‘To Defend the Nicaraguan Revolution is to defend Mexico’: Mexican solidarity with the Sandinista Revolution, 1974-82
2023; Taylor & Francis; Linguagem: Espanhol
10.1080/14682745.2023.2282006
ISSN1743-7962
Autores Tópico(s)Politics and Society in Latin America
ResumoABSTRACTIn the 1970s, a broad range of leftist dissidents in Mexico, from labour organisers to communists to gay liberation activists, took inspiration from and expressed their support for the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) of Nicaragua. This essay examines Sandinista solidarity in Mexico City in the mid-1970s and early 1980s, to shed new light on the contested meanings of ‘revolution’ in Mexico’s politics, society, and culture in the late Cold War period. Sandinismo resonated powerfully in Mexico for activists and politicians alike, for reasons having to do with Mexico’s own revolutionary history, as well as domestic and diplomatic challenges it faced in the present.KEYWORDS: MexicoNicaraguaSandinistarevolutionsolidarity Notes1 Sergio Ramírez, Adiós Muchachos: A Memoir of the Sandinista Revolution (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), 2.2 9 July 1979, PRT flyer, s. 3, 009-010-013, Archivo General de la Nación, Dirección Federal de Seguridad (AGN-DFS), Mexico City.3 Ramírez, Adiós Muchachos, 41.4 Eric Zolov, The Last Good Neighbor: Mexico in the Global Sixties (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020).5 Renata Keller, Mexico’s Cold War: Cuba, the United States, and the Legacy of the Mexican Revolution (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 9, 165-7.6 See recent, related works: Jessica Stites Mor, South-South Solidarity and the Latin American Left (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2022); Eudald Cortina Orero, ‘Militancia transnacional de Montoneros en Centroamérica: De la solidaridad antiimperialista a la lucha por la recuperación democrática,’ ed. Kristina Pirker and Julieta Rostica, Confrontación de imaginarios: Los antiimperialismos en América Latina (Ciudad de México: Instituto de Investigaciones Dr. José María Luis Mora, 2021); Renata Keller, ‘Fan Mail to Fidel: The Cuban Revolution and Mexican Solidarity,’ Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 33, no. 1 (2017); Kristina Pirker and Omar Núñez Rodríguez, ‘La revolución salvadoreña necesita de la solidaridad del pueblo mexicano: Exilio salvadoreño y activismo político en la Ciudad de México,’ in México ante el conflicto centroamericano: Testimonio de una época (Ciudad de México: Bonilla Artigas Editores, 2016).7 Works in this category are too numerous to list. For a recent, notable example, see: Zolov, The Last Good Neighbor.8 See in particular: Adela Cedillo, ‘Tracing the Dirty War’s Disappeared: The Documents of Operación Diamante,’ Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research 19, no. 1 (2013); Adela Cedillo and Fernando Calderón, eds., Challenging Authoritarianism in Mexico: Revolutionary Struggles and the Dirty War, 1964-1982 (New York, NY: Routledge, 2012); Alexander Aviña, Specters of Revolution: Peasant Guerrillas in the Cold War Mexican Countryside (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014).9 State support for Nicaragua has been well studied compared to popular support for the Sandinistas, in numerous works since the 1980s. Two recent articles have addressed the latter: Alejandra G. Galicia and Mariana Bayle, ‘Solidaridad con Nicaragua: La ambivalencia estratégica de la política antiimperialista mexicana en las décadas de 1920 y 1970,’ in Confrontación de imaginarios: Los antiimperialismos en América Latina, ed. Kristina Pirker and Julieta Rostica (Ciudad de México: Instituto de Investigaciones Dr. José María Luis Mora, 2021); Gerardo Sánchez Nateras, ‘“¡Nicas y mexicanos solidarios como hermanos!”: el movimiento mexicano de solidaridad con Nicaragua (1974-1979),’ Secuencia 108, e1840 (2020).10 On the ‘long 1960s’ in Mexico, see in particular: Jaime M. Pensado and Enrique Ochoa, eds., México beyond 1968: Revolutionaries, Radicals, and Repression During the Global Sixties and Subversive Seventies (Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona Press, 2018); Jaime M. Pensado, Rebel Mexico: Student Unrest and Authoritarian Political Culture During the Long Sixties (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013).11 On the DGIPS and DFS archives, see: Aaron W. Navarro, Political Intelligence and the Creation of Modern Mexico, 1938-1954 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010); Tanalís Padilla and Louise E. Walker, ‘In the Archives: History and Politics,’ Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research 19, no. 1 (2013).12 As Keller underscores, these documents’ greatest value to historians is the insight they provide into ‘what Mexico’s leaders thought was happening,’ despite their flaws and inaccuracies. Keller, Mexico’s Cold War, 7.13 Robert A. Pastor and Jorge G. Castañeda, Limits to Friendship: The United States and Mexico (New York, NY: Knopf, 1988), 169.14 Vanni Pettinà, ‘Mexico-Soviet Encounters in the Early 1960s: Tractors of Discord,’ in Latin America and the Global Cold War, ed. Thomas C. Field Jr, Krepp, Stella, Pettinà, Vanni (Durham, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2020), 74-5; Lorenzo Meyer, ‘La guerra fría en el mundo periférico: el caso del régimen autoritario mexicano. La utilidad del anticomunismo discreto,’ in Espejos de la Guerra Fría: México, América Central y el Caribe, ed. Daniela Spenser (México, D.F.: SRE: CIESAS: M.A. Porrúa, 2004), 97-8.15 Meyer, ‘La guerra fría en el mundo periférico,’ 103.16 On Mexico-United States relations during this period, including their irreconcilable positions on Nicaragua, see: Miguel Ruiz-Cabañas Izquierdo, ‘John Gavin: Actor y diplomático,’ ed. Roberta Lajous, et al., Embajadores de Estados Unidos en México: Diplomacia de crisis y oportunidades (Ciudad de México: El Colegio de México y la Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 2021).17 Meyer, ‘La guerra fría en el mundo periférico,’ 98-9; Galicia and Bayle, ‘Solidaridad con Nicaragua,’ 168-9.18 On Mexico as a destination for political refugees in the Cold War era, see: Keller, Mexico’s Cold War, 42-8.19 Sánchez Nateras traces a legacy of ongoing Nicaraguan solidarity in Mexico that was unbroken, albeit in distinct stages, since the time of Sandino up to the rise of the FSLN and into the 1970s. Sánchez Nateras, ‘“¡Nicas y mexicanos solidarios como hermanos!”,’ 4-6.20 Patrick William Kelly, Sovereign Emergencies: Latin America and the Making of Global Human Rights Politics (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 97.21 Ibid., 128-9.22 Zolov, The Last Good Neighbor, 2.23 Barry Carr, Marxism and Communism in Twentieth-Century Mexico (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 279-80. On the PCM leading up to its dissolution in 1981, see 282-9.24 Robert Franco, ‘Revolution in the Sheets: The Politics of Sexuality and Tolerance in the Mexican Left, 1919-2001’ (PhD dissertation, Duke University, 2020).25 See for example: 7 June 1979, Report on event at the Facultad de Ciencias, UNAM, Mexico City, caja 1607-C, exp 11, 5-18 June 1979, foja 33, AGN-DGIPS.26 Fabián Herrera León, ‘El apoyo de México al triunfo de la revolución sandinista: su interés y uso políticos,’ Anuario Colombiano de Historia Social y de la Cultura; Vol. 38, Núm. 1 (2011): Tema libre (2011): 225.27 23 May 1981, report on Nicaragua’s foreign relations, III-3490-1, vol. 1, expediente 728.5-0/210/l”8”, Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, Archivo Histórico Genaro Estrada (SRE-AHGE), Mexico City.28 Mónica Toussaint, ‘¿Activismo o intervencionismo? México frente a Nicaragua, 1978-1982,’ in México ante el conflicto centroamericano: testimonio de una época, ed. Mario Vázquez Olivera and Fabián Campos Hernández (Ciudad de México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Centro de Investigaciones sobre América Latina y el Caribe, 2016), 63-4.29 Pastor and Castañeda, Limits to Friendship: The United States and Mexico, 179-81.30 José López Portillo, Mis tiempos: biografía y testimonio político, 2 vols. (México, DF: Fernández, 1988), 642-4.31 Ramírez, Adiós Muchachos, 45.32 See Tanya Harmer’s analysis of President Luis Echeverría’s insincere public show of support for Salvador Allende: Tanya Harmer, Allende’s Chile and the Inter-American Cold War (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 169-70.33 Ramírez, Adiós Muchachos, 46.34 Herrera León, ‘El apoyo de México al triunfo de la revolución sandinista,’ 233.35 Ana Covarrubias, ‘La política exterior de México hacia América Latina,’ in Una historia contemporánea de México, ed. Ilán Bizburg and Lorenzo Meyer (México, DF: Oceano; el Colegio de México, 2009), 365.36 Jorge G. Castañeda, Amarres perros: una autobiografía (México, D.F.: Alfaguara, 2015), 99-103.37 See various surveillance reports on Daniel Ortega’s visits to Mexico: serie 3, expediente 009-024-090, legajos 1, 2, 4, Archivo General de la Nación, Dirección Federal de Seguridad (AGN-DFS), Mexico City.38 On Mexican government and intelligence collaboration with the CIA during the Cold War, see: Keller, Mexico’s Cold War, 25-7, 70-1, 165-7.39 Sánchez Nateras, ‘“¡Nicas y mexicanos solidarios como hermanos!”,’ 7.40 Emma Yanes Rizo, Araceli: Nicaragua, 1976-79: la libertad de vivir (México, D.F.: Itaca, 2008), 75-77.41 Gaceta Sandinista (Mexico), año I, number 3, September 1975, p. 1. ‘Editorial.’42 Sánchez Nateras shows that the FSLN was told by the Mexican state that it was not to have contact with radical movements in Mexico or to openly criticise the PRI. Sánchez Nateras, ‘“¡Nicas y mexicanos solidarios como hermanos!”,’ 16-7.43 1978, ‘Editorial.’ Boletín Sandinista number 2, fondo: A, O NI3, expediente: 4660. Boletines del FSLN, 1978, Centro Académico de la Memoria de Nuestra América (CAMeNA), Mexico City; on the Gaceta Sandinista, see: Galicia and Bayle, “Solidaridad con Nicaragua,” 176-9.44 There is no perfect translation to English of ‘jornada’ in this context, thus I have chosen to leave the term in Spanish.45 Yanes Rizo, Araceli: Nicaragua, 1976-79, 77-8.46 Galicia and Bayle, ‘Solidaridad con Nicaragua,’ 174-6.47 2 August 1979, memo on solidarity committees, serie 3, expediente 009-024-090, L. 1, AGN-DFS.48 10 January-4 February, 1978, Boletín Informativo #3, p. 39-41, fondo: A, O NI3, expediente: 4660, Boletines del FSLN, 1978, CAMeNA.49 Yanes Rizo, Araceli: Nicaragua, 1976-79, 77.50 Gioconda Belli, The Country Under my Skin: A Memoir of Love and War (New York: Knopf, 2002), 129-30.51 7 June 1979, Report on solidarity planning meeting, caja 1607-C, expediente 11, 5-18 June 1979, fojas 60-1, Archivo General de la Nación, Dirección General de Investigaciones Políticas y Sociales (AGN-DGIPS), Mexico City52 12 July 1979, Report on solidarity rally, caja 1601-B, expediente 13, 6-29 July 1979, fojas 76-7, AGN-DGIPS.53 Galicia and Bayle, ‘Solidaridad con Nicaragua,’ 167-76.54 Ibid., 179-80.55 See: 26 June 1979, UNAM faculty union statement of solidarity, caja 1607-C, expediente 12, 11 June-6 July 1979, foja 169, AGN-DGIPS.56 25 June 1979, Report on conference by Dr. Carlos Gutiérrez, member of the Group of Twelve, at CCH Vallejo, caja 1607-C, expediente 12, 11 June – 6 July 1979, fojas 143-8, AGN-DGIPS.57 See: 21 June 1979, report on political activities at CCH Vallejo, caja 1607-C, expediente 12, 11 June-6 July 1979, foja 77, AGN-DGIPS.58 13 June 1979, report on activism at the UNAM Facultad de Ciencias, caja 1607-C, expediente 11, 5-18 June 1979, foja 146, AGN-DGIPS.59 Gaceta Sandinista (Mexico), año III, number 1, October 1977-March 1978, p. 35-6. ‘Informe sobre actividades en México y en el exterior.’60 1978, ‘Comunicado urgente del Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Industria del Hierro y Acero (SNTIHA) y del Frente Auténtico del Trabajo (FAT) a las organizaciones de trabajadores de México,’ caja 1605-B, expediente 6, 2 October 1968-2 October 1978, foja 9, AGN-DGIPS.61 5 July 1979, report on solidarity meeting at UNAM, caja 1607-C, expediente 12, 11 June – 6 July 1979, fojas 310-14, AGN-DGIPS62 See for example: 7 February 1978, PRT poster transcription, CCH Naucalpan, caja 1613-B, expediente 5, 25 January-19 February 1978, foja 199, AGN-DGIPS.63 7 February 1978, PRT flyer: ‘¡¡Solidaridad con la lucha del pueblo nicaraguense!!,’ caja 1613-B, expediente 5, 25 January-19 February 1978, foja 191, AGN-DGIPS.64 On the role of Cuban intelligence, see: Sánchez Nateras, ‘“¡Nicas y mexicanos solidarios como hermanos!”,’ 15-6. For insight into Fidel Castro’s role in advising the FSLN, see: Belli, The Country Under My Skin.65 Gaceta Sandinista (Mexico City), año III, number 3, September-December 1978, p. 18-9. ‘Nuevo Organismo de Solidaridad.’ See also: Sánchez Nateras, ‘“¡Nicas y mexicanos solidarios como hermanos!”,’ 15-7.66 Ibid., 12, 16.67 11 July 1979, DGIPS report, caja 1601-B, expediente 13, 6-29 July 1979, foja 49, AGN-DGIPS.68 On direct involvement of Mexican nationals in armed struggle in Central America, see: Héctor Ibarra Chávez, ‘La solidaridad y el internacionalismo mexicano en las guerras centroamericanas,’ in México ante el conflicto centroamericano: testimonio de una época, ed. Mario Vázquez Olivera and Fabián Campos Hernández (Ciudad de México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Centro de Investigaciones sobre América Latina y el Caribe, 2016).69 See for examples: ‘Brigadista mexicano, visita calle que fue incendiado por los contras.’ El Nuevo Diario (Mexico City), 4 July 1984, p. 7; ‘1500 internacionalistas en un mes: Brazos solidarios del mundo.’ Barricada (Managua), 31 July 1984, Fondo: A, U NI2, expedientes: 6132-3, Donaciones y colaboraciones internacionales para Nicaragua, 1981-1988 CAMeNA.70 See: 20 June 1979, report on PST effort, caja 1607-C, expediente 12, 11 June-6 July 1979, foja 39, blood donations, fojas 143-8, AGN-DGIPS; 25 June 1979, Report on conference by Dr. Carlos Gutiérrez, member of the Group of Twelve, at CCH Vallejo, caja 1607-C, expediente 12, 11 June-6 July 1979, fojas 143-8, AGN-DGIPS.71 20 June 1979, report on FSLN solidarity at Facultad de Ingenieria, UNAM, caja 1607-C, expediente 12, 11 June-6 July 1979, foja 61, AGN-DGIPS.72 22 June 1979, report on a solidarity with Nicaragua festival, UNAM, caja 1607-C, expediente 12, 11 June-6 July 1979, fojas 103-4, AGN-DGIPS.73 29 June 1979, report on solidarity with Nicaragua festival at CCH Vallejo, caja 1607-C, expediente 12, 11 June – 6 July 1979, fojas 239-41, AGN-DGIPS. Approximate values were calculated with the historical exchange rates of 1 GPB to 41.6 MXP and 1 USD to 22.8 MXP from June 1978 using this converter: https://fxtop.com/en/historical-currency-converter.php?, accessed 25 May 202374 Sánchez Nateras, ‘“¡Nicas y mexicanos solidarios como hermanos!”,’ 19.75 10 June 1985, ‘Obreros Mexicanos donan día de salario a los nicaragüenses,’ Nuevo Diario, p. 10, Fondo: A, U NI2, expedientes: 6132-3, CAMeNA.76 Sánchez Nateras, ‘“¡Nicas y mexicanos solidarios como hermanos!”,’ 9.77 6 June 1979, report on Coalición de Obreros, Campesinos y Estudiantes de Oaxaca (COCEO), Oaxaca, caja 1607-C, expediente 11, 5-18 June 1979, foja 18, AGN-DGIPS.78 27 June 1979, report on solidarity activities at CCH Vallejo, caja 1607-C, expediente 12, 11 June-6 July 1979, fojas 201-5, AGN-DGIPS.79 For example: July 12, 1979, Report on student demonstration at Escuela Superior de Ingeniería Mecánica (ESIME), caja 1601-B, expediente 13, July 6-29, 1979, fojas 38-9, AGN-DGIPS.80 3 October 1978, ‘Manifestaciones para conmemorar la represión del 2 de octubre de 1968,’ Fondo H, seccion: Derechos Humanos, expediente: B MX42, CAMeNA.81 On gay and lesbian rights activism and human rights in Mexico, see: Lucinda Grinnell, ‘Los derechos humanos y el internacionalismo en el movimiento lésbico-gay mexicano, 1979-1991,’ Debate Feminista 52(2016). On terminology: ‘gay’ was not a term used widely in Mexico until the mid-1980s; before then, it was ‘homosexual.’ See: Juan Carlos Rocha Osornio, ‘Una mirada histórica y cultural del movimiento LGBTTTI mexicano,’ Romance Notes 54, no. 2 (2014): 270.82 On this surveillance, see: Lucinda Grinnell, ‘“Lesbianas Presente:” Lesbian Activism, Transnational Alliances, and the State in Mexico City, 1968-1991’ (PhD dissertation, University of New Mexico, 2013), 88-9.83 16 July 1979, ‘Primera manifestación gay en México,’ Bandera Socialista (Mexico City), and 1980, ‘Gay Liberation in Central America.’ Gay Left (London), issue 10, Summer 1980, p. 19-21, both from fondo: I, K IS33, expedientes 1307-8. Centro de Información y Documentación de Homosexualidades en México ‘Ignacio Álvarez’ y Centro de Documentación y Archivo Histórico Lésbico “Nancy Cárdenas” (CIDHOM/CDHAL), Frente Homosexual de Acción Revolucionaria (FHAR), CAMeNA; Jorge A. Barrios G., ‘Interview with Yan María Castro, August 11, 2000,’ in Archivo Histórico del Movimento Homosexual en México, 1978-1982 (CD-ROM) (Ciudad de México, México: Centro de Información y Documentación de las Homosexualidades en México ‘Ignacio Álvarez’ (CIDHOM)/CONACULTA-INAH, 2004), 9.84 Jordi Diez, ‘La trayectoria política del movimiento Lésbico-Gay en México,’ Estudios Sociológicos 29, no. 86 (2011): 694-5.85 Undated, FHAR Declaración de Principios, fondo: I, K IS33, expedientes 1307-8. CIDHOM/CDAHL. Frente Homosexual de Acción Revolucionaria (FHAR), CAMeNA.86 On the history of Oikabeth, see: Lucinda Grinnell, ‘“Lesbianas Presente”.’87 Lucinda Grinnell, ‘“Amor Solidario”: Art and the Politics of Revolutionary Lesbianism in Mexico City,’ Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies / Revue canadienne des études latino-américaines et caraïbes 38, no. 2 (2013): 295.88 Barrios G., ‘CIDHOM Interview with Yan María Castro, 8/11/2000,’ 14-5.89 19 June 1979, report on protest against Somoza at Guatemalan embassy, caja 1656-B, exp 8, 26 June 1976-29 May 1981, fojas 86-93, AGN-DGIPS.90 See: Robert Franco, ‘Revolution in the Sheets: The Politics of Sexuality and Tolerance in the Mexican Left, 1919-2001’ (PhD dissertation, Duke University, 2020).91 See Juan Jacobo Hernández’s account of this incident: ‘Interview with Juan Jacobo Hernández, March 20, 2000,’ in Archivo Histórico del Movimento Homosexual en México, 1978-1982 (CD-ROM) (Ciudad de México, México: Centro de Información y Documentación de las Homosexualidades en México (CIDHOM) ‘Ignacio Álvarez’/CONACULTA-INAH, 2004), 13-15.92 Pedro Polanco, ‘Interview with Braulio Peralta, 27 October and 17 November 2001,’ ibid., 23.93 On gay and lesbian solidarity with Nicaragua in the United States, see: Emily K. Hobson, ‘“Si Nicaragua Venció”: Lesbian and Gay Solidarity with the Revolution,’ Journal of Transnational American Studies 4, no. 2 (2012); Emily K. Hobson, Lavender and Red: Liberation and Solidarity in the Gay and Lesbian Left (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2016).94 1980, ‘Gay Liberation in Central America.’ Gay Left (London), issue 10, Summer 1980, fondo: I, K IS33, expedientes 1307-8. Frente Homosexual de Acción Revolucionaria (FHAR), vol. 2., p. 19-21, CAMeNA.95 1986, ‘Séptima Marcha de Liberación Homosexual,’ fondo: I, K IS33, expedientes 1307-8. CIDHOM/CDHAL Grupos e instituciones lésbico-gays en México. Movimiento de Liberación Homosexual (MLH), CAMeNA. On gay rights organisations’ solidarity with Central America in the 1980s, see: Grinnell, ‘“Lesbianas Presente”,’ 118-24.96 Sánchez Nateras, “¡Nicas y mexicanos solidarios como hermanos!,” 19.97 Patrick William Kelly, Sovereign Emergencies: Latin America and the Making of Global Human Rights Politics (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 130-1.98 On the relationship between the solidarity movement and protests against forced disappearances, see: Sánchez Nateras, ‘“¡Nicas y mexicanos solidarios como hermanos!”,’ 22.99 14 June 1979, report on Corpus Christi commemorative protest, Mexico City, caja 1607-C, exp 11, 5-18 June 1979, foja 185-99, AGN-DGIPS.100 10 June 1979, report on event at the Casa del Lago, Mexico City, by the Comité Pro-Defensa por la Amnistía General, caja 1636-A, exp 2, 6 June-28 August 1979, fojas 5-8, AGN-DGIPS.101 2 August 1979, report on communique publicized by Centro Nacional de Comunicación Social (CENCOS), caja 1779-B, exp 7, 30 August 1978-7 October 1980, fojas 194-5, AGN-DGIPS.102 On the FSLN’s break with the Cuban guerrilla model, see: Jorge G. Castañeda, Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left After the Cold War (New York, NY: Knopf, 1993), 104-5.103 27 July 1979, report on Nicaragua victory march, serie 3, expediente 009-024-090, L. 1, AGN-DFS.104 Ibarra Chávez, ‘La solidaridad y el internacionalismo mexicano,’ 280-81.105 For a greater elaboration on this last point, see: Sánchez Nateras, ‘“¡Nicas y mexicanos solidarios como hermanos!”,’ 15-7.106 CAMeNA, fondo: A, U MX11, expediente: 6128. Relaciones México-Nicaragua, 1980-1994. ‘Nadie detendrá nuestro avance ni la solidaridad de México: el FSLN,’ newspaper clipping [paper unidentified], 2 February 1981.
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