Cold War in the Countryside: Conflict in Guerrero, Mexico

“Our struggle has its inspirational roots in [our] national history and reality: our flag . . . is the same raised by Hidalgo, Morelos and Guerrero, Juárez, Zapata and Villa.”

Genaro Vázquez Rojas, La Asociación Cívica Nacional Revolucionaria, 1968¹

Introduction

Scholarship on the Cold War in Latin America has concentrated on the influence of the Cuban revolution on governments and radical movements throughout the hemisphere. It has often presumed its appeal lay in the strategic success of its guerrilla warfare and the language of international socialism, and that its influence extended beyond urban centers to rural enclaves.² What influence, if any, did Cuba’s revolutionary experience have on popular protest in the Mexican countryside? Alternatively, was popular resistance in Mexico’s peripheral states more readily organized around the language of nationalism and citizenship than that of international socialism? This article will argue that, in the southwest state of Guerrero, people were mobilized by articulation of the democratic hopes of both economic and political inclusion—expectations intimately associated with the Mexican revolution of 1910. Cuban revolutionaries’ nationalist, anti-imperialist sentiments resonated with the popular classes in Mexico, but their more radical language did not.³ Despite evidence that suggests this allegiance to the principles of their own revolution, the Mexican government manipulated Cold War concerns to argue that the proximity of Cuba, its recent revolution and discourse of international socialism, and the concurrent political instability rocking much of the hemisphere posed serious threats to the nation. By exaggerating the internationalist predilections of activists, government officials invoked the state’s prerogative to assure national security and stability, with particular attention to internal threats.

Numerous scholars have begun to move beyond a narrow analysis that links popular protest exclusively or primarily to economic demands, recognizing the broader political expectations of such efforts. A decade ago, Thomas Klubock’s analysis of the Chilean workers’ movement asserted its creation of “radical nationalism and [an] ideology of citizenship.”⁴ Greg Grandin, in his assessment of Cold War politics, argues that programs implemented (or at the least, proposed) during the Guatemalan revolution (1944–54)—expansion of the franchise, land redistribution and increased access to credit, and labor’s right to organize—speak to demands for economic and political inclusion.⁵ He further suggests that the process of political activism in Guatemala encouraged a redefinition of democracy as “the felt experience of individual sovereignty and social solidarity.”⁶ Likewise, Elisabeth Jean Wood argues that El Salvador’s civil war insurgents were motivated by more than material demands: “emotional and moral motives were essential” and contributed to a reformation of the nation’s political culture in the process.⁷ Democratic aspirations were not unique to Latin America or to third world struggles: in the United States, Marxism’s Cold War attraction lay both in its working-class component and its explanation of national liberation struggles in Asia and Africa.⁸

Mexico, however, was a different case, “less easily categorized.”⁹ Following what was widely portrayed as a successful revolution (1910–1920), the government established a corporate structure that, while inefficient and largely protected from external pressures, provided a framework to channel both rural and urban workers’ grievances. State-sponsored social welfare programs were implemented; it was the government’s failure to fulfill their potential, rather than demands for their creation, that led to popular discontent. Dissatisfaction led to a struggle over competing claims to the nationalist mantle, one the state had asserted since it consolidated power in the decades following the revolution. The government’s ambiguous character led to a progressive public stance on the international front, including support of Castro’s revolution, breaking relations with Chile and welcoming Chilean exiles after the military coup of September 11, 1973, and expressions of “solidarity and support for the just causes and liberties of the peoples of the world.”¹⁰ Government commitment to human rights abroad was a façade that masked internal policies: Mexico’s dirty war raged on in Guerrero. While both Mexico’s rural and urban populations suffered from regime-sponsored repression, the national government conducted...