The end of the Second World War marked a shift in U. S.—Mexican relations. The death of President Roosevelt in April 1945 deprived the Good Neighbor Policy of its key backer. By mid-1945, most of the senior officials who had helped develop the Good Neighbor Policy had left the State Department. FDR’s successor, Harry Truman, possessed none of the skills and sensitivities needed to maintain the policy. After the Second World War ended, the United States no longer needed huge quantities of strategic materials. Finally, with the advent of the Cold War, as historian Stephen Niblo observed, interest in Mexico dwindled:
The Great Power rivalry between the United States and the USSR shifted attention to the
Perimeter of the Soviet Union. Mexico, formerly valued as a frontline state against fascist
Expansion and an economic ally during the war, soon became marginalized.8
In February 1945, to lay the groundwork for postwar cooperation with Latin America, the United States sponsored a Pan American conference at Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City. For the Latin Americans who attended, the most pressing concern was postwar economic development. They felt that the United States had an obligation to repay Latin American wartime cooperation with aid. Mexican Foreign Secretary Padilla proclaimed that Latin Americans should “do more than produce raw materials and live in a state of semi-colonialism.” Mexico joined the other Latin American nations in advocating tariffs to protect still vulnerable new industries, controls on foreign (meaning U. S.) investment to ensure that it was in the “public interest,” and the stabilization of commodity prices. As historian Frank Niess observed, “All in all, the Latins’ objective at Chapultepec was nothing less than a more equitable distribution of the profits of the inter-American division of labour.”9
At the Chapultepec Conference, the United States presented a very different economic vision for postwar Latin America. U. S. planners felt the ideal was the unimpeded flow of capital, the elimination of trade barriers within the hemisphere, and free access to each country’s markets and raw materials. The American delegates advocated the use of private capital, not foreign aid, to finance Latin American development.10
As it enunciated its economic preferences, the United States touted its own free-market development model as the only viable path of development and dismissed models that strayed too far from it. The U. S. version of its own economic history conveniently omitted any mention of how in the nineteenth century the United States was the most tariff-protected nation in the world and how various nineteenth-century U. S. administrations had promoted economic
Development.11
A 1947 exchange of visits between Presidents Harry Truman and Miguel Aleman indicated the cordiality in relations between the two nations. In 1947, Truman visited Mexico City—a first for a U. S. president. While there, Truman made the dramatic gesture of laying a wreath at the monument to the Mexican cadets, known as the Ninos Heroes, who died during the
Mexican—American War. Foreign Secretary Jaime Torres Bodet rose to the occasion and proclaimed that Truman “threw a bridge across the chasm of the past.” Aleman responded to Truman’s visit with another first—a visit to the U. S. capital by a Mexican president. Aleman devoted a chapter in his memoirs to the exchange. As an indication of the asymmetry of relations between the two nations, Truman’s much longer memoirs contained only three lines concerning his Mexico City visit and failed to even mention Aleman.12
In 1948, the Ninth Conference of American States, held in Bogota, Colombia, laid the groundwork for the Organization of American States (OAS). At this conference, U. S. Secretary of State George Marshall quashed any remaining hopes that a Marshall Plan for Latin America would be forthcoming. Rather, he informed the representatives of the twenty-one Latin American republics gathered there that the United States would not supply Latin America with aid on a scale similar to the aid being offered Europe since “it is beyond the capacity of the United States government to finance more than a small portion of the vast development needed. The capital required through the years must come from private sources, both domestic and foreign. . ..”13
Harmonious U. S.—Mexican relations continued into the early 1950s. A 1951 CIA report observed, “Mexico supports US views in major international issues, and relations with this country have been increasingly friendly and mutually cooperative.”14
With the exception of the regime change in Guatemala, by the early 1950s Latin America had ceased to be a major focus of U. S. attention. The 1949 U. S. Mutual Defense Act provided for the expenditure of $1.3 billion to bolster friendly militaries around the world. Not a cent went to Latin America. Between 1945 and 1952, Belgium and Luxembourg, with an area less than the Mexican state of Puebla, received more direct aid than all of Latin America combined. As with the rest of Latin America, Mexico drew little attention from its northern neighbor, and U. S.—Mexican relations entered into what historian Alan Knight has described as “their long period of somnolence.”15
The Mexican government under President Lopez Mateos (1958—1964) maintained a delicate balance. To have fully supported the Cuban Revolution would have alienated the Church, the United States, and Mexican business interests. To have supported U. S. actions relating to Cuba, and especially the U. S.-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion, would have alienated the Cuban government, Mexican intellectuals, and the Mexican left, which might have become even more radical.16
Lopez Mateos’s initial reaction to Castro’s 1959 triumph was to welcome the victory and affirm Cuba’s right to self-determination. In June 1960, when Cuban President Oswaldo Dorticos visited Mexico, Lopez Mateos declared, “We who have passed through a similar process, understand and value the changes which Cuba is carrying out. . . We are confident that the Cuban Revolution will, as ours has, contribute to the greatness of the Americas.” The Mexican government condemned the U. S.-organized Bay of Pigs invasion. At the time of the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, Mexico supported the United States by joining in the OAS’s resolution calling for the withdrawal of nuclear missiles from Cuba. However, Mexico qualified its support by declaring that the United States should not use the incident as a pretext for invading Cuba. In 1964, Mexico alone rejected U. S. demands at the OAS that Latin America break diplomatic and trade relations with Cuba.17
The principle of non-intervention became the cornerstone of Mexican foreign policy and an integral part of Mexico’s national identity. The PRI benefited from the broad approval of this stance.18
While Mexico maintained a public stance of support for the Castro regime, it secretly yielded to U. S. pressure. Prior to each Cubana Airlines departure from Mexico City to Havana, Mexican authorities supplied the Mexico City CIA station with a passenger list so that names could be checked. In the case of U. S. citizens, the Mexican authorities would prevent the departure of someone if the station requested them to do so. These authorities would also supply personal data and mug shots—taken of all passengers departing for Cuba—to U. S. intelligence services.19
It is evident from declassified documents that Mexico’s ambassadors to Havana regularly supplied U. S. intelligence services with information on Cuba’s internal political, economic, and social developments. For example, on June 2, 1967, Mexico’s ambassador to Cuba, Fernando Pamanes Escobedo, used a visit to Mexico City to meet with U. S. embassy officer Francis S. Sherry III. Pamanes briefed Sherry on a wide range of highly sensitive topics including the impact of Cuban economic woes on its citizens, popular discontent, military matters, Cuban-Soviet relations, and Cubans seeking asylum at the Mexican embassy in Havana.20
As a result of their carefully hidden cooperation on the Cuba issue and other shared interests, relations between Mexico and the United States remained cordial. In 1963, Presidents Lopez Mateos and Kennedy further improved relations by finally laying to rest the Chamizal dispute. The dispute had arisen when an 1864 flood caused the Rio Grande to cut off a bend, leaving almost a square mile of Mexican territory on the north side of the river at El Paso. Mexicans continued to claim the land—named the Chamizal for a bush growing there—as their territory. At the same time, El Paso residents treated it as de facto U. S. territory. As a result of the 1963 settlement, 439 acres were returned to Mexico. A concrete channel for the Rio Grande separated this land from 193 acres that remained on the north side and that became U. S. territory. Although the settlement made poor geography, putting a bend back where the river had straightened its course, it was good politics. By sacrificing a few acres, which were of little use since land titles were at best shaky, the United States removed a long-time irritant in U. S.—Mexican relations. To the Mexicans, the settlement was a source of national pride, and the ceremony marking the formal transfer of territory was carried live on Mexican television.21
The presidency of Lyndon Baines Johnson, who served between 1963 and 1968, marked the end of a simpler era. Problems such as the Chamizal were often localized and relatively easy to solve. Johnson relied on personal contacts with Diaz Ordaz to maintain cordial relations between their two nations. During his administration, he met with Diaz Ordaz as president-elect and as president on seven separate occasions. As president, Johnson devoted more attention to Mexico than to any other Latin American nation. Before a scheduled 1967 meeting between Johnson and Diaz Ordaz, a U. S. intelligence report stated, “Relations between the Mexican and US governments are extremely friendly, and President Johnson is personally popular in Mexico.”22
The United States tolerated Mexico’s foreign policy deviations since the main American goal in Mexico was political stability. U. S. policy makers correctly viewed Mexico’s foreign policy independence as giving the Mexican government legitimacy, thus contributing to stability. In 1964, the CIA reported that one could overlook Mexican declarations on non-intervention and Cuba’s right to self-determination and find that “The government is basically pro-Western, friendly toward the United States, and fully aware that its economic and political interests are closely tied to this country.”23
These shared interests paved the way for increasingly close ties with the United States. By 1970, the United States accounted for 79 percent of the $2.8 billion of direct foreign investment in Mexico. The volume of Mexico’s trade with the United States steadily increased, although as Mexico’s trading links diversified, the U. S. share of Mexico’s foreign trade decreased from 72.1 percent in 1960 to
63.7 percent in 1970. Historian Daniel Cosio Villegas commented on the steadily increasing U. S. economic and cultural influence, noting that like “that of the Christian god, it is all powerful and omnipresent.”24
The Mexico City CIA station, with fifty employees and a $5.5 million annual budget, became the largest in the western hemisphere. Former CIA agent Philip Agee reported that Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, who was appointed interior secretary in 1958, worked “extremely closely” with the CIA. Its agents would pass their findings to Mexican government agents, who used the information to plan “raids, arrests and other repressive action.” The importance of the CIA was such that when station chief William Scott married in Mexico, President Lopez Mateos and Interior Secretary (and future president) Diaz Ordaz served as official witnesses.25
THE RISE OF THE "PERFECT DICTATORSHIP," 1941-1970
World History
