In The Last Good Neighbor Eric Zolov presents a revisionist account of Mexican domestic politics and international relations during the long 1960s, tracing how Mexico emerged from the shadow of FDR's Good Neighbor policy to become a geopolitical player in its own right during the Cold War. Zolov shows how President Adolfo López Mateos (1958–1964) leveraged Mexico's historical ties with the United States while harnessing the left's passionate calls for solidarity with developing nations in a bold attempt to alter the course of global politics. During this period, Mexico forged relationships with the Soviet Bloc, took positions at odds with US interests, and entered the scene of Third World internationalism. Drawing on archival research from Mexico, the United States, and Britain, Zolov gives a broad perspective on the multitudinous, transnational forces that shaped Mexican political culture in ways that challenge standard histories of the period.

Eric Zolov is Professor of History at Stony Brook University. He is coeditor of Fragments of a Golden Age: The Politics of Culture in Mexico since 1940, also published by Duke University Press, and author of Refried Elvis: The Rise of Mexican Counterculture.

List of Abbreviations  ix
Acknowledgments  xiii
Introduction. Mexico in the Global Sixties  1
1. Mexico's "Restless" Left and the Resurrection of Lázaro Cárdenas  21
2. "Luniks and Sputniks in Chapultepec!": The 1959 Soviet Exhibition and Peaceful Coexistence in Mexico  55
3. Mexico's New Internationalism: Regional Leadership amid the Tumult of the Cuban Revolution  80
4. The "Spirit of Bandung" in Mexican National Politics  108
5. The "Preferred Revolution": Confronting the Crisis of Mexican Neutralism  140
6. New Left Splits: The Implosion of the Movimiento de Liberación Nacional  162
7. Apex of Internationalism: Pursuing a Global Pivot  197
8. The Last Good Neighbor  246
Epilogue. Into the Global 1970s  285
Notes  299
Bibliography  373
Index  389