Modern Nation Building and Political Participation During the XIX Olympiad in Mexico City
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Modern Nation Building and Political Participation during the XIX Olympiad in Mexico City Axel G. Elías Jiménez King’s College London, United Kingdom Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of History Final report for the IOC Olympic Studies Centre PhD Students Research Grant Programme 2016 Award 5 December 2016 In collaboration with Olympic Solidarity and with the support of the Comité Olímpico Mexicano 1 Table of Contents Abstract ....................................................................................................................................... 3 Key Words .................................................................................................................................. 3 Executive Summary .................................................................................................................... 4 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 5 Seeking international visibility: Sport mega-events in 20 th Century Mexico ................................. 7 Securing Olympism and the Modern Nation: The election of Mexico City ................................... 8 Building Modern Mexico during the XIX Olympiad ................................................................... 11 The student movement and Games of the XIX Olympiad ........................................................ 19 Negotiating the Games: Imposition, Patriotism and Politics of Silence ....................................... 20 ‘Everything is possible in Peace’? ............................................................................................ 29 ‘Olympic hangover’? Mexico City and the political legacies of the XIX Olympiad ................... 32 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 34 Abreviations .................................................................................................................................. 36 References ..................................................................................................................................... 36 Archives .................................................................................................................................... 36 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 37 2 Abstract The 1968 Olympic Games were of great interest for the Mexican Government and the IOC. Both had interests behind their celebration. The IOC wanted to secure Olympism during a ‘shaken world’, whilst the Mexican government saw the Games as a platform to communicate that Mexico was a modern country ready for any project that it set eyes on. The preparation for the event went according to plan from October 1963 to July 1968; however, the Mexican student movement unintendedly jeopardised these goals. The negotiation of the social unrest from July 1968 to October 1968, during the last period of Olympic preparations, highlighted the political divisions among the groups. This paper looks at sources from the IOC, government and the student movement to map the political discussions and negotiations among these three actors. The research touches on cultural diplomacy, nationalism, resistance, and security and surveillance. This research contributes to scholarships with two findings. Firstly, it found that IOC’s governance and politics of silence had a direct repercussion on the political participation of Mexico City’s citizenry; secondly, that besides governmental repression and fear, the protester’s patriotism, enhanced by the Olympic Games, was an element that allowed the Games to continue as planned. Key Words Modern nation building, Cultural Diplomacy, Political participation, Governance and Governmentality 3 Executive Summary The main goal of this research is to rethink how Olympic Games are implemented and the ways in which the host destinations are immediately impacted. Scholarship on the Olympic Games has focused on the International Olympic Committee, the local government, media and the global partners, but whilst it recovers an important aspect of the phenomenon by studying these actors, scholarship has overlooked a key player: the host population. This research includes Mexico City’s citizenry in the equation and considers that Olympic cycles are political arenas where the abovementioned actors engage in debates and discussions. Every Olympic Games preparation period has a consequence on each of the involved actors; however, the direct repercussion on the lives of the citizenry has been overlooked. This report mostly reflects the findings of four weeks of field work in Lausanne. The revision of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) archives in March 2016 was possible thanks to the grant from the Olympic Studies Centre. During this period, I reviewed files dedicated to the XIX Olympic Games and the Mexican IOC members, but I also had the chance to retrieve information from the digitised Avery Brundage Collection. This revision allowed me to map IOC’s actions from 1963 to 1968. This report reflects the findings of this archival revision, and shows IOC’s actions during these years, but the report also includes material from Mexican archives to pinpoint and contrast the actions of the IOC with those from the Mexican Government and a sector of Mexico City’s citizenry (the student protestors). This research found that Mexico City’s citizenry was a significant actor in the implementation of the XIX Olympic Games, not only by engaging politically and showing signs of resistance during the Olympic year, but also by accepting the Olympic Projects from 1963 to 1968. The politics of silence of the IOC and the violent repression of the government in 1968 were important elements that explain how the XIX Olympic Games took place, but we also have to include Mexico City’s patriotism as part of the phenomenon. This research suggests that governments and Organising Committees appeal to national values and identity as part of the mega-event implementation on host destinations and that this has a direct repercussion in the political activity. The actions of local governments and the IOC can generate political turmoil and increase the political engagement of host populations. These report suggests that the history of Olympism goes beyond the outstanding athletic performances. The development of Olympism is also the history of host destinations and the actions they take. 4 Introduction The Games of the XIX Olympiad were celebrated in Mexico City from the 12 th to the 27 th of October 1968. Despite the critique of the altitude and the size of the Mexican economy compared to previous hosts, among others, the sixteen days of competition were considered successful at the time because they witnessed impressive athletic performances from Bob Beamon, Věra Čáslavská and Leonid Zhabotinksy, among many others. Furthermore, the XIX Games were the scenario of events with great sociocultural transcendence such as the so called, “black power salute” of Tommie Smith, John Carlos and Peter Norman. Nevertheless, beyond the Olympic venues, the XIX Olympiad was also very significant because it was the first to be celebrated in Latin America and in a developing country. Given these features, the decision of choosing Mexico City as the host of the 1968 Olympic Games was meant to be unique on its own terms, but the developments from 1963 to 1968 went beyond the expectations of the IOC and the Mexican government, and had a repercussion on Mexican political culture and Olympic history. This paper will go beyond analysing the Olympic Games solely and will analyse the XIX Olympiad as a six-year process (1962-1968). I am aware that Olympiad refers to a period of four years, but in this text I will use it to refer to the moment when the bid was placed in December 1962 until the closing ceremony in October 1968. I took this decision because using the concept of the ‘Olympic Games’ tends to highlight the competition period as the goal and disregards the build-up which is as important given the transformations that take place during those years. Scholarship requires studies of impacts and legacies, but also of immediate repercussions such as the political negotiations where the host population also participates. The scholarship on the XIX Olympiad, as in other scholarship of the Olympics prior to 1984, has focused on two actors: the IOC and the Mexican government. Given this focus, the scholarship has contributed greatly to international relations, tourism, economics and security studies, among others, where the IOC and the Mexican government are key players. Nevertheless, few authors have looked at the role that Mexico City’s citizens played during the Mexican Olympiad. As Claire and Keith Brewster noted: ‘Mexican student movement has had the effect of drawing almost all attention away from the Olympic Games themselves and what they meant for the Mexican people.’ 1 Beyond the IOC, local governments and from the eighties 1 Keith Brewster and Claire Brewster, 'The Mexican Student Movement of 1968: An Olympic Perspective', The International Journal of the History of Sport, 26 (2009), 814. 5 onwards the global partners; the host population, ‘the people’, the citizenry have been an actor in building Olympism.2 Including the host destination in these debates reshapes the scholarship.