Notes

Acknowledgements: This essay was written with thanks to Plinio Ávila for granting me an interview at his Mexico City studio, after a long day of print-making, and to investigative journalist Susana Zavala, who took a day off work to bring me to Plinio’s exhibit at the 1968 memorial during my dissertation fieldwork. Gary Kafer provided key feedback and editing for the publication of this review.

1. Aguayo, Sergio. La Charola: Una Historia de Los Servicios de Inteligencia En México. Grijalbo, 2001. P. 36. [Return to page 1]

2. Avila, P. “BIO HM.” Fundación Humberto Márquez. https://www.fundacionmarquez.com/copy-of-bio-1

3. Agee, Philip. Inside the company: CIA Diary. Stonehill Publishing Company, 1975.

4. Pensado, Jaime M., and Enrique C. Ochoa, eds. México Beyond 1968: Revolutionaries, Radicals, and Repression During the Global Sixties and Subversive Seventies. University of Arizona Press, 2018. p. 3.

5. Aguayo, Sergio. La Charola: Una Historia de Los Servicios de Inteligencia En México. Grijalbo, 2001. P. 68.

6. My interview with the artist, May 23, 2023, Mexico City. 
7. “Así es la Dirección Federal de Seguridad” film, dir. Alfonso Cabrera Morales, 1981-1982. The film is available online on El Universal newspaper’s YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USr-CFgmRtc

8. Pensado, Jaime, and Enrique Ochoa. México Beyond 1968:Revolutionaries, Radicals, and Repression During the Global Sixties and Subversive Seventies. The University of Arizona Press, 2018, p. 8-9.

9. Keller, Renata. Mexico’s Cold War: Cuba, the United States, and the Legacy of the Mexican Revolution. Cambridge Studies in US Foreign Relations. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2015, p. 26.

10. Interview with Plinio Ávila. May 23rd, 2023, Mexico City. 

11. Ibid.

12. One such example is the Federal Security Directorate’s file on Fidencio Benítez Ramírez, a member of the Peasants’ Justice Brigade. His reports note Maoist propaganda among his books, as well as an underlined shooting manual. His card also includes a brief field note: “He said he works as a construction worker, but he does not speak like one.” AGN DFS Ficheros, Exp 100-10-1-73, H54, L44. Available on Archivos de la represión https://archivo.archivosdelarepresion.org/?page=files&directory=Ficheros
/PDLP_militantes/Benitez_Ramirez_Fidencio

13. AGN, DFS, box A20 27/103, exp. 5-33-53, L. 2.

14. Pensado, Jaime M. Rebel Mexico: Student unrest and authoritarian political culture during the long sixties. Stanford University Press, 2013, p. 11.

15. Márgara Millán’s review essay published in Jump Cut 61, “Visualities and the City: feminizing public spaces through art and media in post 1968 Mexico City,” mentions this archival collection as a documentary source of the espionage that feminist marches faced in 1968. [Return to page 2]

16. Padilla, Tanalís, and Louise E. Walker. "In the archives: history and politics." Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research 19.1 (2013): 3.

17. Interview with the artist, May 23, 2023, Mexico City. 

18. Ibid.

19. Lambert-Beatty, C. “Make Believe: Parafiction or Implausibility,” October, Vol. 129 (Summer, 2009), p. 51-84.

20. Ibid.

21. Avila, P. Contra la imagen. 2021.

22. CIA Weekly Summary, Students Stage Major Disorder in Mexico, August 2, 1968, Secret. Available online at the George Washington University NSA Archive at https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB10/docs/doc17.pdf. White House memorandum, Mexican Riots - Extent of Communist Involvement  (CIA memorandum, October 5, 1968 and FBI cable, October 5, 1968 attached), October 5, 1968, Secret, Rostow to LBJ. Available online at https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB10/docs/doc18.pdf . Also see Doyle, K. “Tlatelolco Massacre: Declassified U.S. Documents on Mexico and the Events of 1968.” https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB10/nsaebb10.htm