Looking for Jacinto López: Unearthing the Life of a Forgotten Hero in Mexico's Secret Police Files

I came across Jacinto López while working with recently declassified secret police documents in Mexico and was surprised at the sheer volume of attention he received – more than any other radical rural activist at the time – from the 1950s until his death in 1972.  Though originally from the northern state of Sonora, López fought for peasant and workers rights throughout northern Mexico.  He founded the General Union of Workers and Peasants of Mexico in the early 1950s, a political party that posed one of the most effective and coordinated threats to the authoritarian state in the 1960s.  López also staged massive mobilizations and land occupations in key agricultural regions, allied with other well-known activists, and spent considerable time in prison for his actions. 

Despite the attention he merited from the secret police and the range of political activities he engaged, we known virtually nothing about Jacinto López.  Other, less significant activists from this period went on to be labeled counter-hegemonic heroes and became important vehicles through which opposition to the authoritarian state was elaborated and passed on through the generations.  This presentation will delve into the reasons why López did not resonate in the collective memory of opposition movements from the mid-twentieth century Mexico and offer up explanations for the failure of a viable heroic memory.  I will also explore how the complex and contradictory dynamics of an activist’s career did fit easily into the heroic renderings of popular struggles of the time, such as the fact he accepted a political post with the authoritarian regime in the last two years of his life.  I will conclude by discussing the significance of using declassified materials to seek out important historical figures and events that have been forgotten in the making of modern Mexico.