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In The Last Good Neighbor, Eric Zolov proposes a revisionist interpretation of Mexican history during the 1960s. He shows how Mexico's political leadership simultaneously leveraged the nation's strategic partnership with the United States and harnessed the left's revolutionary passions, in pursuit of a grand strategy: to broaden Mexico's international relations and break free of economic subordination to Washington. Zolov looks beyond the impact of the Cuban revolution to reveal the initial attraction of alternative geopolitical currents, such as the Non-Aligned Movement, as well as the potential weight of diplomatic "balancers," including Western Europe and the Soviet Union, during a pivotal moment in the Global Cold War (c. 1959-1966). Zolov examines the intersection of diplomatic, political, and cultural history to show how Mexico's pursuit of a "global pivot" transformed political subjectivities and laid the foundation for a renewed internationalism during the 1970s.
Panelists:
Eric Zolov, Stony Brook University
Tanya Harmer, London School of Economics and Political Science
Roberta Lajous, Former Mexican Ambassador
Eric Zolov is Professor of History and Director of Undergraduate Studies at Stony Brook University. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Santiago, Chile (2019). A graduate of Colby College (1987) and the University of Chicago (1990; 1995), he has published widely on popular culture, twentieth-century Mexico, and U.S.-Latin American relations. In addition to several edited and co-edited collections, he is the author of Refried Elvis: The Rise of the Mexican Counterculture (1999) and co-author of the forthcoming, The Walls of Santiago: Social Revolution and Political Aesthetics in Contemporary Chile (2022).
Tanya Harmer is an Associate Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has published widely on the international history of the Cold War in Latin America with particular emphasis on revolution, counterrevolution, transnational encounters, exile and gender. She is the author of Allende’s Chile and the Inter-American Cold War (2011), Beatriz Allende: A Revolutionary Life in Cold War Latin America (2020) and co-editor with Alberto Martín of Toward a Global History of Latin America’s Revolutionary Left (2021).
Ambassador Roberta Lajous retired from the Mexican Foreign Service last April after 42 years. She has a Masters Degree in Latin American Studies from Stanford University. She is the author of the Brief History of Mexican Foreign Policy and, also to be published by El Colegio de Mexico soon, the collective work “U.S. Ambassadors to Mexico. Diplomacy of Crisis and Opportunity.” She was a former visiting professor at the Wilson Center.
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