Reporting on Anonymous Café Gossip in 1973 Mexico City

In 1973, intelligence agents started spying in cafés in downtown Mexico City, which was a significant change in their activities.  I reviewed spy reports detailing political activity in Mexico City between the years 1969 and 1977, produced by the “Political and Social Investigations” division of Mexico’s Ministry of the Interior.  From 1969 until 1973, agents focused primarily on political parties and known political groups on the Left and Right, reporting on public protests, public meetings, and private conversations.  In late-1973, spies began to report on anonymous middle-class gossip and jokes.  Agents and their informants gathered information in places of middle-class consumption, such as cafés, gas stations, banks, secure taxicabs, dry cleaning shops, and supermarkets.  In the context of global economic recession and national political crisis, middle-class residents speculated about possible peso devaluations, criticized the president’s style and policies, worried about a possible Leftward turn in Mexico, and whispered about a coup d’état. 

In my contribution to the roundtable, I will discuss one document that is emblematic of this new trend in intelligence gathering.  It is part of a series of four documents, from December 1973, in which intelligence agents reported the conversations of a group of men who met for morning coffee in the famous Madero Sanborns café in the center of Mexico City.  I will describe the content of the document, and how I use it to tell several stories.  The first story is about middle-class political culture in the midst of economic crisis.  The second story is about the one-party state and it’s self-perceived vulnerability.  The third story is about an increasing polarization of the Left and the Right in Mexico.