Spying at the Drycleaners: Anonymous Gossip in 1973 Mexico City

Abstract

When inflation began to rise rapidly in 1973, the Mexico City middle classes reacted to growing economic instability by participating in a wave of rumour and gossip about prices and possible peso devaluations, and by repeating jokes that targeted President Luis Echeverría's (1970–1976) policies and personality. This article examines how the Mexican state responded to this political banter by sending government spies to eavesdrop or collect juicy details from informants. The author focuses on one government spy report that details gossip and rumour in everyday sites of consumption, such as supermarkets and dry-cleaning shops, to discuss the promises and problems of using the recently declassified Gobernación (Ministry of the Interior) intelligence archive. Analysed alongside other sources, these intelligence reports offer an unusual window into the everyday history of economic crisis and Cold War politics.

Keywords:

• middle class
• consumption
• rumours
• economic crisis
• political destabilisation

Notes

 1. An expanded analysis of this history appears in chapter two of Louise E. Walker, Waking from the Dream: Mexico's Middle Classes after 1968, Stanford, Stanford UP 2013.

 2. AGN, Mexico City, Dirección General de Investigaciones Políticas y Sociales (hereafter AGN, DGIPS), c. 709, exp. 1,‘Diversas críticas que se oyen en la vía pública en contra del actual régimen de gobierno’, 12 October 1973. (Subsequently referred to as DGIPS, ‘Diversas críticas’.) Translation of this document is in Tanalís Padilla and Louise E. Walker (eds), ‘English Translations of Documents from Mexico's Secret Police Archive’, working paper 2013, available online at the Dartmouth College library website and Northeastern University digital repository: http://www.dartmouth.edu/ ∼ library/digital/publishing/padilla2013/ and http://hdl.handle.net/2047/d20002992.

 3. Ibid.

 4. Ibid.

 5. Ibid.

 6. Ibid.

 7. Ibid.

 8. Samuel Schmidt, Deterioration of the Mexican Presidency: The Years of Luis Echeverría, Tucson, University of Arizona Press, 1991, p. 9, pp. 110–117, pp. 179–180; Soledad Loaeza, “Política del rumor: México, noviembre-diciembre de 1976,” Foro Internacional 17: 4 (April–June 1977), pp. 575–581.

 9. Luise White, ‘Telling More: Lies, Secrets, and History’, History and Theory 39: 4 (December 2000), pp. 13–14.

10. Miguel Messmacher and Alejandro Werner, ‘Inflación en México: 1950–2000’, Gaceta de Economía (ITAM) 2002, p. 54.

11. On the meanings of middle class in twentieth-century Mexico, see Walker, Waking from the Dream.

12. AGN, DGIPS, c. 710, exp. 1, ‘Para conocer los comentarios en el sentir general de los consumidores de gasolina’, 8 December 1973; AGN, DGIPS, c. 708, exp. 3, ‘Existe temor entre cuentahabientes de está ciudad’, 23 October 1973.

13. On the failed tax reform, see Carlos Elizondo, ‘In Search of Revenue: Tax Reform in Mexico under the Administrations of Echeverría and Salinas’, Journal of Latin American Studies 26: 1, 1994, pp. 159–190.

14. DGIPS, ‘Diversas críticas’.

15. I have taken some liberties when translating the jokes, in an effort to convey the humour to English readers; Spanish readers will note the many rich plays on words. “En relación al aumento del presupuesto para el DDF, se dice que obedece a los gastos que tendrá que efectuar para la ampliación de Los Pinos y el Palacio Nacional para que se construyan sendos conventos para guardar todas las madres que se le echan a Echeverría.” AGN, DGIPS, c. 710, exp. 3, ‘En los cafés de Sanborns’, 26 December 1973.

16. José Agustín, Tragicomedia mexicana 2: La vida en México de 1970 a 1988, Mexico City, Planeta Mexicana, 1992, p. 89.

17. See Aviña's and Cedillo's contributions to this dossier.

18. For more on this polarisation, see part one of Walker, Waking from the Dream.

19. DGIPS, ‘Diversas críticas’.

20. Aaron Navarro, Political Intelligence and the Creation of Modern Mexico, 1938–1954, University Park, Pennsylvania State UP, 2010, pp. 180–186.

21. DGIPS, ‘Diversas críticas’.

22. AGN, Dirección Federal de Seguridad, 9-236-76 leg. 2, f. 93, ‘Estado de Guerrero’, 20 August 1976.

23. DGIPS, ‘Diversas críticas’. Citizens were likely referring to PRI-organised demonstrations in support of the president and his government.

24. See, for example, PRI party president Jesus Reyes Heroles's comments about ‘cacerolismo’ in Mexico in ‘Fascismos en Latinoamérica’, El Nacional, 14 February 1975. On Chile, see Margaret Power, Right-Wing Women in Chile: Feminine Power and the Struggle against Allende, 1964–1973, University Park, Penn State UP, 2002.

25. AGN, DGIPS, c. 709, exp. 2, ‘Texto del volante’, 19 November 1973.

26. DGIPS, ‘Diversas críticas’.

27. Sergio Aguayo Quezada, La charola: Una historia de los servicios de inteligencia en México, Mexico, Grijalbo, 2001, p. 52

28. Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, New York, HarperCollins, 2004, chapter 1.

29. Ibid., chapter 3.

30. Aguayo Quezada, La charola, pp. 123–24 (quote from p. 124).

31. Agustín, Tragicomedia mexicana 2, p. 59, p.123; Loaeza, ‘La política del rumor’, pp. 575–81; Schmidt, Deterioration of the Mexican Presidency, p. 9, pp. 110–17, pp. 179–80.

32. See note 24 above.

33. On the 1976 rumour mill, see Walker, Waking from the Dream, pp. 67–69.

34. Secretaría de Industria y Comercio (Ministry of Industry and Commerce), Ley federal de protección al consumidor: precedida por la comparecencia del Srio. de Industria y Comercio Lic. José Campillo Sainz, ante la H. Cámara de Diputados, para explicar la iniciativa de la misma, Mexico City, Ed. Solidaridad, 1976, pp. 26–27. For more on consumer rights see Walker, Waking from the Dream, chapter four.

35. Guadalupe Loaeza, Debo, luego sufro, Mexico City, Océano / Profeco, 2000.

36. Ibid, pp. 273–76.