Muy buenas noches: Mexico, Television, and the Cold War

4 The First Television Diplomats

79 CHAPTER 4 The First Television Diplomats President Miguel Alemán traveled to Washington dc and Manhattan Island to meet with U.S. President Harry Truman in the spring of 1947. The U.S. and Mexican press extensively covered Alemán’s official visit. Time magazine’s Latin American edition featured a photograph of expatriate men and women dressed in “native” costumes as they greeted the president in Manhattan. A journalist covering the visit wrote, “The big viva was far from being synthetic. President Alemán, tanned and affable, carried with him a kind of movie-star glamour. He smiled a big, beaming smile, waved boyishly at the crowds. People liked him—especially the girls. ‘He’s cute,’ they said.”¹ In a special report to the New York Times, Virginia Lee Warren gushed over Alemán: “Handsome, smiling President Miguel Alemán of Mexico swooped down out of the sky this afternoon in President Truman ’s personal plane, the Sacred Cow, and was hailed by one of 80 The First Television Diplomats the largest and most enthusiastic throngs Washington has ever turned out for any foreign guest.”² An embarrassing cultural faux pas occurred when the U.S. State Department had its staff throw into Alemán’s parade route 650 of what staff members thought were miniature Mexican flags. It turned out that they were Italian flags. John O’Donnell’s report concluded, “The Mexicans are as polite as our State Department is stupid. It’s one of those ghastly social horrors that all present ignore, and keep on talking and smiling just as if nothing happened .”³ Alemán’s visit to Washington was the last official trip by a sitting president to the United States until twelve years later in 1959, when Adolfo López Mateos met with Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953–61).4 News coverage of presidential visits abroad and foreign dignitaries ’ trips to a host nation provide a unique window through which the state of diplomatic affairs can be examined between one country and another. During some of the most tenuous years of the Cold War (1959–63), Mexico occupied an important and influential, but not fully understood, role in shaping the events that would define the second half of the twentieth century. After serving time for the attack on the Moncada barracks, Fidel Castro traveled to Mexico to train guerillas who would eventually overthrow Batista’s regime. López Mateos was the first world leader to recognize Castro’s government after the fall of Batista. These and many other Cold War events and activities were covered by television journalists. The way reporters covered these events, including presidential visits abroad and foreign dignitaries’ visits to Mexico, helps us to appreciate both the complexity of the time as well as understand how government leaders began to use television to further their Cold War agendas. By 1959, less than a decade after the inauguration of Mexican television, leaders such as López Mateos, Cárdenas, Castro, Eisenhower , and Soviet leader Anastas Mikoyan may have held different political views, but they all recognized the growing significance of television news and its connection to their roles as international The First Television Diplomats 81 diplomats. More than a half a century after the emergence of television, it remains clear that these figures were indeed the first television diplomats. López Mateos’s trip in October 1959 was momentous because it represented the first time television news reporters accompanied their print and radio counterparts to cover a presidential visit to the United States, signaling the increasing role that the medium played in society. His visit became part of a new phenomenon known as “television diplomacy,” a more popular expression of diplomacy, in contrast to past diplomatic practice that occurred only in elite circles.5 From 1950 to 1970 political figures across the globe increasingly began to use television as a tool to disseminate their political agendas. Since the emergence of satellite communications in the 1960s, numerous terms have been coined to refer to the increasing influence of electronic media on international relations, such as “tele-democracy,” “new diplomacy,” and “cnn effect.” News reels shown at movie theaters, like television news, offered diplomats an earlier audiovisual format through which they could deliver political messages to popular audiences.6 This chapter examines television news coverage of presidential visits abroad and visits by foreign heads of state to Mexico in 1959. The four visits...