Spectacular Mexico: Design, Propaganda, and the 1968 Olympics
- Feb 23, 2020
- 1 min read
★★☆☆☆
Held in Mexico City, the 1968 Summer Olympics was the first to be hosted by a Latin American country. Mexico was, in many ways, still a developing country, but in the decades leading up to Mexico ’68, it had gone through a major period of economic growth that would come to be known as the Mexican Miracle. And throughout the sixties, Mexico was an active, often audacious, participant in world’s fairs, leveraging the annual expositions to announce its arrival as an economic, political, and cultural player on the international stage.
Image building is both highly political and carefully curated. Mexico’s approach was no exception, and there is a fascinating story to be found in the confluence of economics, politics, and design surrounding the lead-up to, and aftermath of, the 1968 Summer Olympics. Sadly, it’s nowhere to be found in Spectacular Mexico. Author Luis M. Castañeda’s arid prose thoroughly drained the life from a tale I expected to overflow with it. The result was a spectacularly dull slog that I should have abandoned before finishing the introduction. Ever the eternal optimist, I instead suffered through nearly half its length in the hopes that the reward would outweigh the price of admission—a wager that never pays. Consider yourself warned.
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