The script for the video was researched and written by Chronology Cast. Check out his channel if you want to see more fun historical videos: www.youtube.com/@ChronologyCast
There’s a reason Mexico was often called “La Dictadura Perfecta” (perfect dictatorship) as most of this stuff was unknown to the outside world as the PRI branded Mexico’s image as a prospering democratic state when underneath the facade was a state long abused by various forces both internal and external and the PRI is to blame for many of its problems today as well as foreign intervention. It’s still crazy how the nation branded as a democracy back in 1917 didn’t really have its own “true” democratic elections until 2000 with the ousting of the PRI. Mexico has never really gotten a break throughout its history
Oh its always been a rough shit hole. Just like current times with the cartels, back then any of these various groups were seen as heroes to the various populous.
Also interesting is Mexico's ambiguous ideological position. It was a revolution before Russia where left wing American went to gawp the ashed of reactionary Porfirismo. A kind of Peronism avant la lettre. In the 30s Mexico angered Britain and was sanctioned by it over oil nationalisation. It gave succour to left wing exiles from the Spanish civil war. It was a safe haven for pre-communist Castro. But then ended up on the same page as Videla's or Pinochet's regime. Most strange.
@@forthrightgambitia1032 a similar thing happened in Ethiopia, the derg a communist regime took over than was later opposed and eventually defeated by the tplf which was also a leftist organization. I think because revolution and fighting against the government is more a doctrine of far left politics than the right, there’s not really much of a tradition or doctrine of right wing insurgencies, therefore when youth grow angry at the government they usually gravitate towards leftist revolutionary movements
My grandpa was a competition shooter and was friends with Lucio Cabañas' personal gunsmith. When cabañas was killed, his gunsmith gave my grandpa Lucio's personal rifle for safe keeping while he went into hiding. From what my grandpa told me, it was a highly modified hunting rifle rebored to take higher caliber military exclusive rounds. When my grandpa found out the gunsmith had been captured, tortured and killed, he buried the rifle in a ditch.
@@gallo4796 You shouldn't accuse someone of "lies" and make false assumptions based on limited knowledge. Soldiers in wars do not carry their rifle around 24/7, especially not guerrillas who often need to blend into the civilian population. Cabañas could have had more than one rifle and there are conflicting accounts of his death.
My father was one of those who were disappeared only 3 months after I was born in ‘73. He had been at that Tlatelolco protest in ‘68 and had to leave Mexico City and go into hiding. The rest is history.
The dirty war is often thought to initiate with the aftermath of the 1968 massacre but there had actually already been some important movements pre-1960s that were met with brutal oppression. There was a major a railroad worker movement/strike in the 50s that partially paralyzed the nation and was of course beaten down by the government. The rail workers would again be an important part of the movements of 1968. There were also the Jaramillistas in the state of Morelos led by Ruben Jaramillo, a former commander under Emiliano Zapata during the Mexican Revolution. The Jaramillistas fought in favor of land reform and campesino rights. Ruben Jaramillo in fact was a big advocate of the Lazaro Cardenas administration and originally sought to work within the post-revolutionary political framework. It was with subsequent administrations that Jaramillo decided to take up arms as the conditions of the rural class became less and less of a concern for the elite.
Also important to note, in the prelude to all of this, the Mexican government ordered the assassinations of people the government feared could pose a threat. People like Pancho Villia in addition to the killings of lesser known generals. In my fathers hometown, after the revolution a general made a homestead of sorts and brought along his soldiers, then sometime later he was assassinated by his cheaufer
I personally think (as a Mexican) that this chapter is often overlooked because the PRI's regime never fully embraced authoritarianism in the way the dictatorships of Chile, Brazil and Argentina did. They were able to just simply be quiet. The term "perfect dictatorship" was coined by a Peruvian analyst in the early 90's to describe Mexico. It took us all the way to 2000 to have a true, free and fair democratic transition of power.
People escaping from fascist dictatorships In Spain and Latin America were living safely In México, and they were very puzzled when they met a family member of a méxican guerrillero. "Is your father a guerrilla fighter In México?! How Is that possible?"
As someone who grew up in the 2000s México, it is sad how schools barely touch on this stuff, it just brushed as oopsies by the government and barely touched on. Thank you for putting this video out there, feels a bit like current times
Si, realmente es difícil encontrar algo respecto a este tema en los libros de historia que te daban en las escuelas. La mayoría son de libros que eran distribuidos por la SEP (Y evidentemente tienen su censura) y ni hablar de los medios que casi nunca tocan estos temas y cuando lo hacen omiten detalles
@@mrkeykush693 es triste pero todos hemos escuchado que "quien no conoce su historia está condenado a repetirla" y la historia de México vaya que se repite. Muchos historiadores mexicanos han documendo muy bien la mayoría de nuestra historia moderna, lástima que sus trabajos son poco difundidos.
As much as the Dirty War still continues in Southern Mexico against indigenous groups, its pretty much just an extension of the same oppression that existed all the way back to colonial Mexico's founding. The names, titles, and structures might have changed periodically over the years, but the heavy handed control by a minority of those in power and the wealthy is a consistent attribute of Mexican (and pretty much all of Latin American) politics.
yes, i've come from the Tehuantepec Isthmus zone, and i still having lively viviencies about soldiers doing raids for capture "Zapatistas" in late 90's early 2000. Now the boogiemans are Centeramericans crossing to USA that many times Mexican Army delivers them to Narcos.
Down in Loxicha they're still living under absolute martial law, and anywhere outside of Central Oaxaca is ringed by Army and Navy checkpoints. It's still sadly very true, especially after the massacres at the 2006 Commune and the 2016 Nochixtlán massacre
@@detleffleischer9418 last time I was in Oaxaca was 2005, lots of military checkpoints but I thought that was just the norm . I often visited huajuapan.
I'm Mexican and it is even more curious the ambiguous ideological position of the PRI. Initially created as a center-left party and founded by former revolutionaries, the PRI even joined the Socialist International but in the 1990's declared itself as neo-liberal. Two of the most infamous PRI Presidents, Luis Echeverría and Jose Lopez Portillo, were closer to the Socialism than to Capitalism and tried to establish a Welfare State with rural support, but at the same time were the worst enemies of the guerrillas in Guerrero. Even more, they were always supported by the US government and the CIA. As Dali would recall later, Mexico is the most surrealist country in the world. Nowadays, our President Lopez Obrador argues to be in the "nationalist revolutionary" left-wing but he has actual conservative positions and his cabinet is formed by former PRI's dinosaurs.
Social democracy/ welfare states exist precisely as a bribe to workers in order to stop actual socialist policies, now that the USSR is gone there is no pressure to make such bribes, thus life is getting worse in those nations
@@adelinerojas7806 there are reasons behind that, US involvement, treats of not recognizing the government if it didn't signed an abusive treaty, known as Bucarelli's treaty that basically limited most of the development of the country
I am extremely surprised by this material. I had no idea about something like the Mexican Dirty War and I didn't know that Operation Condor also involved countries like Mexico, I was convinced that the operation itself was in these countries of the so-called Southern Cone and did not take place in other Latin American countries. The only thing I knew about guerrilla warfare in Mexico was 1994 and the famous Zapatista uprising.
Operation Condor itself generally focused on Southern Cone dictatorships, true, but that's mostly a purely administrative or operational distinction. The treatment of the rest of of Latin America during the Cold War was near-identical, it was just done under different names (and often looped back into Operation Condor, such as many torturers and death squads active in Central America having been originally trained by South Cone dictatorships during Condor)
Even then the Zapatistas were tame compared to all the other revolutionary forces that sprang up at the same time, one in Guerrero managed to kidnap high level political figures, and the EPR (Popular Revolutionary Army) staged multiple armed attacks against oil pipelines, Army bases, banks, the Federal Electoral Tribunal, Congress, the PRI headquarters, ambushed multiple Federal Judicial Police, Military Police, Army, and Navy patrols across Oaxaca, and in one instance staged a massive strike on all of these targets in like 5 states, with the biggest one being a full-on assault on a Naval base in Huatulco. It's the reason why parts of Oaxaca are STILL under military rule/martial law.
@@detleffleischer9418 yes that was Lucio Cabañas partido de los pobres who kidnapped Ruben Figueroa Figueroa, a huge scandal, as he was the designated candidate of the president to be the governor of Guerrero, back then democracy was led by the president directly, as he handpicked his successor and had to approve senate, deputies and state governor candidates, who in turn were shoe-ins for the post. In reality it wasn't force but a political reform on 1979 that allowed left wing and right wing opposition to reach the lower chamber, the anti guerrilla forces as the video says were badly equipped and badly paid, so they saw in drugs a chance to earn cash, the DFS became a drug dealer protection office, and in fact was disbanded in the 80's after it's commander became involved in the killing of a journalist.
On the coast near Ensenada , Baja California, Mexico there is a luxury housing development. I last saw this place in the 1990s. As you approach it in the car you drove from California, USA, you see welcoming banners, bunting, pretty houses behind a terra cotta wall. But if you drive on past the entrance you come to the other end, where painted on the rough unplastered wall scrawled with a paint brush, the name of the local major or some other military rank and the threat that this community was under his protection. If you visit Mexico as an American, or Canadian, it's wonderful, the people are wonderful, I spent part of Christmas day 2005 walking amongst families on the beach in Acapulco; but if you look a bit closer there's a permanent war against humanity going on. Now it's mostly the narcos, but the 43 desaparecido students in Guerrero in 2014 show that at least parts of the government are still very dangerous. When I visited China over the years seeing it grow wealthy I often had the thought, this is just like Mexico; hard working intelligent people, incredible potential. There were once more billionaires (US$) in Mexico than in the US. When those successful business people tried entering the U.S. market - they failed. No 'connection' no wealth.
the 43 were barely students, protest in Mexico became some sort of bussines. You put people for rallys and protest on demand for money, many politic partys use them as cannon foodder to give ilussion that they have people´s back up, specially those related to populist , authoritarian old wings of PRI, disguised as leftists. Current president used them very much in his way to presidency. Specifically the 43 were confused by narcos, they thoutgh they were a rival faction and killed them, by the way, local authorities participated (they were postulated by current president)
Kudos for pronouncing "guerrillas" correctly. something most Americans pronounce like the great ape. It tends to lead to confusion amongst the less language oriented.
Really good episode, interesting and overlooked topic! Your Spanish was pretty good too. I hope next episode on Latin America you can pronounce them even better. Like Aguirre, the u is silent there, and names like Vásquez are stressed on the first syllable (that’s why the accent is there), so VASquez, PErez, BoLIvar, etc
my grandpa participated in that war, in the side of the government, he take the life of twenty eight peoples and disable another more like federal officer, he never regret his actions until his death
now that the founder of the current iteration communist movement in the philippines just passed away. can we have a video on the martial law period and marcos I regime?
Also interestingly, the PRI in many ways is actually a left-leaning party (at least certain factions I suppose). Not only does it have "revolutionary" in its name and was created in the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution, it is also a member of the Socialist International and it was the party that gave asylum to Leon Trotsky after he was kicked out of the USSR.
You could say that the last left wing leader of the pri was Lázaro Cárdenas. After him, the pri has been a right wing party, especially in the 80's with the neoliberalism. But ultimately, as one answer said, the pri is whatever it needs to be to win
@@coldwar45 Yes, in the 60's Lopez Mateos and Echeverria called themselves "Communists", but were also CIA Agents and actively suppresed Left-leaning movements.
Thank you for making this video. Even among those of us who are interested in the history of the dirty wars in Latin America, Mexico's dirty war is often neglected
The war was dirty from both sides. The guerrillas kidnapped and killed people too. But the lesser of the two evils was the government, Mexico is way better than Cuba (what those guerrillas wanted to become).
PRI was a classic ex of the socialist/corporate state with total control of all institutions. Actual free enterprise was prevented, except at the smallest level. While I was living in summer of 1969 in rural Hidalgo State a nearby village had not voted for the PRI, and then all of their fields were burned down
@@g1g4_ch4d7 the leaders typically had a 'socialist' ideology (the state should control the means of production), but they allow corps to exist but regulated by the state. Also, leaders take a cut of the business and get rich
@@g1g4_ch4d7 people gave their own definitions, obviously.. Mexico did nationalize all the oil and minerals. The government owns, or used to, all the newsprint (they would refuse to sell newsprint to periodicals that irritated them). The gov used the police to shut down political opposition.
Glad to see this being talked about. My grandfather worked in the government (Secretary of Agriculture) during this time, while my parents were both born in 1970 and '72 (the "height" of the PRI's repression and the Dirty War). The founder of the school I currently study in was murdered by the Liga Comunista in 1973. Here in Mexico we just focus on Tlatelolco and Halconazo as the only repression, but ask anyone living in 1960s-1980s Mexico, they'll know the real repression. It even outlived the Cold War with the Ejercito Zapatista in 1994. IMO, the Dirty War lasted from the end of the Revoltion (c.19717) all the way through the ousting of the PRI in 2000. As a Mexican born during the PAN, I can't tell it. Just through my grandparents and parents. But as someone who first-hand lives the Drug War, I can say it just feels like the Dirty War's extended cut. Heck, it's the Dirty War, just as violent, even though this time around it is "slightly" more covered and talked about.
It is interesting that you call the PRI "right-leaning" when it was socialist in ideology and social democrat in execution, to say it somehow. The fact that they are to the right of Cuban Communist and relied of the USA does not necessary make them "right-leaning". In fact, when the PRI lose their power after more than 70 years in government, they lose to the PAN, a proper right-leaning party. In this specific issue, the video seems a bit oversimplified. That being said, solid video overall. Keep Latin American videos coming, please! Very nice Spanish pronunciation, btw.
They constantly supressed worker and student movements, and well the reliance on the US Which is the chief of anti worker power does say something about their ideology, would you care to name the socialist policies they enacted?
@@jaimeebg it could be argued that Salinas was the first center right president. But there was still a huge corrupt left leaning movement within the party that ended up moving to Morena
@@AGRS22 it could be argued that the las left-leaning president was Lopez Mateo, after him the PRI was a strange mix more like centre. However, since De la Madrid the PRI started officially moving to the right,and Salinas was downright neo-liberal. I ignore the current role of all those old people as almost none of them are key players anymore (Bartlett), unlike the USA.
Thank you so much for this content. Even in law school this sort of content is extremely barren, and its notable because most of the current Human Rights Law treaties and conventions that are binding in Mexico trace their roots to the Dirty War. The existence of the Internal Normative System of Indigenous self-governance was born this way, the 2006 APPO rebellion/Oaxaca Commune was inspired by the PdlP, the Zapatistas and the EPR attacked the government after the Army massacred multiple indigenous civilians in many towns (Aguas Blancas and Acteal Massacres), and most importantly of all, one disappearance would end up being brought before the Inter-American Court (think of the Supreme Court but instead of exercising authority over a country it has actual binding authority over the entirety of Latin America) that would force Mexico to radically reform the Constitution to allow for human rights laws to be enforceable on Mexican soil. So thanks to Radilla Pacheco v. Mexico, the state implemented a reform to the Constitution forcing international treaties to be basically on par and have the same legal authority as the Constitution itself, which has been a slow but improving situation, even despite funding and institutional setbacks. So much happened in those decades that still resonate today. The face of Lucio Cabañas helped transform the national teachers union into a mass left movement, going so far as to rebel against the government in the 2006 Commune, the 2016 Nochixtlan Massacre, and even now. This also was the reason why the Ayotzinapa mass disappearances happened too. Since the Army and police are distrustful of activists and teachers in the first place, and because of their role in collaborating with drug cartels in the area, they were instrumental in carrying out the disappearances of the students themselves. The previously mentioned EPR is still active here in Oaxaca, enough that parts of the countryside are still living under martial law, especially the Southern Sierra region of Loxicha. And im sorry for the long comment, its just not everyday this sort of history is even discussed, much less when in the context of politics and government or law, since most of the members of the currently ruling Morena party are former members of the PRI, including the President himself, which is why its not even close to convenient for them to bash the PRI and expose their deeds during the war (and I say this as a card-holding member of the Party), theyre so anticommunist they even omit the name and deeds of Lazaro Cardenas from Party records because the man was an avowed Socialist himself.
Great video, a very poor understood topic outside and even inside of Mexico. And just a thing that I would have liked the video to adress: The weird relationship of the PRI with the left, lets just remember that the PRI was born in the end of the mexican revolution with some early leftist ideas like the "reparto agrario" and "seguridad social", and that they also capture and release Fidel Castro when he was on Mexico (Fidel never spoke bad about the PRI when alive for that reason) and always support the Castro regime in Cuba. In the same manner some PRI oligarchs and even expresidents (like Lázaro Cárdenas) visited the CCP regularly for being messangers betwen México city and the Kremlin. So it was very difficult for the urban guerrilla more in the path of the soviet union to find commitment when the CCP where in good terms with the PRI, and the rural guerrilla were more a Zapatist-Jaramillist style flavoured with comunist ideas
Tienes algún recurso l fuentes para informarme de la vida de Lázaro cárdenas y su asociación conos gobiernos socialistas? Es difícil encontrar algo en internet
@@DanielGarcia-kw4ep Solo yo se que se pronunció a favor de la revolución de Castro, el apoyo a los españoles Repúblicanos y que lo persiguió la CIA y la DFS.
@@gelasiodecaravantes9361 si te persigue la CIA entonces debiste hacer algo bueno. Al menos al momento de actuar, nadie sabía lo que la revolución cubana iba a terminar gestando, la misma CIA le dió dinero a Castro pero los abandonaron y se fueron con la URSS 😬
Min 12.31 the picture is from Argentina, i soppose from the times of the "military junta". You can track the image to Argentina by the plate of the truck and the inscription in the truck´s door. "(poli)cia fereral argentina". As always thank you for a great video and investigation.
Thank you for this video , which is quite accurate about those years. I would just like to point out that the PRI is the ' Partido Revolucionario Institucional ' - " Institutional Revolutionary Party ".
The Halconazo (5:54) is the background of Cuarón's movie Roma, with Cleo's boyfriend being part of Los Halcones One thing I'm surprised is not mentioned here is the Liga 23 de Septiembre's involvement in the death of Eugenio Garza Sada
My very own special opinion in La guerra sucia is that all of the rural and urban guerrillas failed to accomplished their goals (Besides from the EZLN movement in the 90s) because they had little to no support of the general mexican public. And let me explain why. In 60s and 70s the political opression was brutal, and that's what made the urban guerrillas to be created. A lot of survivors of Tlatelolco and Halconazo massacres joined the urban guerrillas as la Liga 23 de S. or La Liga Espartaco. But that's not the point. The working class in the 70s were born between 30s and 40s, which was a very particular time. Lázaro Cardenas and subsequent presidents had finally stabillized the country after a bloody civil war (Our very particular social-democratic revolution) in 1910s and a feeling of progress was being achieved. At the time, Our revolution seemed succesful and ideologically speaking, the country was in the middle of two doctrines, the statized economy and industry and a soft introduction of free markets. Soooooo, to the general public (The middle class, generally responsible for creating revolutions) another armed revolution would only destroy what 30 years stabilization created. Also was the fact that PRI had chosen a side in the bigger scenario (Along the USA). Particullary speaking of urban guerrillas, they were infested by DFS officials (Mexican CIA at that time) and they were poorly structured. This caused massive failed plans and that the mexican elite used this group indirectly to strike political rivals (Search for Garza Sada's murder, caused by a failed kidnapping, who was the greatest bussinessman at that time, killed by la Liga, instrumentalized by the mexican president Luis echeverría, who knew a year prior the failed kidnapping was going to happen and did nothing). Also was the fact that the guerrilleros hoped that the working class joined the movement, but sadly didn't. Speaking of rural guerrillas, sadly, in Mexico's deep country, inequality has always been a thing, from the mayan rebellion against the yucatan peninsula landlords, to the greatest mexican revolutionary Zapata, a fight against the evil men in México's country is still fought today. La guerra sucia showed the repressive, unequal and violent political system that Mexico had those days, and helped to the downfall of PRI at 1994.
This is the main reason Mexicans lost the right to have weapons. There was an ambush the military and the police had against students in a restaurant, the students were being massacred by the government forces, but some students with 22 pistols managed to kill 6 soldiers. This brought stricter gun laws in Mexico.
Fr you have any more stories? Someone told me at that time they would take young men by force from guerrero to fight lucio en la Sierra a lot of them didn’t come back no one wanted to be a soldier to the point they had to take young men away from there home by force and made them soldiers
I grew up Mexico In the late 90s early 2000. I was seein the death of what the old socialist ways that worked. The more I learn the more in common Mexico has with the USSR. I do miss the Mexico i grew up in.
The 1968 Mexico City protest saw more than 5000 'disappeared' and buried outside of Mexico City, in the desert. My sources are three witnesses to the event. One was a police officer there and his friend. They both resigned after the second event. The second was a Doctor In Training and her sister who were nursing victims in secret. Los halcones were terrible commandos. I knew the first gentleman and his friend briefly in the '90s, as he was a nightclub worker. The second landed up being my dentist. Her sister was a friend who ran an internet cafe I used. All of the lived in Tijuana while I lived there, off and on, from 1985 to 2015. Vazquez was allegedly assassinated by the government. All of these people voluntarily gave me the information, over time. The dentist dragged victims into a shop and was technically required to report all injured to the police. Since no 'official' treatment was done, no reports were filed. When the POLICE STATION was transferred, the old station was bulldozed in the middle of the night, while groups worked at turning it into a museum. This surprised everyone in Tijuana, as some noted that something was inside, never meant to be seen again. Unrelated to Mexico City events, but interesting as this happened in the '90s.
@@patrickdunning6886 mexico is a mostly white country. by law it's illegal to be black or dark skinned there in the constitution.....but they still blame us somehow for their own internal failures
@@margarettoellieniellieni5087 no they weren't you tool. you just wish they were. more importantly if it is that easy to sponsor civil wars in your country....then YOUR COUNTRY has a problem
@@patrickdunning6886 they hate America with a passion.. the same guys commenting on this video be on their spanish mexican news channels hating on America 24/7 on the comment section .. and sounds like they live in the states since they speak good english
Fun fact, there was a "dirty war" in Spain between special forces units known as GAL's and ETA's terrorist. But mainly the Gal's kill and torture inocent civilian people.
Es bueno que menciones este tema que normalmente suele pasar desapercibido en la historia de mi país, supongo que esto se debe a la censura que se manejó durante años y evitar temas relacionados con el comunismo, masacres por parte del ejército, rebeldes, etc. Cuando era niño recuerdo que en los libro de la primaria apenas se mencionaba la Crisis de Los Misiles y la caída de la Unión Soviética. Gracias al algoritmo de TH-cam he logrado ver este vídeo y aprender un poco mas de la historia de mi país durante la Guerra Fría, te agradezco el tiempo que te tomaste por hacer esto y así que se revele la historia como sucedió y no como nos la quisieron hacer creer.
It's nice that you are covering a somewhat obscure conflict, but I feel it's presented somewhat unbalanced. Too much attention was focused on what the PRI did but not what the guerillas did, the PRI was horrible but the guerillas were not "good" either. They kidnapped and killed civilians, charged extortion money and many became druglords. The state of Guerrero is still one of the poorest and most dangerous in the country due in part to groups linked to those guerillas commiting a lot of crime. "
No way the PRI was a right-wing party. Actually, it's a member of the international socialist. Mexico under the PRI was even the first country to give international recognition to the Cuban revolutionary government. Plus, those guerrillas wanted to install a government way more tyrannical than the PRI itself, just look at their methods and the way they admired the Cuban Revolution.
A bit disappointed about the video. Cold War politics were relevant but not the core aspects that explain the conflict here. Painting the PRI as being almost a US puppet is utterly wrong. Painting it as a Righ-Wing party is also utterly wrong. The PRI rose as a left wing party with Cardenas, but mainly it was a true coalition party between leading sectors of Mexican society that wanted peace after the Mexican Revolution (and after almost 100 years of non stop conflict after Mexicos Independence, with the brief interlude of Porfirio Diaz Dictatorship). The PRI had both right-wing and left-wing sectors, liberals, socialists, and many fascists (especially before the 40s). That was what made PRI stable as a political regime. Representatives of all relevant sectors were included. And all of them enjoyed economic and political rents (Syndicate leaders and Businessmen cartels, Northerners and Southerners. Urban dwellers and Rural dwellers). Mexican Guerillas were limited to fringe groups in poorer southern regions for the most part. And later to young college students who were more idealistic and had not been coopted by the system. That is what matters the most in explaining the Mexican Dirty War. Cold War politics were tangential to the core problems.
Mild correction, but I believe this is more so a case of all of the Americas during down the barrel of the Monroe doctrine. All of the Americas is the United States is backyard.
You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. The US didn't create the corrupt and repressive systems around the world, all it could do is try to make sure that they were "friendly" ones. Just like no amount of aid or even direct intervention could really change a culture as it discovered in places like El Salvador, Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc. neither could lectures about democracy and human rights persuade those who couldn't or wouldn't apply them.
I used to be lot further left than I am now. Twenty years ago, I thought America, my country, had an evil foreign policy for things like the Bay of Pigs, the Dirty War, Operation Condor, supporting the Contra death squads, etc. But when I look at the world today, and I see the state of the communist and former communist countries vs. the state of the countries that's governments were on our side during the Cold War, and I realize that what we did, while maybe not ideal, was FAAAAAR better than the alternative of doing nothing. We are not batting 1000, but on the whole, US intervention has done a HELL of a lot more good for the world than harm.
Every country should decide their own destiny regardless of how good or bad it is. You said it was good, but most of the times it was help no one was asking for and did more harm to us in the long run. Your comment was very imperialistic pal, very funny of you to imply you're still sympathetic to the left.
@@AlexVanChezlaw I don't care what label you want to give me. I think when you compare North Korea and South Korea, mainland China and Taiwan, Ruzzia and the Baltics, my argument is made.
Yeah, I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure that Guatemala, Vietnam, Angola and Iran were far worse off after the United States intervened there.
@@extrahistory8956 Thank you for bringing that up. I always love the chance to educate people on this topic in particular. Because I was like you once. I was raised by hippies, one of whom was drafted to serve in Vietnam, so I was brought up believing that the war in Vietnam was wrong and what we did there was horrible. But then I looked at the most basic evidence right in front of my face -- South Korea and Taiwan -- and I wised up. I'm now happy to pass on to you what I realized... South Korea and Taiwan are two of the freest and most prosperous nations in the world. Their scores in political and press freedom and economic prosperity consistently beat the European average. And both of those countries were born out of the ashes of civil wars against communists, and both countries have communist doppelgangers right next door. North Korea is a dystopia by all measurements, and mainland China, though somewhat more prosperous than the PRK, is an Orwellian nightmare. There is absolutely no reason to believe that if an anti-communist government had continued to exist operating out of Saigon, it wouldn't be just as free and prosperous as that in Seoul and Taipei. In fact, probably more so, because South Vietnam is far greater in natural resources than South Korea or Taiwan. So understanding all of the above, it's easy to see that the true tragedy of that era isn't that America WENT TO Vietnam, it's that we LEFT Vietnam. Indeed, turning our backs on the people of the Republic of Vietnam was America's most shameful foreign policy decision of the 20th Century. And what spurred me to this realization? An ex-girlfriend's parents. She was born and raised in Orange County, but her parents came from South Vietnam. I went to their house, and I saw the yellow flag with the three red stripes tacked to the wall right next to the framed portrait of (GASP!) Richard Nixon... The fact that my dad was a 'Nam vet immediately endeared me to them, and after a couple conversations... well, my opinion didn't change right away, but it did start me on a process off learning some new things. And that's my experience regarding what the people of Vietnam think about the Vietnam War. (And no, I AM NOT a fan of Richard Nixon now, I just now realize he was a complex individual and not easy to put in a box. You should watch the BioGraphics video here on TH-cam about him. Simon nails it.) Anyway, I hope I've given you something to think about. Thank you very much.
@@benjauron5873Are going to ignore that the government of South Vietnam was despotic and petty? That they didn't promote freedom of religion? That the United States also violated the neutrality of Cambodia and Laos by bombing them back to the stone age? That the use of agent orange devasted the ecological and agricultural landscape of an entire region? Also, I eager to learn about how Operation PBSuccess helped out Guatemala or how the 1954 Iranian Coup helped out the Iranian respectively.
How come I'm not surprised that the US was behind all this? Same for the Caribbean and Central America the US involment should be continue to be called out
because history is huge and we don't have time to cover everything everywhere. especially a backwater war of very low consequence such that even americans at the time didn't know it happened? seriouslly 3,000 dead is nothing
@@mrkilo-g8794 search what a puppet government is makes your realize who pulls the strings.. also Mexican presidents have studied in the same university’s as usa presidents makes you think
It’s still going on, most of it mutated to the “war on drugs” but there are still some remnants that are pure classic dirty as seen during Enrique Peña’s mandate - the one who got thousands of people railings against him because Ayotzinapa, to mention the most well known. But, what do you know, rich Europeans and Americans love to “invest” in Mexico because they love our beaches sooooo much…
It is not the "Industrial Revolutionary Party" it is the "Institutional Revolutionary Party". PRI is actually consdiered the "liberal" party of the two major parties with PAN being the more right leaning party. PRI actually did not even embrace capitalism until the 1980s (due to new found oil wealth) when it sort of moved center right and the liberals, socialist and labor organizations broke with it. During the time frame of the 'dirty war" PRI was very much leftist, anti-church and more socialist than anything else, but it was too corrupt for the reforms to ever take hold. In watching your show, I can tell you get all your information from Oliver Stone or such other conspiracy theory sources. PRI in the 1970s and early 80s was very much leftist, they changed when they started to embrace free market capitalism in the later 1980s, and frankly I believe they grew fearful that Reagan might do something rash if he thought they were too far leftwing. Mexico, under PRI was one of only two Western Hemisphere nations to keep diplomatic ties with Cuba after the missle crisis and kept them throughout the Cold War. Until the mid-80s or so, Mexico even supported the Sandanista Revolution in Nicaragua, its new found oil wealth at the time had it thinking it could have a larger influence in Latin America than the USA and since PRI was born in a revolution, it often supported revolutionaries throughout Latin America. Having spent a lot of time in Mexico during the 1980s when the political landscape was changing and being a supporter of PAN, I can tell you know not about what you are talking about, I mean hell, you don't even know what PRI stands for. I still spend a lot of time in Mexico, just got back from there last month.
Your reply is what happens when you have little method of socioeconomic analysis and instead become a liberal saying that PRI grew "fearful" of Reagan while that's not how political economy works at all. Your statements of history is true, but your personal analysis as to why is false
@@lilfoward1832 I know from being down there in the 1980s that many were looking at how the US under Reagan was acting in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatamala, Grenada and regions south with regards to leftist revolutionary movements. Coupled with the "war on drugs", many in Mexico were worried we (the US) would once again intervene in Mexico. The "Pinche Gringos" to the north have always been the "big boogey-man" for Mexico and the "Reagan doctrine" which differed from the "Truman doctrine" by seeking to actively roll back communism and leftist governments did cause concern for many in Mexico. In Chihuahua, the one state that PAN had strength at the time, you could see the protests and counter protests where that was an issue at the time. PAN wanted closer ties with the US, both economically and militarily.
And thanks to this Commies were crushed in Mexico. However, there are some points to take, PRI was a leftist party, conservative, but leftist. In fact, they still have a lot of power today, as another party, MORENA, which takes everything PRI had, but something PRI had in those years is that they were efficent, ruthless, but efficent to keep the country moving. Something this guy should point is that in that time our economy was mostly statized. In 2000's Fox tried to uncover the records of the dirty war, but also at that time, a fire destroyed most of the documents, leaving the history of what happenes totally lost. I personally think cartels were created to destroy every attempt of insurrection in the country. But today they are just unstopable.
I'm a Mexican American born in the US but raised in Mexican border town for 15 years before moving back to the US, my parents made me born in the US so I could go there if I wanted to, they said they remember the regime of El PRI until the 2000s and yet people didn't learn and elect president Peña Nieto I was just a child during Peña Nieto and even then I knew he was a corrupt bastard
@@AGRS22 tell me your not mexican without telling me your not mexican,Pena did nothing under Obrador the peso went up and during the pandemic the peso did not lose any value Pena did not do shit
Not America's fault that Mexico is a narco state that has millions to pay off ex-US soldiers to train up cartel members.. and Los Zetas used to be special forces- they were trained by the US to fight against the cartels.. Not America's fault they switched sides lmao.. But Mexico like many other countries, blames everything and anything on the US.
The script for the video was researched and written by Chronology Cast. Check out his channel if you want to see more fun historical videos: www.youtube.com/@ChronologyCast
whats about other commie side crimes against humanity ? are you sure that you can use term POW here ?
There’s a reason Mexico was often called “La Dictadura Perfecta” (perfect dictatorship) as most of this stuff was unknown to the outside world as the PRI branded Mexico’s image as a prospering democratic state when underneath the facade was a state long abused by various forces both internal and external and the PRI is to blame for many of its problems today as well as foreign intervention. It’s still crazy how the nation branded as a democracy back in 1917 didn’t really have its own “true” democratic elections until 2000 with the ousting of the PRI. Mexico has never really gotten a break throughout its history
Oh its always been a rough shit hole. Just like current times with the cartels, back then any of these various groups were seen as heroes to the various populous.
Also interesting is Mexico's ambiguous ideological position. It was a revolution before Russia where left wing American went to gawp the ashed of reactionary Porfirismo. A kind of Peronism avant la lettre. In the 30s Mexico angered Britain and was sanctioned by it over oil nationalisation. It gave succour to left wing exiles from the Spanish civil war. It was a safe haven for pre-communist Castro.
But then ended up on the same page as Videla's or Pinochet's regime. Most strange.
@@forthrightgambitia1032 a similar thing happened in Ethiopia, the derg a communist regime took over than was later opposed and eventually defeated by the tplf which was also a leftist organization. I think because revolution and fighting against the government is more a doctrine of far left politics than the right, there’s not really much of a tradition or doctrine of right wing insurgencies, therefore when youth grow angry at the government they usually gravitate towards leftist revolutionary movements
@@Danheron2 thats not necessarily true
@@forthrightgambitia1032 it was the Perfect Dictatorship, socialism with Mexican characteristics.
My grandpa was a competition shooter and was friends with Lucio Cabañas' personal gunsmith. When cabañas was killed, his gunsmith gave my grandpa Lucio's personal rifle for safe keeping while he went into hiding. From what my grandpa told me, it was a highly modified hunting rifle rebored to take higher caliber military exclusive rounds. When my grandpa found out the gunsmith had been captured, tortured and killed, he buried the rifle in a ditch.
Dam that's crazy I'm glad the communists didn't win
@@Joebay707 It is because they didn't win and their petitions ignored that our country is going to sh1t 🙄
Lies.. cabanas had is rifle with him all the time he was in a open war.. dude wasn’t in a gang but in a war
@@gallo4796 You shouldn't accuse someone of "lies" and make false assumptions based on limited knowledge. Soldiers in wars do not carry their rifle around 24/7, especially not guerrillas who often need to blend into the civilian population. Cabañas could have had more than one rifle and there are conflicting accounts of his death.
@@gallo4796 people can have several rifles... I mean i got three and I´m no warlord.
My father was one of those who were disappeared only 3 months after I was born in ‘73. He had been at that Tlatelolco protest in ‘68 and had to leave Mexico City and go into hiding. The rest is history.
I’m so sorry.
Chale, I'm sorry for your loss :(
QDEP
Do u have his revolutionary zeal ?? Don't answer or many people would wish the same fate
Went for milk that same night and never came back.
The dirty war is often thought to initiate with the aftermath of the 1968 massacre but there had actually already been some important movements pre-1960s that were met with brutal oppression.
There was a major a railroad worker movement/strike in the 50s that partially paralyzed the nation and was of course beaten down by the government. The rail workers would again be an important part of the movements of 1968.
There were also the Jaramillistas in the state of Morelos led by Ruben Jaramillo, a former commander under Emiliano Zapata during the Mexican Revolution. The Jaramillistas fought in favor of land reform and campesino rights.
Ruben Jaramillo in fact was a big advocate of the Lazaro Cardenas administration and originally sought to work within the post-revolutionary political framework. It was with subsequent administrations that Jaramillo decided to take up arms as the conditions of the rural class became less and less of a concern for the elite.
Awesome comment
Also important to note, in the prelude to all of this, the Mexican government ordered the assassinations of people the government feared could pose a threat. People like Pancho Villia in addition to the killings of lesser known generals. In my fathers hometown, after the revolution a general made a homestead of sorts and brought along his soldiers, then sometime later he was assassinated by his cheaufer
Fascinating piece of Cold War history that I had never heard about. Thanks David.
I personally think (as a Mexican) that this chapter is often overlooked because the PRI's regime never fully embraced authoritarianism in the way the dictatorships of Chile, Brazil and Argentina did. They were able to just simply be quiet. The term "perfect dictatorship" was coined by a Peruvian analyst in the early 90's to describe Mexico. It took us all the way to 2000 to have a true, free and fair democratic transition of power.
People escaping from fascist dictatorships In Spain and Latin America were living safely In México, and they were very puzzled when they met a family member of a méxican guerrillero.
"Is your father a guerrilla fighter In México?! How Is that possible?"
As someone who grew up in the 2000s México, it is sad how schools barely touch on this stuff, it just brushed as oopsies by the government and barely touched on. Thank you for putting this video out there, feels a bit like current times
Prima!
Si, realmente es difícil encontrar algo respecto a este tema en los libros de historia que te daban en las escuelas. La mayoría son de libros que eran distribuidos por la SEP (Y evidentemente tienen su censura) y ni hablar de los medios que casi nunca tocan estos temas y cuando lo hacen omiten detalles
Esto no lo Sabia todo lo que paso con los movimientos armados y las atrocidades cometidas por el gobierno , es Bueno saber de esto ahora que nunca
@@mrkeykush693 es triste pero todos hemos escuchado que "quien no conoce su historia está condenado a repetirla" y la historia de México vaya que se repite. Muchos historiadores mexicanos han documendo muy bien la mayoría de nuestra historia moderna, lástima que sus trabajos son poco difundidos.
@@ivangarcia1327 Neoconseevatives....🤣🤣🤣
As much as the Dirty War still continues in Southern Mexico against indigenous groups, its pretty much just an extension of the same oppression that existed all the way back to colonial Mexico's founding. The names, titles, and structures might have changed periodically over the years, but the heavy handed control by a minority of those in power and the wealthy is a consistent attribute of Mexican (and pretty much all of Latin American) politics.
yes, i've come from the Tehuantepec Isthmus zone, and i still having lively viviencies about soldiers doing raids for capture "Zapatistas" in late 90's early 2000. Now the boogiemans are Centeramericans crossing to USA that many times Mexican Army delivers them to Narcos.
Down in Loxicha they're still living under absolute martial law, and anywhere outside of Central Oaxaca is ringed by Army and Navy checkpoints. It's still sadly very true, especially after the massacres at the 2006 Commune and the 2016 Nochixtlán massacre
@@detleffleischer9418 most of mexican army is station in that region. Narcos aren't a threat because they can be allies
What's going on in Oaxaca? I have land there apparently
@@detleffleischer9418 last time I was in Oaxaca was 2005, lots of military checkpoints but I thought that was just the norm . I often visited huajuapan.
I'm Mexican and it is even more curious the ambiguous ideological position of the PRI. Initially created as a center-left party and founded by former revolutionaries, the PRI even joined the Socialist International but in the 1990's declared itself as neo-liberal. Two of the most infamous PRI Presidents, Luis Echeverría and Jose Lopez Portillo, were closer to the Socialism than to Capitalism and tried to establish a Welfare State with rural support, but at the same time were the worst enemies of the guerrillas in Guerrero. Even more, they were always supported by the US government and the CIA.
As Dali would recall later, Mexico is the most surrealist country in the world.
Nowadays, our President Lopez Obrador argues to be in the "nationalist revolutionary" left-wing but he has actual conservative positions and his cabinet is formed by former PRI's dinosaurs.
@adeline rojas yes you're right, but it doesn't mean the PRI was socialist or liberal
Social democracy/ welfare states exist precisely as a bribe to workers in order to stop actual socialist policies, now that the USSR is gone there is no pressure to make such bribes, thus life is getting worse in those nations
@@adelinerojas7806 there are reasons behind that, US involvement, treats of not recognizing the government if it didn't signed an abusive treaty, known as Bucarelli's treaty that basically limited most of the development of the country
You know they install puppet governments around the world for there use not hard to see it happens in Mexico too
Don’t forget Cárdenas who identified himself as a socialist. He was one of the best best presidents we’ve had.
Mexico: people seem to revolting that we are hosting the 1968 Olympics. Let's host the 1970 World Cup too!
Yes!!! Thank you for covering my country.
I am extremely surprised by this material. I had no idea about something like the Mexican Dirty War and I didn't know that Operation Condor also involved countries like Mexico, I was convinced that the operation itself was in these countries of the so-called Southern Cone and did not take place in other Latin American countries. The only thing I knew about guerrilla warfare in Mexico was 1994 and the famous Zapatista uprising.
Operation Condor itself generally focused on Southern Cone dictatorships, true, but that's mostly a purely administrative or operational distinction. The treatment of the rest of of Latin America during the Cold War was near-identical, it was just done under different names (and often looped back into Operation Condor, such as many torturers and death squads active in Central America having been originally trained by South Cone dictatorships during Condor)
@@juanjuri6127 the moonies and the message cults are tied to the death squads
Even then the Zapatistas were tame compared to all the other revolutionary forces that sprang up at the same time, one in Guerrero managed to kidnap high level political figures, and the EPR (Popular Revolutionary Army) staged multiple armed attacks against oil pipelines, Army bases, banks, the Federal Electoral Tribunal, Congress, the PRI headquarters, ambushed multiple Federal Judicial Police, Military Police, Army, and Navy patrols across Oaxaca, and in one instance staged a massive strike on all of these targets in like 5 states, with the biggest one being a full-on assault on a Naval base in Huatulco. It's the reason why parts of Oaxaca are STILL under military rule/martial law.
Operation condor, operation Northwoods, operation PBSUCCESS, operation mongoose, operation cyclone
@@detleffleischer9418 yes that was Lucio Cabañas partido de los pobres who kidnapped Ruben Figueroa Figueroa, a huge scandal, as he was the designated candidate of the president to be the governor of Guerrero, back then democracy was led by the president directly, as he handpicked his successor and had to approve senate, deputies and state governor candidates, who in turn were shoe-ins for the post. In reality it wasn't force but a political reform on 1979 that allowed left wing and right wing opposition to reach the lower chamber, the anti guerrilla forces as the video says were badly equipped and badly paid, so they saw in drugs a chance to earn cash, the DFS became a drug dealer protection office, and in fact was disbanded in the 80's after it's commander became involved in the killing of a journalist.
On the coast near Ensenada , Baja California, Mexico there is a luxury housing development. I last saw this place in the 1990s. As you approach it in the car you drove from California, USA, you see welcoming banners, bunting, pretty houses behind a terra cotta wall. But if you drive on past the entrance you come to the other end, where painted on the rough unplastered wall scrawled with a paint brush, the name of the local major or some other military rank and the threat that this community was under his protection. If you visit Mexico as an American, or Canadian, it's wonderful, the people are wonderful, I spent part of Christmas day 2005 walking amongst families on the beach in Acapulco; but if you look a bit closer there's a permanent war against humanity going on. Now it's mostly the narcos, but the 43 desaparecido students in Guerrero in 2014 show that at least parts of the government are still very dangerous. When I visited China over the years seeing it grow wealthy I often had the thought, this is just like Mexico; hard working intelligent people, incredible potential. There were once more billionaires (US$) in Mexico than in the US. When those successful business people tried entering the U.S. market - they failed. No 'connection' no wealth.
the 43 were barely students, protest in Mexico became some sort of bussines. You put people for rallys and protest on demand for money, many politic partys use them as cannon foodder to give ilussion that they have people´s back up, specially those related to populist , authoritarian old wings of PRI, disguised as leftists. Current president used them very much in his way to presidency. Specifically the 43 were confused by narcos, they thoutgh they were a rival faction and killed them, by the way, local authorities participated (they were postulated by current president)
Please remember nothing absolutely nothing of that happened without the blessing of the USA
Things are worst now without it :P
Kudos for pronouncing "guerrillas" correctly. something most Americans pronounce like the great ape. It tends to lead to confusion amongst the less language oriented.
I had never heard about Operation Condor until now. Thank you for bring it up. Can you expound on it in a future video?
US replacing leftist leaders with military and right wing dictatorships
Behind the Bastards podcast has a series on Condor and the World Anti-Communist League
Very interesting. And David's Spanish pronounciation is great.
Really good episode, interesting and overlooked topic! Your Spanish was pretty good too. I hope next episode on Latin America you can pronounce them even better. Like Aguirre, the u is silent there, and names like Vásquez are stressed on the first syllable (that’s why the accent is there), so VASquez, PErez, BoLIvar, etc
my grandpa participated in that war, in the side of the government, he take the life of twenty eight peoples and disable another more like federal officer, he never regret his actions until his death
Fr sounds like q bad person someone who kills innocent people by the orders of someone who’s not even his race is a coward
now that the founder of the current iteration communist movement in the philippines just passed away. can we have a video on the martial law period and marcos I regime?
Also interestingly, the PRI in many ways is actually a left-leaning party (at least certain factions I suppose). Not only does it have "revolutionary" in its name and was created in the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution, it is also a member of the Socialist International and it was the party that gave asylum to Leon Trotsky after he was kicked out of the USSR.
The PRI is whatever it needs to be to win power quite frankly.
You could say that the last left wing leader of the pri was Lázaro Cárdenas. After him, the pri has been a right wing party, especially in the 80's with the neoliberalism. But ultimately, as one answer said, the pri is whatever it needs to be to win
Any revolution that succeeds inevitably becomes the reactionary oppressor it replaced.
@@obsidianjane4413 Certain (usually bad) elements of the previous regime, yes. And typically a lot worse than said previous regime.
@@coldwar45 Yes, in the 60's Lopez Mateos and Echeverria called themselves "Communists", but were also CIA Agents and actively suppresed Left-leaning movements.
Thank you for making this video. Even among those of us who are interested in the history of the dirty wars in Latin America, Mexico's dirty war is often neglected
The war was dirty from both sides. The guerrillas kidnapped and killed people too.
But the lesser of the two evils was the government, Mexico is way better than Cuba (what those guerrillas wanted to become).
PRI was a classic ex of the socialist/corporate state with total control of all institutions. Actual free enterprise was prevented, except at the smallest level. While I was living in summer of 1969 in rural Hidalgo State a nearby village had not voted for the PRI, and then all of their fields were burned down
Socialist state? If you think socialism is when the government does stuff/ higher taxes you're not very attuned to it
How was it socialist???
@@g1g4_ch4d7 the leaders typically had a 'socialist' ideology (the state should control the means of production), but they allow corps to exist but regulated by the state. Also, leaders take a cut of the business and get rich
@@johnl5316 you don’t need to be be socialist to nationalize one’s resources though??
@@g1g4_ch4d7 people gave their own definitions, obviously.. Mexico did nationalize all the oil and minerals. The government owns, or used to, all the newsprint (they would refuse to sell newsprint to periodicals that irritated them). The gov used the police to shut down political opposition.
Glad to see this being talked about. My grandfather worked in the government (Secretary of Agriculture) during this time, while my parents were both born in 1970 and '72 (the "height" of the PRI's repression and the Dirty War). The founder of the school I currently study in was murdered by the Liga Comunista in 1973. Here in Mexico we just focus on Tlatelolco and Halconazo as the only repression, but ask anyone living in 1960s-1980s Mexico, they'll know the real repression. It even outlived the Cold War with the Ejercito Zapatista in 1994. IMO, the Dirty War lasted from the end of the Revoltion (c.19717) all the way through the ousting of the PRI in 2000. As a Mexican born during the PAN, I can't tell it. Just through my grandparents and parents. But as someone who first-hand lives the Drug War, I can say it just feels like the Dirty War's extended cut. Heck, it's the Dirty War, just as violent, even though this time around it is "slightly" more covered and talked about.
Please make a video about the 1964 military coup in Brasil
It is interesting that you call the PRI "right-leaning" when it was socialist in ideology and social democrat in execution, to say it somehow. The fact that they are to the right of Cuban Communist and relied of the USA does not necessary make them "right-leaning". In fact, when the PRI lose their power after more than 70 years in government, they lose to the PAN, a proper right-leaning party. In this specific issue, the video seems a bit oversimplified.
That being said, solid video overall. Keep Latin American videos coming, please! Very nice Spanish pronunciation, btw.
They constantly supressed worker and student movements, and well the reliance on the US Which is the chief of anti worker power does say something about their ideology, would you care to name the socialist policies they enacted?
Well, the PRI ended up being right-wing, since the 80's and way before loosing against PAN the PRI was already a neo-liberal party.
it was Left then turned right
@@jaimeebg it could be argued that Salinas was the first center right president. But there was still a huge corrupt left leaning movement within the party that ended up moving to Morena
@@AGRS22 it could be argued that the las left-leaning president was Lopez Mateo, after him the PRI was a strange mix more like centre. However, since De la Madrid the PRI started officially moving to the right,and Salinas was downright neo-liberal. I ignore the current role of all those old people as almost none of them are key players anymore (Bartlett), unlike the USA.
Thank you so much for this content. Even in law school this sort of content is extremely barren, and its notable because most of the current Human Rights Law treaties and conventions that are binding in Mexico trace their roots to the Dirty War. The existence of the Internal Normative System of Indigenous self-governance was born this way, the 2006 APPO rebellion/Oaxaca Commune was inspired by the PdlP, the Zapatistas and the EPR attacked the government after the Army massacred multiple indigenous civilians in many towns (Aguas Blancas and Acteal Massacres), and most importantly of all, one disappearance would end up being brought before the Inter-American Court (think of the Supreme Court but instead of exercising authority over a country it has actual binding authority over the entirety of Latin America) that would force Mexico to radically reform the Constitution to allow for human rights laws to be enforceable on Mexican soil.
So thanks to Radilla Pacheco v. Mexico, the state implemented a reform to the Constitution forcing international treaties to be basically on par and have the same legal authority as the Constitution itself, which has been a slow but improving situation, even despite funding and institutional setbacks.
So much happened in those decades that still resonate today. The face of Lucio Cabañas helped transform the national teachers union into a mass left movement, going so far as to rebel against the government in the 2006 Commune, the 2016 Nochixtlan Massacre, and even now. This also was the reason why the Ayotzinapa mass disappearances happened too. Since the Army and police are distrustful of activists and teachers in the first place, and because of their role in collaborating with drug cartels in the area, they were instrumental in carrying out the disappearances of the students themselves.
The previously mentioned EPR is still active here in Oaxaca, enough that parts of the countryside are still living under martial law, especially the Southern Sierra region of Loxicha.
And im sorry for the long comment, its just not everyday this sort of history is even discussed, much less when in the context of politics and government or law, since most of the members of the currently ruling Morena party are former members of the PRI, including the President himself, which is why its not even close to convenient for them to bash the PRI and expose their deeds during the war (and I say this as a card-holding member of the Party), theyre so anticommunist they even omit the name and deeds of Lazaro Cardenas from Party records because the man was an avowed Socialist himself.
Great video, a very poor understood topic outside and even inside of Mexico. And just a thing that I would have liked the video to adress: The weird relationship of the PRI with the left, lets just remember that the PRI was born in the end of the mexican revolution with some early leftist ideas like the "reparto agrario" and "seguridad social", and that they also capture and release Fidel Castro when he was on Mexico (Fidel never spoke bad about the PRI when alive for that reason) and always support the Castro regime in Cuba. In the same manner some PRI oligarchs and even expresidents (like Lázaro Cárdenas) visited the CCP regularly for being messangers betwen México city and the Kremlin. So it was very difficult for the urban guerrilla more in the path of the soviet union to find commitment when the CCP where in good terms with the PRI, and the rural guerrilla were more a Zapatist-Jaramillist style flavoured with comunist ideas
Exactly. PRI is socialist democrat. They simply didn’t want to give up the reigns of power to anyone left or right of them.
Tienes algún recurso l fuentes para informarme de la vida de Lázaro cárdenas y su asociación conos gobiernos socialistas? Es difícil encontrar algo en internet
@@DanielGarcia-kw4ep Solo yo se que se pronunció a favor de la revolución de Castro, el apoyo a los españoles Repúblicanos y que lo persiguió la CIA y la DFS.
@@gelasiodecaravantes9361 si te persigue la CIA entonces debiste hacer algo bueno. Al menos al momento de actuar, nadie sabía lo que la revolución cubana iba a terminar gestando, la misma CIA le dió dinero a Castro pero los abandonaron y se fueron con la URSS 😬
Min 12.31 the picture is from Argentina, i soppose from the times of the "military junta". You can track the image to Argentina by the plate of the truck and the inscription in the truck´s door. "(poli)cia fereral argentina". As always thank you for a great video and investigation.
*suppose
Dice claramente "across in America"🙄
Very interesting, you should do one about the last Argentinian Dictatorship
Thank you for this video , which is quite accurate about those years. I would just like to point out that the PRI is the ' Partido Revolucionario Institucional ' - " Institutional Revolutionary Party ".
New fav history channel
Now you got to do farc and eln in Colombia.
ay, dios mio. Que complicado!
@@TheColdWarTV that is the fun part about it
I had a rough idea of this stuff from Narcos Mexico
The Halconazo (5:54) is the background of Cuarón's movie Roma, with Cleo's boyfriend being part of Los Halcones
One thing I'm surprised is not mentioned here is the Liga 23 de Septiembre's involvement in the death of Eugenio Garza Sada
I love how you point out without hesitation at the PRI as the guilty in this moment of Mexico's history
Excellent documentary brother I’m as a Mexican National I can say that I learned some things today that I didn’t know before .
My very own special opinion in La guerra sucia is that all of the rural and urban guerrillas failed to accomplished their goals (Besides from the EZLN movement in the 90s) because they had little to no support of the general mexican public. And let me explain why.
In 60s and 70s the political opression was brutal, and that's what made the urban guerrillas to be created. A lot of survivors of Tlatelolco and Halconazo massacres joined the urban guerrillas as la Liga 23 de S. or La Liga Espartaco. But that's not the point.
The working class in the 70s were born between 30s and 40s, which was a very particular time. Lázaro Cardenas and subsequent presidents had finally stabillized the country after a bloody civil war (Our very particular social-democratic revolution) in 1910s and a feeling of progress was being achieved. At the time, Our revolution seemed succesful and ideologically speaking, the country was in the middle of two doctrines, the statized economy and industry and a soft introduction of free markets.
Soooooo, to the general public (The middle class, generally responsible for creating revolutions) another armed revolution would only destroy what 30 years stabilization created. Also was the fact that PRI had chosen a side in the bigger scenario (Along the USA).
Particullary speaking of urban guerrillas, they were infested by DFS officials (Mexican CIA at that time) and they were poorly structured. This caused massive failed plans and that the mexican elite used this group indirectly to strike political rivals (Search for Garza Sada's murder, caused by a failed kidnapping, who was the greatest bussinessman at that time, killed by la Liga, instrumentalized by the mexican president Luis echeverría, who knew a year prior the failed kidnapping was going to happen and did nothing). Also was the fact that the guerrilleros hoped that the working class joined the movement, but sadly didn't.
Speaking of rural guerrillas, sadly, in Mexico's deep country, inequality has always been a thing, from the mayan rebellion against the yucatan peninsula landlords, to the greatest mexican revolutionary Zapata, a fight against the evil men in México's country is still fought today.
La guerra sucia showed the repressive, unequal and violent political system that Mexico had those days, and helped to the downfall of PRI at 1994.
Great job on this video 💯☯️☯️☯️
This is the main reason Mexicans lost the right to have weapons. There was an ambush the military and the police had against students in a restaurant, the students were being massacred by the government forces, but some students with 22 pistols managed to kill 6 soldiers. This brought stricter gun laws in Mexico.
@@Miguel-iv5ft you are correct, but we still have to ask a lot of permission from the government. Defeating the main reason we had that right.
Fr you have any more stories? Someone told me at that time they would take young men by force from guerrero to fight lucio en la Sierra a lot of them didn’t come back no one wanted to be a soldier to the point they had to take young men away from there home by force and made them soldiers
@@gallo4796 not really, I didn’t live through that time.
I grew up Mexico In the late 90s early 2000. I was seein the death of what the old socialist ways that worked. The more I learn the more in common Mexico has with the USSR. I do miss the Mexico i grew up in.
the USSR worked? then why is it gone?
Socialism is cancer
@@JorgeRodriguez-mr8nz absolutely Mexico has always been a cancerous socialist state.
Funny thing: the current president wants to have that power.
at times like this, its good to know the locations of every military family members.
Interesting stuff
This was when firearms were greatly restricted in Mexico.
Pistol packen |}eaners plus Tequila = someone is a has|}eaner
No point when they were against CIA sponsored war criminals, and today Mexican military trained Narcos. You can’t win against money and powerful POSs
Still salty about it
The 1968 Mexico City protest saw more than 5000 'disappeared' and buried outside of Mexico City, in the desert. My sources are three witnesses to the event. One was a police officer there and his friend. They both resigned after the second event. The second was a Doctor In Training and her sister who were nursing victims in secret. Los halcones were terrible commandos.
I knew the first gentleman and his friend briefly in the '90s, as he was a nightclub worker. The second landed up being my dentist. Her sister was a friend who ran an internet cafe I used. All of the lived in Tijuana while I lived there, off and on, from 1985 to 2015.
Vazquez was allegedly assassinated by the government.
All of these people voluntarily gave me the information, over time. The dentist dragged victims into a shop and was technically required to report all injured to the police. Since no 'official' treatment was done, no reports were filed.
When the POLICE STATION was transferred, the old station was bulldozed in the middle of the night, while groups worked at turning it into a museum. This surprised everyone in Tijuana, as some noted that something was inside, never meant to be seen again.
Unrelated to Mexico City events, but interesting as this happened in the '90s.
It’s good and important to learn about this period of Mexican history.
We will never forget the humiliations that the United States has inflicted on us.
mexico has had 11 civil wars in 200 years......i'm thinking this is mostly your own fault for not having an electoral college
@@patrickdunning6886 mexico is a mostly white country. by law it's illegal to be black or dark skinned there in the constitution.....but they still blame us somehow for their own internal failures
@@007kingifrit Curiously, many of those conflicts were sponsored by the United States.
@@margarettoellieniellieni5087 no they weren't you tool. you just wish they were.
more importantly if it is that easy to sponsor civil wars in your country....then YOUR COUNTRY has a problem
@@patrickdunning6886 they hate America with a passion.. the same guys commenting on this video be on their spanish mexican news channels hating on America 24/7 on the comment section .. and sounds like they live in the states since they speak good english
The PRI was like today's United Russia Party.
I like your videos keep it up
Fun fact, there was a "dirty war" in Spain between special forces units known as GAL's and ETA's terrorist. But mainly the Gal's kill and torture inocent civilian people.
México necesita ser educado con unas 5 bombas atómicas porque los terremotos NO han hecho nada en la conciencia de sus ciudadanos
🤨🤨
México never had a right wing oligarchy, PRI was a center left wing party.
Es bueno que menciones este tema que normalmente suele pasar desapercibido en la historia de mi país, supongo que esto se debe a la censura que se manejó durante años y evitar temas relacionados con el comunismo, masacres por parte del ejército, rebeldes, etc.
Cuando era niño recuerdo que en los libro de la primaria apenas se mencionaba la Crisis de Los Misiles y la caída de la Unión Soviética. Gracias al algoritmo de TH-cam he logrado ver este vídeo y aprender un poco mas de la historia de mi país durante la Guerra Fría, te agradezco el tiempo que te tomaste por hacer esto y así que se revele la historia como sucedió y no como nos la quisieron hacer creer.
Please don’t ignore Mexico’s soft power - Tacos, Chili con carne, Corona, Placido Domingo, Frida….
Plácido Domingo was born in Spain.
Chilli con carne its not from Mexico, its from United States, Placido Domingo its spanish
Corona tastes like piss
Would it be more accurate that the US supported operation condor? Since it seems like the main initiative came from the south American militaries
History never repeats. History is always the same.
It's nice that you are covering a somewhat obscure conflict, but I feel it's presented somewhat unbalanced. Too much attention was focused on what the PRI did but not what the guerillas did, the PRI was horrible but the guerillas were not "good" either. They kidnapped and killed civilians, charged extortion money and many became druglords. The state of Guerrero is still one of the poorest and most dangerous in the country due in part to groups linked to those guerillas commiting a lot of crime. "
No way the PRI was a right-wing party. Actually, it's a member of the international socialist.
Mexico under the PRI was even the first country to give international recognition to the Cuban revolutionary government.
Plus, those guerrillas wanted to install a government way more tyrannical than the PRI itself, just look at their methods and the way they admired the Cuban Revolution.
Very interesting
Excellent video 📹
'..mass disappeared students '
I wonder if any dirty Sanchez’s were given in this dirty war
I can't wait until you cover the central American crisis
Institutional.... not industrial
Tlatelolco 68 was our euromaidan moment
3:19 oh no like ive never seen that before
A bit disappointed about the video. Cold War politics were relevant but not the core aspects that explain the conflict here. Painting the PRI as being almost a US puppet is utterly wrong. Painting it as a Righ-Wing party is also utterly wrong. The PRI rose as a left wing party with Cardenas, but mainly it was a true coalition party between leading sectors of Mexican society that wanted peace after the Mexican Revolution (and after almost 100 years of non stop conflict after Mexicos Independence, with the brief interlude of Porfirio Diaz Dictatorship). The PRI had both right-wing and left-wing sectors, liberals, socialists, and many fascists (especially before the 40s). That was what made PRI stable as a political regime. Representatives of all relevant sectors were included. And all of them enjoyed economic and political rents (Syndicate leaders and Businessmen cartels, Northerners and Southerners. Urban dwellers and Rural dwellers). Mexican Guerillas were limited to fringe groups in poorer southern regions for the most part. And later to young college students who were more idealistic and had not been coopted by the system. That is what matters the most in explaining the Mexican Dirty War. Cold War politics were tangential to the core problems.
He’s right tho they there puppets.. republicans and democrats are the same in other countries they use different names
They left wings of course they will have a bias
Operation thunderbolt the epic flight 139 hostage rescue in Uganda my sugestion of next episode
"The Industrial Revolutionary Party" XD
Why are the videos on your playlists posted in the wrong ordr
But, the victims of cartels are far more numerous. 35,000 people per year. We can't blame pri for this.
We can blame them too, as the left the CIA operate here and give money and weapons to the cartel
Can you talk about the guerrilla movement in Venezuela? Nice work
No Mention of Diaz Ordaz
You butchered the word "GUERRILLA" so bad I had no clue what you were talking about until the 3rd time you said it.
Mild correction, but I believe this is more so a case of all of the Americas during down the barrel of the Monroe doctrine. All of the Americas is the United States is backyard.
Why don't you trust America? They promote freedom!
*America:*
You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.
The US didn't create the corrupt and repressive systems around the world, all it could do is try to make sure that they were "friendly" ones.
Just like no amount of aid or even direct intervention could really change a culture as it discovered in places like El Salvador, Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc. neither could lectures about democracy and human rights persuade those who couldn't or wouldn't apply them.
What's crazy is that the PRI party where left leaning.
So what this about ? Anybody break it down for me
At the 12:00 mark the unibrow on that lad is astounding 😳
Isn´t "Luis Cabañas" Is LUCIO CABAÑAS
Yes we call them chairos, unfortunately now we got a chairo president and things are moving worse than ever.
I used to be lot further left than I am now. Twenty years ago, I thought America, my country, had an evil foreign policy for things like the Bay of Pigs, the Dirty War, Operation Condor, supporting the Contra death squads, etc. But when I look at the world today, and I see the state of the communist and former communist countries vs. the state of the countries that's governments were on our side during the Cold War, and I realize that what we did, while maybe not ideal, was FAAAAAR better than the alternative of doing nothing. We are not batting 1000, but on the whole, US intervention has done a HELL of a lot more good for the world than harm.
Every country should decide their own destiny regardless of how good or bad it is. You said it was good, but most of the times it was help no one was asking for and did more harm to us in the long run. Your comment was very imperialistic pal, very funny of you to imply you're still sympathetic to the left.
@@AlexVanChezlaw I don't care what label you want to give me. I think when you compare North Korea and South Korea, mainland China and Taiwan, Ruzzia and the Baltics, my argument is made.
Yeah, I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure that Guatemala, Vietnam, Angola and Iran were far worse off after the United States intervened there.
@@extrahistory8956 Thank you for bringing that up. I always love the chance to educate people on this topic in particular. Because I was like you once. I was raised by hippies, one of whom was drafted to serve in Vietnam, so I was brought up believing that the war in Vietnam was wrong and what we did there was horrible. But then I looked at the most basic evidence right in front of my face -- South Korea and Taiwan -- and I wised up. I'm now happy to pass on to you what I realized...
South Korea and Taiwan are two of the freest and most prosperous nations in the world. Their scores in political and press freedom and economic prosperity consistently beat the European average. And both of those countries were born out of the ashes of civil wars against communists, and both countries have communist doppelgangers right next door. North Korea is a dystopia by all measurements, and mainland China, though somewhat more prosperous than the PRK, is an Orwellian nightmare. There is absolutely no reason to believe that if an anti-communist government had continued to exist operating out of Saigon, it wouldn't be just as free and prosperous as that in Seoul and Taipei. In fact, probably more so, because South Vietnam is far greater in natural resources than South Korea or Taiwan.
So understanding all of the above, it's easy to see that the true tragedy of that era isn't that America WENT TO Vietnam, it's that we LEFT Vietnam. Indeed, turning our backs on the people of the Republic of Vietnam was America's most shameful foreign policy decision of the 20th Century.
And what spurred me to this realization? An ex-girlfriend's parents. She was born and raised in Orange County, but her parents came from South Vietnam. I went to their house, and I saw the yellow flag with the three red stripes tacked to the wall right next to the framed portrait of (GASP!) Richard Nixon... The fact that my dad was a 'Nam vet immediately endeared me to them, and after a couple conversations... well, my opinion didn't change right away, but it did start me on a process off learning some new things. And that's my experience regarding what the people of Vietnam think about the Vietnam War. (And no, I AM NOT a fan of Richard Nixon now, I just now realize he was a complex individual and not easy to put in a box. You should watch the BioGraphics video here on TH-cam about him. Simon nails it.)
Anyway, I hope I've given you something to think about. Thank you very much.
@@benjauron5873Are going to ignore that the government of South Vietnam was despotic and petty? That they didn't promote freedom of religion? That the United States also violated the neutrality of Cambodia and Laos by bombing them back to the stone age? That the use of agent orange devasted the ecological and agricultural landscape of an entire region? Also, I eager to learn about how Operation PBSuccess helped out Guatemala or how the 1954 Iranian Coup helped out the Iranian respectively.
How come I'm not surprised that the US was behind all this?
Same for the Caribbean and Central America the US involment should be continue to be called out
Shout out to the Federal Security Directorate (D.F.S.)
Crazy how there is no mention of this is k-12 American History classes.
I only first heard of this until recently.
I can only imagine why….
because history is huge and we don't have time to cover everything everywhere. especially a backwater war of very low consequence such that even americans at the time didn't know it happened? seriouslly 3,000 dead is nothing
You used pictures from different countries. Check that.
A lot of Mexico's problems made a lot more sense to me when I found out what PRI stood for.
PRI and Diaz ruined Mexico big time
@@mrkilo-g8794 search what a puppet government is makes your realize who pulls the strings.. also Mexican presidents have studied in the same university’s as usa presidents makes you think
It’s still going on, most of it mutated to the “war on drugs” but there are still some remnants that are pure classic dirty as seen during Enrique Peña’s mandate - the one who got thousands of people railings against him because Ayotzinapa, to mention the most well known. But, what do you know, rich Europeans and Americans love to “invest” in Mexico because they love our beaches sooooo much…
Amlo killing more journalists than Peña shows nothing has changed. But it bothers you that people invest in Mexico despite our failed governments?
Si simon
It is not the "Industrial Revolutionary Party" it is the "Institutional Revolutionary Party". PRI is actually consdiered the "liberal" party of the two major parties with PAN being the more right leaning party. PRI actually did not even embrace capitalism until the 1980s (due to new found oil wealth) when it sort of moved center right and the liberals, socialist and labor organizations broke with it. During the time frame of the 'dirty war" PRI was very much leftist, anti-church and more socialist than anything else, but it was too corrupt for the reforms to ever take hold. In watching your show, I can tell you get all your information from Oliver Stone or such other conspiracy theory sources. PRI in the 1970s and early 80s was very much leftist, they changed when they started to embrace free market capitalism in the later 1980s, and frankly I believe they grew fearful that Reagan might do something rash if he thought they were too far leftwing. Mexico, under PRI was one of only two Western Hemisphere nations to keep diplomatic ties with Cuba after the missle crisis and kept them throughout the Cold War. Until the mid-80s or so, Mexico even supported the Sandanista Revolution in Nicaragua, its new found oil wealth at the time had it thinking it could have a larger influence in Latin America than the USA and since PRI was born in a revolution, it often supported revolutionaries throughout Latin America. Having spent a lot of time in Mexico during the 1980s when the political landscape was changing and being a supporter of PAN, I can tell you know not about what you are talking about, I mean hell, you don't even know what PRI stands for. I still spend a lot of time in Mexico, just got back from there last month.
Your reply is what happens when you have little method of socioeconomic analysis and instead become a liberal saying that PRI grew "fearful" of Reagan while that's not how political economy works at all. Your statements of history is true, but your personal analysis as to why is false
@@lilfoward1832 I know from being down there in the 1980s that many were looking at how the US under Reagan was acting in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatamala, Grenada and regions south with regards to leftist revolutionary movements. Coupled with the "war on drugs", many in Mexico were worried we (the US) would once again intervene in Mexico. The "Pinche Gringos" to the north have always been the "big boogey-man" for Mexico and the "Reagan doctrine" which differed from the "Truman doctrine" by seeking to actively roll back communism and leftist governments did cause concern for many in Mexico. In Chihuahua, the one state that PAN had strength at the time, you could see the protests and counter protests where that was an issue at the time. PAN wanted closer ties with the US, both economically and militarily.
Pensé que la historia de mi país estaba hasta las rodillas de mugre, ahora sé que está hasta el cuello
The description of this conflict sounds to be slanted to be pro-communist.
Ok did I hear that right? does he have a Madrid accent when speaking spanish?
Operación Cóndor truly hit indigenous communities the hardest. This is why us native people can’t let others forget. EZLN ❤️🔥
And thanks to this Commies were crushed in Mexico.
However, there are some points to take, PRI was a leftist party, conservative, but leftist. In fact, they still have a lot of power today, as another party, MORENA, which takes everything PRI had, but something PRI had in those years is that they were efficent, ruthless, but efficent to keep the country moving. Something this guy should point is that in that time our economy was mostly statized.
In 2000's Fox tried to uncover the records of the dirty war, but also at that time, a fire destroyed most of the documents, leaving the history of what happenes totally lost.
I personally think cartels were created to destroy every attempt of insurrection in the country. But today they are just unstopable.
pendejo
I'm a Mexican American born in the US but raised in Mexican border town for 15 years before moving back to the US, my parents made me born in the US so I could go there if I wanted to, they said they remember the regime of El PRI until the 2000s and yet people didn't learn and elect president Peña Nieto I was just a child during Peña Nieto and even then I knew he was a corrupt bastard
You should also cover the zapatistas
the thing you need to understand about mexico is mexico has no electoral college and thus becomes corrupt with one party rule very easily
lamentablemente laa verdad
Peña was actually a pretty decent president especial compared to the current one
@@AGRS22 tell me your not mexican without telling me your not mexican,Pena did nothing under Obrador the peso went up and during the pandemic the peso did not lose any value Pena did not do shit
Thanks US, thanks for training a "los Halcones" and "los Zetas" pretty fukin cool!
Not America's fault that Mexico is a narco state that has millions to pay off ex-US soldiers to train up cartel members..
and Los Zetas used to be special forces- they were trained by the US to fight against the cartels.. Not America's fault they switched sides lmao..
But Mexico like many other countries, blames everything and anything on the US.
The rest was done by us Mexicans. No country progresses until it stops looking for scapegoats.
the tlatelolco massacre was done by a small guard, nicknamed "Olimpia", because of the coming olimpics at that time.
Coño this is some insightful shit