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Abstract
The Atoms for Peace initiative was announced by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on 8 December 1953. The ways in which Eisenhower’s proposal was interpreted, adapted and reshaped by different countries allows us to understand the various meanings and uses of nuclear technologies, particularly in Third World countries. Mexico’s version of the initiative was related to its modernizing nationalism, a distaste for overt geopolitical alignment and nuclear weapons, and an intermittent commitment of the federal government with nuclear technologies. These ingredients eventually led to the promotion of the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean, known as the Treaty of Tlatelolco (TT) signed in Mexico City in 1967. The TT made Latin America the first nuclear weapons-free populated region in the world, thus positioning Mexico in the new geopolitical nuclear order through a denuclearization discourse and a policy of non-engagement with nuclear technologies.
Acknowledgements
We want to thank Jessica Wang, John Krige and assistants to the Dark Matters conferences (Barcelona 2013 and Vancouver 2014) for their useful comments on previous versions of this paper.
Funding
This research was possible thanks to a UNAM-PAPIIT [grant number IN 400314-4] and Conacyt Research [grant number 152879].
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. I hate war, the cold war, the hot war, and the warm war/ The bombs I hate them, the hydrogen bomb must die, the atomic bomb and the tear gas bombs/bombs! If there are electricity strikes I light myself with a candle lamp/bombs! Only the Yucatecan bombs should exist, dear father/that’s why I am a fan of good manners; Hurra the Marshall Plan, Hurra the UNESCO, Hurra for peace!/Ya murió la cucaracha … Tin Tan was a Mexican actor, singer, dancer and representative of the ‘Pachuco’ movement of the 1950s, and always showed up wearing a Zoot Suit.
2. The ININ was created in 1979, after the INEN and the CNEN. See text.
3. Mateos and Suárez-Díaz, “Clouds, Airplanes.”
4. Epstein, “The Making of the Treaty of Tlatelolco.”
5. Mateos and Suárez-Díaz, “Atoms for Peace in Latin America.”
6. Latin American critics like Celso Furtado, Theotonio Dos Santos, and Ruy Mauro Marini linked the economic asymmetries between the ‘center’ and the ‘periphery’ to the unequal structure of the world economy and the conservative role of foreign and local elites.
7. This was not the first – nor the last – time the Mexican state adopted the language of modernity. As Sujit Sivasundaram has suggested ‘The question of modernity is one that needs to be addressed squarely by global historians science. To be modern in a global age of knowledge, by the twentieth century, meant using science and technology to intervene in problems of hunger, disease and development. Such modernity meant the tying of knowledge into the national economy […] what is interesting is that modernity did not lead to the flattening out of various traditions of expertise across the world. Instead, the modern and the traditional coexisted, entangled to the extent that being modern was sometimes proved by recourse to rejecting traditions while at other times it was about updating traditions or recovering lost ones.’ Sivasundaram, “Sciences on the Global,” 156. On development theory and the construction of the Third World see Escobar, Encountering Development.
8. Katz, “La Guerra fría”; Bachelor, “Miracle on Ice” and Keller, Mexico’s Cold War.
9. Stason, “Report of Activities.” Fund for Peaceful Atomic Development Inc., January 1 to May 1, 1955 (Ann Arbor, May 10, 1955). 5. NARA, Record Group 59. Box 297 (old box 214).
10. The scientists involved in the acquisition of the accelerator were Nabor Carrillo, Manuel Sandoval Vallarta, Carlos Graef, Alberto Barajas. Minor, “Instrumentos”; Mateos, Minor, and Sánchez, “Una modernidad anunciada.”
11. Mexico was the only Latin American country (besides Cuba), which did not signed a bilateral military agreement with the USA. Vázquez and Meyer, México frente a Estados Unidos. Mexico’s reluctance to break relations with Cuba illustrates the public foreign position of Mexico’s government, which stood in contrast to its close ties to the USA in private communications. Another example representative of this autonomy was Mexico’s position during the Cuban missile crisis. See Keller “A Foreign”; “The Latin American” and Mexico’s Cold War.
12. Fein, “Producing the Cold War in Mexico,” 172.
13. Results were similar for the rest of Latin American countries, which were rather ‘neutral’ concerning sides on the international confrontation. Distaste for atomic weapons and testing ran high in Brazil, Mexico and Uruguay. Wittner, The Struggle Against the Bomb, 79.
14. For early responses to Hiroshima and Nagasaki see Cabral, “The Mexican Reactions.”
15. Medhurst, “Atoms for Peace” and Osgood, Total Cold War have interpreted the Atoms for Peace campaign in this vein. See also Drogan, “The Nuclear.”
16. On the FPAD’s involvement in South Korea, see DiMoia, “Atoms for Sale?” For its relation to Mexico, see NARA Record Group 59.
17. The President’s Report of Regents for the Academic Year 1953–1954. 57 (17), August 8, 1955. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Official Publication, 7.
18. Memorandum from Blythe Stason (Director of Fund for Peaceful Atomic Development, Inc., FPAD, and Dean of Michigan University Law School) to W. Keneth Davis, Director of US AEC Reactor Development Division. NARA Record Group 59. Box 297 (old box 214).
19. The students sent to study Nuclear Engineering at Michigan University were Bruno de Vecchi Appendini and Carlos Vélez Ocón (with fellowships from the Canadian Electric Power and Light Company); Arnulfo Morales Amado and Vinicio Sermen Cabrero (from UNAM); Antonio Magaña Plaza (from the IPN); Miguel Angel Barberena Vega and Luis Gálvez Cruz (From the University of Veracruz) and finally Roberto Treviño Arizpe (with a FPAD endowment).
20. As mentioned before, in 1950 the UNAM bought, through negotiations between Sandoval Vallarta, Carlos Graef and Nabor Carrillo, and the American company High Voltage Engineering Corp., a 2 MeV Van de Graaff generator with a cost of one million pesos of the time (around 125,000.00 USD). See Minor, “Instrumentos Científicos.”
21. Mateos and Suárez-Díaz, “Clouds, and Airplanes.”
22. The second director appointed (1965–1970) was a poet and diplomat, José Gorostiza. An anonymous anecdote related to Ortiz Tirado’s appointment illustrates this indifference to nuclear industry. The president called him to his office, and said:
– Jose María, an atomic bomb is going to explode you
– Why is this so, Mr. President?
– Because I just appointed you as President of the Comisión Nacional de Energía Nuclear
– And why me?
– Well, because I chose you!
– And what the hell is the Comisión Nacional de Energía Nuclear? I don’t know what is that!
– I know less! Answered the President. The reason why I appointed you is because I also appointed two of our Mexican wise-men [Carrillo and Sandoval Vallarta], and you have to be there to coordinate them.
– But, I am a lawyer!!!
– That is precisely why I did it! He concluded.
23. Anonymous, 24.
24. Recently, Mara Drogan has argued along similar lines, stressing the realization, by US officials, that ‘nuclear power would not solve the problems of [underdeveloped countries]’ in large part because ‘it did not provide a solution for the progressive […] development of those countries.’ Drogan, “The Nuclear,” 13.
25. Acceptance of PRI presidential candidacy speech, 1958, Adolfo López Mateos; Memoria Política de México. (http://www.memoriapoliticademexico.org/Biografias/LMA09.html). Accessed February 10, 2015.
26. Eklund, “Treaty of Tlatelolco,” 35.
27. Vélez-Ocón, Cincuenta años.
28. In his memories of the events Carlos Vélez-Ocón wrote ‘There was a tendency of the authorities of the CNEN, represented by Dr. Carrillo, to follow the easiest path, but also the most constraining one, of buying a research reactor, and in order to do this conversations with different providers began, specially with General Atomic, that constructed nuclear submarines and the popular TRIGA reactor.’ Vélez-Ocón, Cincuenta años, 31.
29. Two more research reactors were acquired in that period. The reactors were a CHI.Mod. 9000 and a CHI.Mod 2000 located at the Zacatecas University and the Instituto Politécnico Nacional, respectively.
30. Office memorandum, August 14, 1959 from George N. Monsma to Robert M. Winfree (Suggested redraft on Section on Inter-American Nuclear Energy Commission (IANEC). NARA, RG. 59, Box 457, Regional Program: Latin America d. (IANEC) 1958–1959, 4.
31. On the Radioisotope Mobile Exhibition in Latin America see Mateos and Suárez-Diaz, Radioisótopos itinerantes.
32. David Fisher, History of the IAEA. After thirteen years of almost none activity, in 1989, finally the IANEC was disolved.
33. Domínguez, La energía; Mateos and Suárez-Díaz, “Clouds, Airplanes.”
34. Our archival research has led us to conclude that the Genetics and Radiobiology Program did not produce any scientific results in the decades between 1960 and the early 1980s. For a contrasting apologetic account, see Barahona, “The Genetics” and “Transnational Science.”
35. Buchenau, “Por una guerra fría.”
36. Keller, “A Foreign Policy,” 113.
37. Gilbert and Spenser, In from the Cold; Keller, “Missile Crisis.”
38. United Nations General Assambly, Eighteenth Session, Official Records, Monday, November 11, 1963. New York, 114.
39. Epstein, “The Making Of”; Buchenau, “Por una guerra fría.”
40. In 1982 García Robles and the Swedish Alva Reimer Myrdal shared the Peace Nobel Prize for their commitment to world disarmament.
41. Also, it prohibited the ‘receipt, storage, installation, deployment and any form of possession of nuclear weapons, directly or indirectly, by anyone on their behalf or in any other way. Finally, the partners agreed to refrain from engaging in encouraging or authorizing, directlyor indirectly, or in any way participating in the testing, use, manufacture, production, possession or control of any nuclear weapon.’
42. So far, we have found scarce secondary literature on the impact of the Tlateloco Treaty and its meaning in the charged Cold War agenda, despite the fact that it accounted for the first nuclear weapons-free zone. Lawrence Wittner, in his three-volume history of nuclear disarmament devotes only one page to Garcia-Robles and the TT. Wittner, The Struggle Against, 434. The most extensive account to date is Epstein “The Making Of.”
43. The TT entered into force in Argentina, Brazil and Chile in 1994. Cuba in 1995.
44. Guillermo Espinosa, personal communication, January 2013.
45. Wittner’s claim has wider and deeper implications for a reassessment of Cold War literature. The conventional explanation as to why the world avoided nuclear war has been to insist on strategic ‘deterrence.’ This explanation, according to Wittner, fails to incorporate is the world nuclear disarmament movement. Wittner, The struggle, ix.
46. Fein, “Producing the Cold War”; Keller, “A Foreign Policy.”
47. Medhurst, “Atoms for Peace,” 587–8.
48. See Moon, “Take-off”; Cullather, “Miracles of Modernization.”
49. Cullather, The Hungry World, 69.
50. Nuclear workers (including scientific researchers) had been involved in union struggles in 1975, and belonged to the ‘Democratic Wing’ (Tendencia Democrática) of the Mexican sindicalist movement that agitated several workers unions. The nuclear workers separated from the pro-government Electricity Workers Union (SUTERM) and, supported by numerous researchers and university professors, were able to create their own independent union (the abovementioned SUTIN). See Trejo Delarbre 1990. Crónica del Sindicalismo en México; also, Azuela and Talancón, Contracorriente; Rojas, Desarrollo Nuclear.
51. Rojas, Desarrollo nuclear: and Azuela and Talancón, Contracorriente.