Mexico's Cold War: Cuba, the United States, and the Legacy of the Mexican Revolution

Cambridge Studies in US Foreign Relations

by Renata Keller

Mexico's Cold War examines the history of the Cold War in Mexico and Mexico in the Cold War. Renata Keller draws on declassified Mexican and US intelligence sources and Cuban diplomatic records to challenge earlier interpretations that depicted Mexico as a peaceful haven and a weak neighbor forced to submit to US pressure. Mexico did in fact suffer from the political and social turbulence that characterized the Cold War era in general, and by maintaining relations with Cuba it played a unique, and heretofore overlooked, role in the hemispheric Cold War. The Cuban Revolution was an especially destabilizing force in Mexico because Fidel Castro's dedication to many of the same nationalist and populist causes that the Mexican revolutionaries had originally pursued in the early twentieth century called attention to the fact that the government had abandoned those promises. A dynamic combination of domestic and international pressures thus initiated Mexico's Cold War and shaped its distinct evolution and outcomes.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Academic

294 pages, Paperback

First published July 28, 2015

Reviews

[Stacy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating topic. Grateful to the author for repeating essential information and titles of people for the topic. They introduce topics in previous chapters that they go into further detail in the next chapters. Stringing it along provides the reader with a clear understanding of the topic. The conclusions are helpful in reinforcing the main points of the chapter. The part about Lee Harvey Oswald was the highlight (not because of American centered but the tie to the topic as a whole)

[Ximena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent academic book. Renata Keller refrains from adding her personal opinions to present a well-researched and sustained historical perspective. I appreciate her thesis about how the Cuban Revolution had a major influence on Mexicans, who were expecting significant changes after the Mexican Revolution. However, the PRI institutionalized the revolution and adopted ambiguous positions toward Cuba due to Mexico’s binational relationship with the United States. This is something to consider, as American interventionism in Mexico’s sovereignty has persisted until the present day.

Understanding the role of the CIA and USAID in training paramilitary forces to suppress leftist factions in the 1970s reveals the lasting consequences of such actions. This training spread to criminal organizations that were used by the CIA as counterinsurgency forces in Nicaragua and other Central American countries. Moreover, these criminal organizations grew powerful over time.

One particularly relevant aspect is Mexico’s role during the missile crisis and the Bay of Pigs invasion. What would have happened if Mexico had fully sided with Cuba? Would the revolution have spread across the continent?

Fantastic book.