In his new work, Eric Zolov contributes to the growing literature around the “long 1960s” and the “global Cold War” as these concepts relate to Mexico's geopolitical position vis-à-vis the United States, the Soviet Union, Cuba, and other powers. He reconsiders Mexican foreign policy and political priorities, drawing primarily on the presidential administration (sexenio) of Adolfo López Mateos (1958-64) to argue that the country aspired to develop a robust diplomatic presence that navigated a distinct path among conservative and leftist interests in the region. The Last Good Neighbor is a thoroughly researched book with a clear scholarly voice that deepens our understanding of this period while also provoking historical reassessments of major actors, especially Lázaro Cárdenas.
Zolov focuses on the years 1958 to 1973 to contextualize the political movements and geopolitical trends that persisted through the 1960s and their immediate impact. Whereas much of the rest of Latin America had become disillusioned with and abandoned the notion of the “good neighbor policy,” which sought to position the United States as a positive hemispheric actor, the concept persisted in Mexico. Zolov cites the popular reception that President Miguel Alemán (1946-52) received when he visited New York City in 1947 (9). Mexican leaders relied on this “good neighbor” relationship to create a third-way diplomacy that engaged Western and communist bloc counterparts effectively. President López Mateos represented the apex of this aspiration as he reached out to Cuba and the Soviet Union, while also maintaining good relations with member states of the Non-Aligned Movement (although not committing Mexico to deeper alliances with the group). In doing so, López Mateos frustrated members of the US foreign policy establishment but never suffered serious breaches with Washington, which positioned Mexico as an important diplomatic conduit in the region and also signaled its persistent ties to the United States (239).
This book is most interesting in Zolov's assessment of the role that Lázaro Cárdenas played in the long 1960s. Cárdenas returned to the national political forefront in the 1950s, bridging supporters who represented factions of the Old and New Left in Mexico. He maintained close ties with the young revolutionaries taking control of Cuba and had toured the Soviet Union, as well as receiving the Stalin Peace Prize in 1954. These factors reinforced Cárdenas's left-wing bona fides, but he did not use this influence to undermine the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), but rather to reshape it from within. Zolov argues that this position allowed Cárdenas to serve as a preeminent representative of the Mexican left for the national government as well as foreign actors. He deferred to President López Mateos, while absorbing criticism from conservatives in the Mexican press; thus, the relationship Cárdenas maintained with López Mateos shielded the latter from leftist opprobrium. Zolov writes: “The act was no doubt calculated as a signal to the Left that, in the wake of the visit by President Kennedy, the cardenista position had not been sacrificed by López Mateos in some ‘deal’ with the United States (as some accused)” (186).
Following the US invasion of the Dominican Republic (1965) and escalating hostilities in the Vietnam War, Zolov argues, Mexico became Washington's “last good neighbor” in the hemisphere. These historical changes came as the Mexican government retreated from its activist foreign policy with the arrival of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz (1964-70) to the presidency. During these years, the country returned to a more inward domestic security focus as the dirty war increased against leftists and other activists, presided over by an authoritarian president whose sexenio was marked by the massacre of students at Tlatelolco in 1968. Here Zolov coincides with Roderic Camp's point that without at least some support from national intellectuals to justify its power, the Mexican government under the PRI “will increasingly resort to the use of force” (6). Considering the Díaz Ordaz years, Zolov also argues against the view that the period represented a permanent turning away from regional diplomacy, but rather was solely an interregnum. In 1970, President Luis Echeverría (1970-76) embraced and transformed López Mateos's activist geopolitical legacy, looking to reassert Mexico as a prominent regional actor. Later leaders Miguel de la Madrid (1982-88) and Carlos Salinas (1988-94) pivoted the country toward a global, neoliberal stance that led to the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and membership in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
In building this perspective, rooted in the history of the “long 1960s,” Zolov writes convincingly of Mexico's role as a regional geopolitical actor in the Americas. Far from being a passive witness to the power politics of the hemisphere, the country's leadership sought to maintain an active role, drawing on its relationship to the United States and other great powers to chart its own path. In this context, Díaz Ordaz's sexenio appears much more as a temporary rupture of a broader postwar trajectory that pitted conservatives and leftists over the future geopolitical direction of the country. Although Zolov acknowledges that the country took a decidedly neoliberal turn in the last decades of the twentieth century, the “long 1960s” remained deeply influential.
This book is recommended reading for scholars of modern Mexican history, cultural studies, and international politics and will make for lively discussion in graduate seminars and honors courses.
