In 1968, Mexico stood at a crossroads. Under the illusion of a vibrant and proud nation preparing to host the world’s most celebrated athletic event, internal conflicts continued to fiercely arise. The Mexican government, which was increasingly corrupt and authoritarian, faced the force of students, workers, and everyday citizens who demanded systemic change. Students protested, leading to the tragic Tlatelolco Massacre. The protests were handled corruptly by the government as it was stated that “when told that the students wanted to steal the Olympics’ limelight, the reader is already conditioned to sneer at this interpretation because he or she knows the ‘truth…’ the vulnerable are being attacked because the attackers are themselves vulnerable in their attempt to preserve the appearance that is rotten.”[1] It became obvious that there was hypocrisy between the cultural image the government sought to project to the world and the reality of the lived experiences of most Mexicans.

How could a nation with such internal conflict hope to project national unity and peace through the Olympics? More importantly, was it simply a carefully constructed illusion in which the Mexican government attempted to impress the rest of the world by suggesting it as a modernized culture? This is now as “Mexico’s national character as a fundamentally tragic one, and contracts a cyclical conception of national history where the trauma of the colonial past is never quite overcome and conditions the relationship between the modern state and its governed populations.”[2] The design and presentation of the 1968 Olympics was fundamentally a mirage created to project an image of peace, progress, and modernity that masked the deep internal struggles of the Mexican state. Through visual analysis of photographs, graphic design, stamps, and protest art, and a consideration of historical events frames by decolonial theory, this essay illustrates how the the design of the 1968 Olympics operated as a form of political theater, prioritizing international approval over internal reform. This functioned through their strategic illusion that was crafted through visual design and a performance of culture. While Mexico projected this status of modernity and peace on the global stage, the Olympics masked the internal political repression, social inequality, and dissent through propaganda; overall, this revealed how design can operate as political propaganda within the neocolonial sphere aligning with Western ideals.

By the mid-twentieth century, Mexico was grappling with contradictions within the country’s modernization project. The so-called Mexican Miracle, in which “Mexico had experienced nearly three decades of favorable macroeconomic indicators,”[3] had resulted in rapid industrialization and approach to modernity from the 1940s to the early 1960s. However, the benefits of this growth were unevenly distributed. Urban centers expanded, which resulted in the emergence of a small middle class; this “directly echoed the statements by politicians and cultural bureaucrats of the period who attempted to legitimize single-party rule, and thus gave their political language a gloss of ‘high’ culture.”[4] However, most of the population remained in poverty; these people were voiceless as political repression silenced dissent. President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz’s administration, which reigned from 1964 through 1970, demonstrated the centralization of political power under the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI).

As the government recklessly consolidated power, dissent by the impoverished was increasingly viewed as a threat instead of a necessary component of a democracy; this was made obvious as Elena Poniatowska questioned Ramírez Vázquez in a 1967 interview about “costly addition[s] to all Olympics venues implemented while ‘thousands of poor slums with no lighting demanded lighting desperately’ were left without electrification in Mexico. ‘So, while we enjoy the beauty [of the Olympics],’ Poniatowska claimed, ‘the most pressing needs of the poorest ones will remain without a solution.’”[5] The government was blatantly ignoring the needs of the people.

Naturally, in 1968, student protests erupted. These protests culminated in the Tlatelolco Massacre on October 2 when military forces opened fire on unarmed students gathered at the Plaza de las Tres Culturas; the horrors of this event were described:

“Gunfight was prolonged and fierce. All newspaper articles published on 3 October use words like ‘intenso,’ ‘generalizado,’ ‘ininterrumpidamente’ (‘intense,’ ‘massive,’ ‘constantly’), to show what a hellish experience it was; one of the articles even calls the plaza ‘un infierno’ (‘an inferno’). The deafening effect of gunfire mixed with screaming and crying is mentioned in many articles; the feeling of powerlessness and inevitable demise permeates the texts: ‘ningún ser humano podía escapar al fuego concentrado, de alto poder, que allí [by the Chihuahua building] se estaba registrando’ (‘no human could escape the focused fire from the high-power weapons coming from [the area by the Chihuahua building]’) All sources agree that the most intense gunfire lasted about twenty-nine minutes, after white it abated somewhat but continue doing for another several hours.”[6]

The extreme use of violence at Tlatelolco exposed the brutal lengths to which the Mexican government would go for perserving the appearance of stability; this is especially so with the global spotlight fixed on Mexico City in preparation of the Olympics. It is within this covered up context of internal disillusionment combined with the external spectacle that the design of the 1968 Olympics must be understood.

As Eric Zolov articulates in his article “Showcasing the ‘Land of Tomorrow,’” Mexico’s acceptance of the Olympic challenge was part of a broader strategy of urban modernization.[7] Internally, however, citizens faced an authoritarian government whose practices starkly contradicted its democratic pretensions. The 1968 student movement rose in response to the national widespread corruption. Their demands for greater freedoms and reforms were met with brutal crackdowns of protests, largely hidden from the world’s view. Precisely, their demands were as stated:

“We, the students demand of the appropriate authorities the immediate solution for the following points:

1.     Freedom of political prisoners.

2.     Removal of Generals Luis Cueto Ramírez and Raúl Mendiela.

3.     End of the riot police, direct instrument of repression without the creation of similar forces.

4.     Repeal of articles 145 and 145 bis of the C.P.F. (crime of social dissolution), legal instruments of aggression.

5.     Compensation fro the families of the dead and wounded who were victims of aggression from Friday, 26 July, onward.

6.     Demarcation of responsibility for acts of repression and vandalism on behalf of the authorities as carried out by the police, the riot police, and the army.”[8]

These demands were not met nor were they throughly reported upon. The authoritarian regime only repressed them further. This was due to strict media censorship in the days leading up to the Olympics; instead, the Mexican government “avidly promoted this ‘miracle,’ taking the domestic and international visibility of Mexican art and culture to new heights as part of a highly touted apertura or ‘opening up’ of Mexico to the world.[9] Thus, the games unfolded against the backdrop of severe national trauma. Mexico sought to paper over its discontent with a gleaming spectacle of modernity; this was done through “dismissing their mass protests as mere ‘youthful preoccupations,’ the architect-politician praised the students who donated their labor to the ‘constrictive’ task of staging the Olympics and openly condemned those who protested.”[10] The dissent was erased to glorify their own curated national image. For, if the world knew about the horrors, Mexico would potentially become further othered by the West. Thus, the Mexican government’s approach to hosting the Olympics was strategic in performance through design.

Mexico’s successful bid to host the Olympics was historic as it marked the first time the Games would be held in Latin America, as well as in a Spanish-speaking country. The very selection of Mexico as the host city introduced contradictions for their government, as “the Mexican state is only one symbolization of the desire for a hegemonic politics of progress-oriented collective being. That very desire, under any form, in any epoch, is for Paz the Real of a modernity or a promised modernization that has not been achieved.”[11] The design was an allusion of peace. How could a country characterized by the Western world as ‘developing,’ littered with inequality and political unrest, present itself as a model of modernity? Rather than addressing these systemic issues directly, the Mexican government decided to campaign their cultural engineering, this “desire commanded everything, counted everything, and posited as its razón de ser the incomplete fulfillment of the task that it held in reserve, to be carried out exclusively by the Mexican state.”[12] This façade of peace was created as the projection of modernity was more important to the Mexican government than the needs of their citizens. 

Design became the central tool in this project of propaganda. The 1968 Olympic Games are often praised for their innovative visual identity—an identity that drew from both modernist principles and indigenous motifs, blending Mexico’s past and present into a seamless, attractive package. The design of the Olympics “incorporated local materials and ‘Mexican’ (indigenous and popular) decoration with modernist form. It was promised as a showplace manifesting the cooperation of its various contributors to produce a modernity that was recognized abroad but that retained its national distinction.”[13] However, this visual strategy did not reflect the reality of life in Mexicans for the average person, for, “if one looks closely at this enmeshing of networks, serval less-than-utopian or less-than-democratic aspects of this ‘second modernism,’ as some architecture historians have recently called it, come into view.”[14] Therefore, it rather offered a plastic, depoliticized version of Mexican identity, one carefully curated for international consumption.

The design campaign for the 1968 Olympics was led by American graphic designer Lance Wyman in collaboration with Mexican designers such as Eduardo Terrazas and Pedro Ramirez Vázquez. Leading up to the Olympics, “Ramírez Vázquez would claim some measure of ownership over Mexico’s international ‘image’ during the ‘miracle’ years, as this image had primarily taken shape in a series of world’s fair pavilions produced by his design office.”[15] The designers’ approach was extremely modern by using Op Art-inspired aesthetics (ex. bold lines, vibrating patterns, and vivid color schemes) lending a visual identity of dynamism and modernity to the Games; this was developed “through trial and error,” as the designers “tested out and perfect various scenographies of ‘Mexicanness’—environments intended to give foreign audiences a dramatic sense of Mexico’s culture, political, and economic conditions,” [16] which were more theatrical than true to reality.

 The famous 1968 Olympics logo (figure 1), combining the year “68” with the Olympic rings in a circular, pulsating pattern in order to visually capture the spirit of the times; the spirit projected embodies youth, movement, and progress, which. Yet beneath the surface of these energetic designs lay a deeper political function. There is a direct use of indigenous motifs, such as pre-Columbian patterns and colors evocative of Mexican folk traditions, which “consistently traced the origin of the Mexico ’68 logo back to the textile patterns made by Mexico’s Huichol peoples.”[17] In using these designs, the cultural identity of Mexico being suggested is one that is a harmonious integration of Mexico’s rich past with its modern aspirations, as the “logo’s divergent interpretations illuminate a central predicament behind the creation of many of the ‘miracle’s’ design projects: the challenge to embody Mexican cultural specificity while remaining in tune with universalizing and internationally palatable modernist trends.”[18] It implied that Mexico honored its indigenous roots while participating in the modern world. This implication ignored the violent colonial past. Simply put, the design of the 1968 Olympics demonstrates an internalized colonization of the past and present.

This projected visual narrative was a stark contrast to the government’s actual treatment of those who remained marginalized and oppressed through the protests, as it was “stressed [that] the attack was premeditated and that the journalists and survivors agreed that unnecessary and prolonged shooting had broken up what had been a peaceful meeting.”[19] Furthermore, Castañeda in Spectacular Mexico astutely observes that the whole design of the Olympics was aligned with PRI-sponsored propaganda emphasizing the falsehood of social peace, even as these ideals were far from being realized on the ground. The visual identity of the Games did not arise organically from the cultural of Mexico at the time, but was imposed from above, creating the veneer of cultural authenticity which completely masked the systemic inequities.

One of the most striking examples of this contrast is the student-created graphic that subverted the official Olympic logo. As found in Eric Zolov’s article, a student protester adapted the official design to make it true to the rocky sociopolitical climate; Zolov states that “the MEXICO68 image often appeared on posters next to caricatures of Mexican symbolic old of repression.[20] This was demonstrated by placing the original logo on top of a simple drawing of a tank (figure 2). The Olympic rings were constructed to serve as the tank’s wheels. This work was powerful as it revealed the brutal reality lurking beneath the fictional showcase of peace and unity, for “the tools of the oppressors became the language of the protestors.”[21] The juxtaposition between the cultural icons exemplified through the Games and the protesters were further projected through political art. The official Olympics design (figure 3), which was supposed to represent modernity, was used in the political art as a vehicle for violence and repression. Through this visual subversion, the student protesters clarified the contradiction between Mexico’s external image and its internal reality. Furthermore, this juxtaposition between the carefully thought-out official logo versus the raw, powerful protest imagery highlights the ways in which design can be weaponized to gain power. The elegance of the official logo masked the bloodshed at Tlatelolco whereas the student’s parody exposed it.

Additionally, Mexico City was covered in advertisements promoting these ideals of peace and prosperity for the 1968 Olympics. This was an attempt by the Mexican government to quiet the student protestors. Billboards, advertisements, and messages were made to “bombard residents and visitors to the capital with these kinds of messages in order to encourage peaceful behavior and a general atmosphere of cordiality.”[22] Clearly, this was an indirect way of censoring the needs of the people. This was a passive aggressive strategy through a visual medium to disseminate “such slogans as ‘Everything Is Possible in Peace’ and of images of a white peace dove… not only featured in large billboards around the city and installed on the painted light posts along primary roads, but also pasted, in its much smaller sticker version, onto cars that circulated.”[23] These promotions of peace were reworked by protestors, similar to the logo.

The graphics produced for the 1968 Olympics were then presented with reactionary works by protestors who saw through the theatricality of the event. The dove was a symbol of peace granted by the Mexican police which is a misrepresentation of the events on October 2. The direct response of these images were a decoloniality approach to the falsehoods presented to the Western audience. Another image presented by the Olympics was “Wyman’s postage stamp, intended to commemorate the heroic combat of athletes in Olympic boxing”[24] (figure 4). The top of the stamp is decorated with the logo of the 1968 Olympics, which was already criticized by the protestors. The bottom shows the silhouettes of six boxers, which are infinitely connected in a narrative if one is placed next to another. The 1968 Student Movement Graphics created a response work titled Año de la Lucha Democrática (Year of the Democratic Struggle) (figure 5). The 1968 Student Movement Graphics group produced a similar subject with silhouettes of fighting. Rather than showing the heroic boxing, this narrative depicts police brutality; this was the true narrative that the Mexican people lived in. There are three figures that are seemingly repeated for the continuous narrative shown in the stamps. The central figure is bent over as their arms are held by two police officers on either side. The police figures raise their batons over the central figure, relentlessly inflicting violence. This response was the way in which “protestors nevertheless reappropriated graphic elements used by the Organizing Committee to convey their outrage at government hypocrisy and repression.”[25] Through these protestors’ responses, it is clear that the Mexican government was more concerned about promoting the falsehood of peace than supporting the needs of their people.

The visual elements of the games, such as the logo, the architecture, and the color schemes that were used, were all crafted to suggest a harmonious fusion of tradition within modernity. This was used to project an image of Mexico that was at all at once ancient and progressive, exotic and modern. But as Castañeda makes clear, this was an act of severe gaslighting to the external world, using aesthetic innovation to mask internal political repression. The design of the 1968 Olympics did not heal national divisions; rather, it concealed them.

Moreover, as Zolov points out, the success of this endeavor lay not in solving Mexico’s problems but in managing international perception through design, and “what emerged would be both quintessentially modern yet rooted in Mexican visual tradition.”[26] Well, in a fictionalized way. This curated perception was performed as the Mexican government’s goal was not to achieve internal peace or prosperity but to be recognized as an equal among the world’s leading Western nations. This ultimately amounted to a temporary, performative achievement that left underlying issues unresolved.

One photograph taken by Francisco Uribe in 1966, presented in Spectacular Mexico, depicts the efforts of creating the Olympics architecture (figure 6). Here is a laborer welding the metal structure, almost floating in the air as sparks fly around him. An element of propaganda is seamlessly intertwined into the photograph as the balance of man and nature is no longer equal: the efforts of the Mexican government put into the Olympics structure are so great that they trump the landscape around them. Furthermore, the Popocatépetl volcano in the background was an image of Mexican national identity. Thus, “representations of this geography also presented infrastructure interventions in it as symbolic of national progress. Inscribing a construction worker within this heroic landscape, Uribe’s image also presented labor, architecture, and mass sport as interrelated forces that engulfed the capital.”[27] Mexican officials saw the Olympics as an opportunity to rebrand Mexico, through image. The merging with technology and the landscape moves away from the images of rural backwardness towards Western standards of modernity. In particular, the PRI leadership were deeply aware that hosting the games would allow Mexico to become equals with Western powers. Therefore, the Olympics were not a reflection of Mexico’s internal realities but rather an aspirational image crafted for foreign consumption. 

The mere design of these stadiums built for the 1968 Olympics reinforces the idea of the Mexican government using this platform to curate an image of Mexico for the outsiders. This was explored through the lens of tourism and national branding. For example, it was promised that Aztec Stadium would “barre the direct intersection between Olympic design and the exercise of state surveillance, inscribing [Ramírez Vázquez’s] practice as Olympic organizer squarely within the bio political domain.”[28]  The government was in full control of how the national image would be perceived through the Olympics.

Overall, the government used the games as a massive public relations campaign, using visual design, architectural projects, and promotional materials to present Mexico as an exciting, exotic, yet thoroughly modern destination. The design was a grand façade of permitting equality through sports, like soccer, which was supposed to be for everyone. Rather, “the future stadium’s private boxes were so much more luxurious than the many seats that the less privileged visitors to the stadium would occupy.”[29] The separation of classes mirrors the sociopolitical climate of the Mexican state. Thus, Mexico was merely establishing this image of peace for those who had power in the global hegemony. The constructions of these stadiums “with a capacity for one hundred and ten thousand people,”[30] was  ultimately obscured the harsh realities of violent poverty faced by the average person.

To further this, the constant idea of voyeurism must be inspected. Everything within the 1968 Olympics was meant to be seen, for it was all apart of the government’s theatricality. The extreme use of camera footage is what linked the Games together. The lack in uniformity made it “a ‘cheap’ Olympics because it downplayed the heterogeneity of its existing infrastructure and diverted attention away from a sense of new, unified planning schemes in Mexico City like those that previous Olympics host cities had boasted.”[31] Thus, camerawork correlated the curated image that the Mexican government needed; therefore, “not only does the design account for the position and sight line was of television cameras all around the sports court, but it also features a couple in the foreground, who view the sports events in front of them through the lens of a television camera.”[32] Spectators were only made to view what the government intended them to see.

Furthermore, the use of camera strengthened “the architects [claim] that the Aztec Stadium accomplished a ‘relative democratization’ with its spaces,”[33] as the curated camera work eliminated “the clear separation of social classes in the spaces for the audience.”[34] Through use of cameras, the Mexican government crafted their image of prosperity. The architectural projects for the Olympic Village and sports centers were meticulously planned to signal Mexico’s entry into the modern world. More than anything, these projects prioritized the curated image over substance; their purpose was not to address urban poverty or housing shortages but to impress wealthy foreign visitors. 

The manipulation of Mexico’s cultural image was apart of the longer tradition of performing modernity for global audiences.  For, it must be remembered that the cultural image was “simultaneously unique on account of its having resulted from Mexico’s violent history of conquest and colonization… embarked on the traumatic philosophical pursuit of cultural self0definition in a world defined by ideological, economic, and political conflicts.”[35] Because of this, Mexico was poisoned by the internalized colonization to align with the Western canon. This is a way of the peripheral world feeding into the manipulation of the effects from colonization.

 Mexico was labeled as developing as a derogatory country. The use of the word functions not as objective of economic or societal growth, but more so as rhetoric used to maintain global hierarchies, belittling the peripheral world to always be inferior in comparison. Within Mexican design, the label ‘developing’ perpetuated a narrative throughout the twentieth century (and still in the present) that Mexican cultural production was insufficient or inferior compared specifically to the European canon; this is a complete ignorance of the violent histories of colonization which disrupted indigenous ways of knowing and creating in these regions. After gaining independence, Mexico was othered as their design practices were measured against Eurocentric standards, rather than recognized on their own terms. Decolonial theory offers a powerful framework for resisting this.

The theory actively challenges Eurocentric norms and aesthetics; decolonial efforts highlight that these cultures are not primitive, but are simply living within different way. Rather than viewing Mexico as ‘developing,’ it must be recognized as distinct, innovative, and modern on its own; through this, the external canon shall be dismantled. But, the Mexican government was not using decoloniality theory; they rather wanted to be accepted by global powers, even if it means failing their own people. Similarly, visual representations of Mexican identity helps unpack how indigenous imagery was strategically mobilized to serve elite interests; this was demonstrated through performances.

One use of performative cultural expression was through dance. The indigenous identity was used within the Teotihuacán performance “dressed in colorful ‘folkloric’ attires from Mexico’s diverse regions, the Ballet’s dancers performed as Enriqueta Basilio made her way across the Avenue of the Dead, Teotihuacán’s ceremonial avenue, and up the stone stairs of the Pyramid of the Moon, where she lit a ceremonial flame with the Olympic torch.”[36] This was a true theatricality of Mexican culture that was so disconnected to the sociopolitical climate of 1968; it was a performance for the outsiders. Furthermore, architect Candela’s “political and architectural universalism coexisted with interpretations of his work as uniquely ‘Mexican’ on cultural grounds, a perception that he probably encouraged for instrumental reasons, but which was also a result of a set of other symbolic demands, not merely ‘official’ or Mexican ones.”[37] The design of the Olympics were the grounds for tricking the world into believing this show of Mexicanism. Combining these perspectives creates a holistic view of what was truly happening in design of the Games. It becomes clear that the 1968 Olympics were not an isolated moment of cultural flourishing, but a part of a broader pattern in which Mexico’s political elite used design to mask internal issues and further appeal to external arbiters of modernity.

Ultimately, the 1968 Mexico City Olympics functioned as political theater: a grand performance intended to convince a shift in the global powers because Mexico had achieved the standards of modernity. The Games were meant to artificially align Mexico within the global hierarchy, shedding the ‘developing’ label to assert the nation’s place among the world’s modern powers. Yet this performance was hollow in how it falsely created “a national-scale synthesis of Mexico’s ‘mosaic’ of cultures, strategically erasing from the picture differences of class, race, and gender.”[38] The brutal repression of the civilians’ needs, systemic inequalities, and the meaningless appropriation of indigenous motifs simply expose the harsh divide between the image projected through the Games and the reality lived by most Mexicans. The Olympics did not bring about substantive internal reform; instead, they reinforced the very structures of oppression and marginalization that the student protesters had sought to challenge.

Primary sources from the period, such as Henry Giniger’s articles in The New York Times, reveal the skepticism with which foreign observers viewed Mexico’s preparations. In his October 1968 article “Olympics 1968: Mexico City is Ready,” Giniger highlights the concerns about logistical challenges and the police competence. In his writing, there is a tone that borders on condescension. It is made obvious that the Eurocentric world was othering Mexico. Giniger’s casual dismissal of Mexican organizational efforts—worried that athletes might “get tangled up with the ordinary public” thus “different routes indicted by colored lines along the roadway will be used, theoretically anyway, by different categories of people so that athletes, officials and newsmen will not get tangled up with the ordinary public or with each other. How well the police manage to keep this straightened out remains to be seen?”[39] This quote reflects a deeper anxiety about Mexico’s capability to host. This reinforces the argument that Mexico’s Olympic presentation was not just for domestic consumption but primarily for the validation of an international, predominantly Western audience.

Despite this skepticism, the Mexican government largely succeeded in curating this positive false image abroad. Throughout the games, international media coverage pivoted to celebrating the colorful pageantry and technological feats on display, while the political violence at home was largely overlooked by foreign spectators. This is largely due to how “the committee not only aimed to move participants and visitors around dispersed venues, nor to circulate evidence of material improvements in the capital indicating preparedness of the games, but aimed also to persuade audiences to view Mexico City as an equal partner of design, art, and technology hubs such as New York and Milan.”[40] Thus, the Mexican government succeeded in tricking the outside world into believing their fictional narrative. 

The 1968 Mexico City Olympics were not a celebration of genuine national identity or modern progression. The design of the Games were a carefully constructed illusion; an image handcrafted by the Mexican government and the outsiders from the Olympic Committee manufactured in order to satisfy the Eurocentric world’s expectations of what it means to be a modern culture. Rather than responding to the real needs of the Mexican people, the Games served as a stage on which the government could perform a falsehood of modernity and social peace. The visual culture of the Games which were innovative, vibrant, and superficially inclusive disguised the reality remembered through violence, inequality, and repression. The design was “operated in a context where urban space was visualized and activated to serve as a controlled environment by the state and its agents. The Olympics took this to a new level in Mexico, attempting to operate specifically on human perception.”[41] With the citizen protestors’ actions, the juxtaposition between official design and the reactive protest art reveals the deep dissonance between the curated image and the reality. It was necessary for protestors to respond through art in order to demonstrate the misalignment between facade and truth. In understanding the 1968 Olympics, the design must not be taken as fact, rather it must critically interrogate the political purposes that design served. Only by doing so, the illusions of peace and modernity are dismantled, leaving the true struggles of those who fought for a more just and equitable Mexico to be recognized. 

[1] Victoria Carpenter, The Tlatelolco Massacre, Mexico 1968, and the Emotional Triangle of Anger, Grief and Shame (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2018), 40.

[2] Luis M. Castañeda, Spectacular Mexico: Design, Propaganda, and the 1968 Olympics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), 88.

[3] George F. Flaherty, Hotel Mexico: Dwelling on the ‘68 Movement (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016), 71.

[4] Castañeda, 89.

[5] Ibid, 112-113.

[6] Carpenter, 29-30.

[7] Eric Zolov, “Showcasing the ‘Land of Tomorrow: Mexico and the 1968 Olympics,” The Americas 61, no. 2 (2004): 187.

[8] Samuel Steinberg, Photopoetics at Tlatelolco: Afterimages of Mexico, 1968 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016), 105.

[9] Castañeda, XV.

[10] Ibid, 241.

[11] Steinberg, 32.

[12] Ibid, 32.

[13] Flaherty, 75.

[14] Ibid, 76.

[15] Castañeda, 2.

[16] Ibid, 2.

[17] Ibid, 154.

[18] Ibid, XVI.

[19] Claire Brewster, “The Student Movement of 1968 and the Mexican Press: The Cases of Excélsior and Siempre!,” Bulletin of Latin American Research 21, no. 2 (2002): 184.

[20] Zolov, 184.

[21] Ibid, 184.

[22] Castañeda, 159.

[23] Ibid, 159.

[24] Ibid, 160.

[25] Zolov, 183-184.

[26] Ibid, 174.

[27] Castañeda, 119.

[28] Ibid, 107.

[29] Ibid, 119.

[30] Ibid, 115.

[31] Ibid, 102.

[32] Ibid, 101.

[33] Ibid, 119.

[34] Ibid, 120.

[35] Ibid, 87-88.

[36] Ibid, 133.

[37] Ibid, 143.

[38] Ibid, 229.

[39] Henry Giniger, “Olympics 1968: Mexico City is Ready,” New York Times (New York, NY), Oct. 6, 1968.

[40] Flaherty, 71.

[41] Ibid, 72.

Bibliography

Brewster, Claire. “The Student Movement of 1968 and the Mexican Press: The Cases of Excélsior and Siempre!” Bulletin of Latin American Research 21, no. 2 (2002): 171-90.

Carpenter, Victoria. The Tlatelolco Massacre, Mexico 1968, and the Emotional Triangle of Anger, Grief and Shame. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2018.

Castañeda, Luis M. Spectacular Mexico: Design, Propaganda, and the 1968 Olympics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014.

Flaherty, George F. Hotel Mexico: Dwelling on the ’68 Movement. Oakland: University of California Press, 2016.

Giniger, Henry. “Olympics 1968: Mexico City is Ready.” New York Times (New York, NY), Oct. 6, 1968.

Steinberg, Samuel. Photopoetics at Tlatelolco: Afterimages of Mexico, 1968. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016.

Zolov, Eric. “Showcasing the ‘Land of Tomorrow: Mexico and the 1968 Olympics.” The Americas 61, no. 2 (2004): 159-88.