the country posed not only by the drug cartels but soaring crime and kidnapping levels – the reliability of these arrests is highly dubious.

Top: Yesterday, the public paid their respects at a shrine to the side of the city’s main plaza in Morelia, remembering the seven people killed in Monday night’s bomb attack.

Middle: A soldier stood guard in front of the plaza, where debris of the explosion still lies. Forensic officers in white boiler suits were investigating on the scene.

I spent the day down on Reforma where, as Mexico’s military marched, people reacted to the bombings.