Coordinating Movements: The Politics of Dance Exchanges between Mexico and Cuba, 1959–75

This paper analyzes the politics of dance collaborations between Mexicans and Cubans in the 1960s and 1970s to reach new insights on Mexico-Cuba relations during this period of heightened Cold War tensions. Broadly speaking, the two countries cultivated a curious accord, unexpected given the rightward drift of Mexican Presidents and the radicalization of the leftist regime in Cuba at the time. Days after Fidel Castro and his 26^th of July Movement took power in 1959 Mexico announced relations with Cuba would continue as normal. In 1964, Mexico became the only member of the Organization of American States (OAS) to maintain diplomatic relations with Cuba until November 1970. In return for these gestures, Castro kept his distance from the Mexican left even as he supported leftist insurrection in other parts of the region.

Against this backdrop, leftist dancers from Mexico and Cuba contributed to dance developments in both countries. After 1959, Mexican modern dancers went to Cuba to contribute to cultural, social, and political revolution there. Mexican dancers directed and taught at the national art school in Havana, worked with the Cuban national modern dance company, and helped found the national Cuban folkloric dance company. In the early 1970s, Cuban ballet dancers began to teach and perform in Mexico, culminating in a 1975 ballet collaboration agreement signed by Mexican President Luis Echeverría and Cuban bureaucrats. This paper analyzes these exchanges and argues that dancers helped reframe the relationship between the two countries from one of careful distance and mutual respect of non-intervention to one of more intimate creative partnership. This dance history also provides a different perspective of cultural diplomacy during the Cold War, which tends to focus on contentious gestures or conspicuous collaborations, rather than more informal exchanges that eventually paved the way for official cultural agreements between two governments.