"Luniks and Sputniks in Chapultepec!" The Soviet Exhibition of Science, Technology, and Culture in Mexico City, 1959

This paper examines the significance of the Soviet Exhibition of Science, Technology and Culture held in Mexico City in the fall of 1959, locating that exhibition within the strategic framework of U.S.-Mexican relations in the immediate aftermath of the Cuban revolution.  The exhibition formed part of a broader Soviet cultural offensive in Mexico and was inaugurated by Anastas Mikoyan, Soviet First Deputy Premier and the highest Soviet official ever to set foot in Latin America.  From Mexico, Mikoyan famously took the fair unexpectedly to Cuba, thereby establishing the highest-level Soviet-Cuban contacts to that point and setting in motion the consolidation of a Soviet-Cuban strategic relationship.  Overlooked by historians, the exhibition provides a unique portal for examining the nexus of Soviet-Mexican-U.S. relations at the start of the “long 1960s.”