ABSTRACT
‘Mexico 68’ has often been referred to as a watershed – a pivotal moment when developments occurred that would forever change the future. Within Mexico, the student movement quickly appropriated ‘1968’ with the weight of subsequent literary and academic output, reflecting on how it marked a significant step forward in a democratic process that is still continuing. As far as the Olympic movement was concerned, Mexico City did indeed represent a threshold, albeit not in ways that might have been anticipated when news of the Baden-Baden vote broke out. In terms of size, media coverage, expenditure, revenues and professionalism, the Olympic Games would never be the same again. Yet only a wild optimist would assert that the 1968 games represented a breakthrough in the developed world’s previous grip on the International Olympic Committee (IOC). For various reasons, few of which have anything to do with Mexico’s competence as a host, never again has a country from the developing world hosted the summer Olympics. In this concluding study, therefore, we revisit some of the objectives behind Mexico’s desire to stage the games to gauge the extent to which these were achieved. In doing so, the student movement and its bloody end are considered within the context of a broader picture: how this tragic, unforeseen event has impinged on the ways in which the Mexican elite wished to instil lasting, more positive images of their nation. We also consider how the experience of hosting the Olympics affected Mexico’s staging of the football World Cup in 1970. In particular we explore how the differing agendas of the two organizing committees underlined many of the social and cultural tensions discussed in earlier parts of this collection. In considering the long-term legacy of the Olympic Games, we go beyond quantitative criteria to explore the extent to which the rhetoric of unity and humanity encapsulated by the Olympic ethos was sufficiently strong to have a lasting effect on Mexican society.
