“To Assault With The Truth”: The Revitalization of Conservative Militancy in Mexico During the Global Sixties
On July 26, 1961, a mob of approximately 500 students affiliated with an anti-castrista group called “Mariano” gathered at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City. After splashing the Cuban and Soviet embassies with red paint, they headed toward the School of Economics with the intent to burn an effigy of Fidel Castro. The activists timed their act to coincide with the inaugural celebration of the Mexican- Cuban Institute of Cultural Relations José Martí; the event itself was scheduled on the eighth anniversary of the Moncada Barracks attack that sparked the Cuban Revolution. The anti-Castro protestors denounced the proceedings with chants and signs that read “A direct threat to Mexico.” Warning other students about the “the red hand” manipulated by the “despot Fidel,” the group condemned the entire July 26 Revolutionary Movement, calling it a continental menace that, if allowed to succeed, would introduce “communist tyranny to all Latin America.”