Jacob Glenn and Dr. Andrew Johns, Department of History

A green flare shot up in the air, lighting the sky. A red flare shortly followed. As the surprised crowd looked up, “a hail of bullets” turned a peaceful student protest into a massacre at Tlatelolco.

Indignation at police brutality and political authoritarianism had triggered a series of student protests in Mexico City stretching from June into the fall of 1968. Mexican government officials, meanwhile, had been preparing to showcase Mexico City during the upcoming Olympic Games. With students chanting “We don’t want the Olympics, we want a revolution!”¹ Mexican President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz determined that there “existed an imperative necessity to fully maintain the principle of authority”² and the Tlatelolco Massacre followed.

Although the ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) managed to maintain political rule for thirty years after the 2 October massacre, the 1968 student movement immediately became a potent political symbol. The blatant repression quickly undercut Mexico’s image as the “most stable and progressive country in Latin America,”³ highlighting the cracks in Mexican political consensus and signaling the beginning of the end for the PRI.

While the summer protests and resulting massacre have—understandably—garnered significant attention from historians, almost no scholarly literature previously explored US-Mexican relations during the crisis. By examining declassified government documents at George Washington University’s National Security Archive and the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Archive, my research aimed to fill that void, investigating US-Mexican diplomacy from 1968- 1971. Although increasingly frustrated by the Mexican government’s unwillingness to fully disclose its hand in repressing the 1968 protest at Tlatelolco and a second violent repression—the Corpus Christi Massacre—in 1971, US officials proved unwilling to distance the United States from the ruling PRI and eventually even aided them in maintaining political control.

Detailing US-Mexican diplomatic relations required first properly placing the student protests within the context of various—and often contradictory—forces affecting the United States’ diplomatic response. Perhaps more than any other context, the stark realities of Cold War confrontation colored US perception of the Mexico City student movement from the outset. Although the initial protests focused on longstanding domestic concerns regarding police brutality and political openness, President Díaz Ordaz characterized the students as an aggressive communist minority not representative of the Mexican people at large. This caricature proved palatable to US officials; with student unrest at home and troops still embroiled in Vietnam, possible communist infiltration so close to home demanded immediate attention.

In addition to suspecting communist influence in the 1968 student movement—anathema to the United States during its ideological battle with the Soviet Union, US engagement with Mexico also took place against the backdrop of more pragmatic interests. As Castro’s staunchest ally in Latin America, on multiple occasions Mexico had facilitated the return of US citizens trapped in Cuba. Even more importantly, beginning in 1964 the Mexican government began double dealing, slipping the United States information about Cuba’s internal affairs. Upon assuming the presidency, Díaz Ordaz assured President Johnson that “Mexico’s interests in a showdown would be parallel” to the United States’.⁴ A valuable Cold War ally and an intelligence foothold in Cuba—arrangements that a successor to the PRI might easily reject, were both at stake.

Beyond the immediate exigencies of the Cold War, deeper cultural currents also pulled policymakers in contradictory directions. On the one hand, US presidents of both parties had long viewed the PRI as a positive, stabilizing force that had calmed Mexico’s turbulent history of instability. Díaz Ordaz and Johnson quickly established a close working relationship, one that the Johnson administration held up as proof of his having paid special attention to Latin America.

But just as Johnson held Díaz Ordaz in high regard, policymakers at the US Embassy in Mexico City and the State Department were acutely aware of the importance of maintaining the United States’ image as leader of the free world. Providing significant support to the PRI in the wake of its violent repressions ran the risk of generating raucous backlashes at home and abroad, especially in Latin America where resentment toward US intervention ran deep.

Balancing all these interests, policymakers began walking a diplomatic tightrope. Fully convinced that foreign communists had played an important role in the student movement, the United States offered its public reassurance that the Olympic Games would be safe in Mexico. As time wore on, however, US officials became more skeptical of the influence of communism and increasingly wary of the Mexican government’s role in repressing its people. In early 1971 Mexican officials requested training in riot control for their police officers. Although hesitant— recognizing the criticism that could spill to the United States if these police repressed another protest—the State Department acquiesced. On June 1971, the United States fears were justified as the Mexican government smashed another peaceful protest—though not with the US-trained policemen who had not yet returned. Still fearful of the possible fallout, both governments worked together to succesfully suppress the story. The United States’ covert aid to the PRI can, to some extent, can be considered a foreign policy success; officials aided a Cold War ally while avoiding a public backlash.⁵

References

1. Elena Poniatowska, Massacre in Mexico: The Night of Tlatelolco trans. Helen R. Lane (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1975), 12.
2. Enrique Krauze, El Sexenio de Díaz Ordaz (Mexico: Editorial Clio S.A., 1999), 82.
3. US Department of State Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Student Violence and Attitudes in Latin America: Confidential Working Draft. Circa November 15, 1968. National Security Archive. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB99/Doc43.pdf (accessed October 2, 2011).
4. US State Department Confidential Memorandum of Conversation, President Johnson’s Conversations with President-elect Díaz Ordaz. November 23, 1968. National Security Archive. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/ NSAEBB/NSAEBB83/us06.pdf (accessed October 20, 2011).
5. This project could not have been accomplished without the BYU Office of Research and Creative Activities. I would like to thank Alan Harker for his generous donation and Professor Andrew Johns for his always insightful advice. Protest and the PRI: Examining US-Mexican Relations, 1969-1971 was published in the 2012 edition of BYU’s student journal of history, the Thetean.