Global Horizons: Mexico, the Third World, and the Non-Aligned Movement at the Time of the 1961 Belgrade Conference

Abstract

This paper analyses the autonomous streak that marked Mexico's foreign policy during the presidency of Adolfo López Mateos (1958–64). Throughout this period, Mexico showed reluctance to participate fully in the flagship Kennedy programme for Latin America, the Alliance for Progress. At the same time, the López Mateos government adopted a position of defence for Cuba's right to self-determination in spite of Washington's attempts to eradicate the Cuban Revolution from the Western Hemisphere. During López Mateos's term, Mexico tried for the first time in its history to elaborate a foreign policy with broader international outreach, an effort highlighted by the Mexican presidential trips to Latin America and Asia as well as other countries that belonged to the Non-Aligned Movement. While historiography has explored Mexico's attitude towards the Alliance for Progress and, more consistently, the country's Cuban policy, much less attention has been dedicated to López Mateos's engagement with the Non-Aligned Movement. Focusing on Mexico's failed participation at the First Conference of Heads of State of Non-Aligned Countries celebrated in Belgrade in 1961, this article aims to fill this research gap. Indeed, even if Mexico did not ultimately participate in the conference, Mexican diplomacy did show great interest in the gathering. For a country that had formally sided with the United States after the beginning of the cold war, Mexico's flirtation with the Non-Aligned Movement represented a detour from the diplomatic path it had adopted at the end of the Second World War. This work argues that Mexico's engagement with the Non-Aligned Movement presents a different dimension of the country's international strategy during the 1960s, reflecting Mexico's desire to loosen the bipolar constraints that limited its economic development and increase its leverage with Washington.