Revolutionary Nationalism, Anti-Americanism, and Bipolarity: Mexican Relations with the United States during the Cold War

In the wake of the Cuban Revolution Mexicans found their relationship to the Cold War altered by the events that took place in the island nation as well as by the super power maneuvering that occurred as a result.  As Fidel Castro’s vision, rhetoric, and activism reached beyond Cuba to encompass a broader critique of the status of Latin America and the global south, Mexicans took note.  Castro’s Third Worldism and its condemnation of imperialism resonated with the Mexican revolutionary nationalism of a half century earlier that had a strong rejection of North American imperialism at its core.  Overlaid on to this ideological slurry of political thought were the events of the Cold War.  These included the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the expulsion of Cuba from the Organization of American States, the war in Vietnam, the overthrow of Salvador Allende’s government in Chile, and the guerrilla insurgencies in Central America.  In each of these cases, the Mexican government acted and the Mexican public responded against the Cold War interests of the United States            While these public rejections of Cold War bipolarity do not belie the private cordial relations that existed between the Mexican and United States governments, they are nonetheless significant as a reflection of Mexican revolutionary nationalism.  Significant too, is the United States response, which was nuanced, pragmatic, and in no way reflective of the hard-line Cold War posture exhibited in other circumstances.  This paper seeks to examine how Mexicans interpreted the Cold War through the prism of their own revolutionary experience and how the powerful Cuban example harnessed a latent anti-Americanism that manifested itself in a political calculus that endured for decades:  working against North American Cold War interests abroad advances political legitimacy at home without seriously eroding relations with the United States.