Abstract
This article challenges two general assumptions that have guided the study of Mexican foreign policy in the last four decades. First, that from this policy emerges national consensus; and, secondly that between Mexico and the US there is a “special relation” thanks to which Mexico has been able to develop an autonomous foreign policy. The two assumptions are discussed in light of the impact on Mexican domestic politics of the 1954 USsponsored military coup against the government of government of Guatemala. In Mexico, the US intervention reopened a political fracture that had first appeared in the 1930’s, as a result of President Cardenas’radical policies that divided Mexican society. These divisions were barely dissimulated by the nationalist doctrine adopted by the government. The Guatemalan Crisis brought some of them into the open. The Mexican President, Adolfo Ruiz Cortines’ priority was the preservation of political stability. He feared the US government might feel the need to intervene in Mexico to prevent a serious disruption of the status quo . Thus, Ruiz Cortines found himself in a delicate position in which he had to solve the conflicts derived from a divided elite and a fractured society, all this under the pressure of US’ expectations regarding a secure southern border.
Highlights
RESUMEN: La fractura política Mexicana y el golpe de 1954 en Guatemala (Los incios de la guerra fría en América Latina).- Este artículo ofrece una discusión crítica de dos presupuestos generales que han orientado el estudio de la política exterior mexicana en las últimas cuatro décadas
The relevance of the Guatemalan episode lies in that it is at the origin of decades of instability and internal strife in Latin American countries
In Mexico, the operation against Árbenz in 1954 produced reactions analogous to those that accompanied the Cuban events: it stirred up protests among university students and teachers; divided the political elite, and within the middle-classes it reopened a political fracture that had first appeared in the thirties
Summary
The transformation of the US into a superpower was the most momentous change affecting Mexico in the post-War period. Eisenhower repeatedly talked about his wish to foster cooperation with Mexico, which he considered different to other Latin American countries, because it shared with the US a border stretching more than 1 800 miles This fact bore a special meaning for a military man, who was fighting a war, of a fundamentally diplomatic and ideological nature, but one that could become an armed conflict at any moment. The same is true of Mexico’s attitude towards the United States it is traditionally colored by vague suspicion of our motives.” John Foster Dulles’ views on Mexico seem surprisingly balanced and well-informed.22 At this time of general paranoia, the Mexicans’ ambivalent attitudes and policies toward foreign Communists, or the government’s defense of State’s intervention, did not disturb the cordiality between the two countries. John Foster Dulles’ analysis of the Mexican situation reveals surprising restraint
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