Mexican Revolution in 1968 (possible Cold War battlefield)

In 1968 the situation for the Mexican government was unprecedented, it was the biggest protest yet in modern history as students and citizens protested the authoritarianism of the ruling PRI party.

In that era, the president was basically a 6 years term dictator.

What is however largely unknown, is that there is evidence the US was actually worried that a revolution could happen, which would be a trouble in the middle of the Cold War, right at its doorstep.

The situation got so bad, that there are reports the US ambassador called the Secretary of Defense and gave him green light to launch a coup against the Mexican president, to calm down the population. The Secretary refused the petition and instead, the army was sent to slaughter the protesters.

The action was successful, while this forever tainted the PRI and government image in the collective memory, it managed to subdue the protests and end the movement.

However, it is easy to see, the situation could had gone in the opposite direction, if the slaughter rather than scaring the protesters made the opposition even more fierce and it grew into a full scale revolution. It is interesting to note, that among the protesters, there was a big acceptance to communism, which means that the Soviet Union would likely be quite interested.

What would had happened if there had been a revolution in 1968? Could it had become another Cold War scenario with the US and the USSR backing different sides?
 
There were violent student protests in the US and many other countries too in 1968. I don't think there was any greater chance that they would overthrow the government of Mexico than that of the US. The PRI government was able to massacre protesters without any serious repercussions (at least immediate ones). One thing that helped was that the media was overwhelmingly pro-government: "El Día's morning headline on October 3, 1968 read as followed: 'Criminal Provocation at the Tlatelolco Meeting Causes Terrible Bloodshed.'" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlatelolco_massacre#Massacre
 
There were violent student protests in the US and many other countries too in 1968. I don't think there was any greater chance that they would overthrow the government of Mexico than that of the US. The PRI government was able to massacre protesters without any serious repercussions (at least immediate ones). One thing that helped was that the media was overwhelmingly pro-government: "El Día's morning headline on October 3, 1968 read as followed: 'Criminal Provocation at the Tlatelolco Meeting Causes Terrible Bloodshed.'" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlatelolco_massacre#Massacre

But unlike the US's protests, the US was so worried that it attempted a coup to remove the president.

If the US took this so seriously, there likely was a very real chance of a revolution.

Also I wouldnt say there were no consequences, apparently Mexicans never forgot about it and it was the event that eventually snowballed into the PRI being so despised that by the 90s, its position as hegemon, was impossible to maintain.
 
But unlike the US's protests, the US was so worried that it attempted a coup to remove the president.

If the US took this so seriously, there likely was a very real chance of a revolution.

Also I wouldnt say there were no consequences, apparently Mexicans never forgot about it and it was the event that eventually snowballed into the PRI being so despised that by the 90s, its position as hegemon, was impossible to maintain.

The US frequently overreacted to alleged radical or "Communist" threats during the Cold War, so I would take its worries with more than a grain of salt. And *in the short run* the Mexican government didn't pay much of a price for its brutality. Echeverría (who had maintained a hard line against the protesters in 1968) was elected without any trouble in 1970. and under his administration there was another massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_Christi_massacre which again did nothing in the short run to shake the PRI's power.
 
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