México en Guerra

Propaganda is a modern phenomenon which played a role in the First World War and had an even greater impact in the Second World War twenty-five years later.  Although not always called by its name, propaganda has been an aspect of warfare since the dawn of history.  The classical tactics of propaganda include the use of intimidation, psychological debilitation by means of terror, rumor-mongering, and the use of symbols which assert a supposed alliance with the gods, among others. It was not until the First World War that modern propaganda made its controversial debut.  Was it Beauty or the Beast?  Vice or virtue?  Honorable or despicable?  Legitimate or spurious?  In sum, it was thoroughly polemical.  Whatever was to be gainsaid of its merits, propaganda went to war in l9l4 with all the resources that the spirit of the times could muster.  With the help of recent discoveries in psychology and the social sciences combined with the ever greater capacity of the rotary press, telegraph and the nascent film industry, propaganda developed into a weapon of heretofore unimagined efficacy. By the war's end in 1918, the prestige of propaganda had returned home, along with the other war casualties, severely wounded.  The original expectations for this new science were greatly undermined by the sordid evidence of its first practical applications.  Propagandists acted most vigorously, but oftentimes without the slightest scruple whatsoever.  They manipulated, exaggerated, calumniated, stigmatized, and silenced.  They promised a war to end all wars, self-determination for every nation and colony, and basically one idealistic slogan on top of another.  With the war finally over, their promises could not be honored and their calumnies could no longer be believed. Yet strangely, though the guns had gone silent, the war of words and images somehow assumed a life of its own, becoming a war more universal, criminal and sophisticated in nature than the real-life conflict.  Thus, "messianism" ended in deception and sorrow.  The word "propaganda" came to mean empty rhetoric, overstatement and falsehood.  Notwithstanding all of these wounds, the propagandists themselves understood the importance of their work to the war effort.  They might employ euphemisms to explain that contribution, but however it would be described or judged, propaganda had become an indispensable and permanent aspect of modern warfare. During the two world wars, the propaganda war achieved its greatest intensity and impact in Europe, as would be expected.  Both wars began in Europe and most of the hostilities took place in Europe.  The basic themes in the propaganda issued by the European combatants responded to the same motives.  The continual conscription of troops, war casualties, rationing, the presence or nearness of the enemy,the counter-propaganda, the anguish of the apocalyptic bombing runs, as well as many other hardships, had to be confronted by the propagandists in their work of uplifting or steeling public morale. Even though Mexico lay far afield from the principal battlefronts in the two world wars, she exercised a critical role in the eyes of the various great powers in conflict.  George Creel - the Chief of the Committee for Public Information, the U.S. office responsible for worldwide propaganda during the First World War-, claimed that in terms of German propaganda penetration, country for country, Mexico was the second highest in importance. The outbreak of the Great War let loose in Mexico certain very interesting activities on the part of the major war powers.  Mexico's common border with the United States acted like a magnet to diplomats and subversive agents.  They practiced espionage, intrigue, pressures on and concessions to the governmental authorities, blackmail and bribery to public figures at the centers of power such as the army and the mass media.  All of this was a part of what the hurricane of war brought to Mexico.  At the outbreak of war there prospered only confusion and uncertainty.  The supply and demand of information rapidly accelerated, but to be impeded by draconian measures of censure.  By means of their feverish agitations, the foreign propagandists achieved their sordid ends:  within a churning river, manipulators will surely triumph. Information about the war served as a potent psychological artillery.  As if they were firing powerful missiles across thousands of miles of  territory, so the great powers used the teletype machines of the major press services and the microphones for short-wave radio in order to instantly discharge their bombs of propaganda.  As if they were surging out from their trenches, dozens of men have come forth from the embassies, their pockets bulging with cash, their minds determined to tilt the means of mass communication in Mexico to their cause.  It is with the outbreak of war that a sorry chapter came to be written in the history of the Mexican media, a chapter which significantly determined the future of the Mexican media and its contemporary structure. The means of mass communication played an enormous role in the conduct of the Second World War and their influence in Mexico was no exception.  In part, these pages will make that clear.  Yet these pages will hopefully serve to take the reader a little bit further, focusing not so much on the war of words but on the words of war.  It is an attempt to situate the historical, geographical and psychological parameters for this propaganda war whose images and key concepts abide to our present day wherein they continue their work of ideological conquest. Mexico and its structure for mass communication was in times of war a very special piece of booty for foreign propagandists.  They waged chilling, undercover battles to take control of what has become the principal means of ideological influence for every country in the modern era.  These pages were at first intended to reveal a series of activities which took place in Mexico in the realm of propaganda as effected by foreign propagandists during the Second World War.  As this investigation unfolded, it became evident that there existed a number of important precedents from the First World War which thereupon required a general explanation of that period.  As the reader will note, there is no shortage of strategies implemented between 1939 and 1945 which had not already been attempted between 1914 and 1918. The documentary and critical apparatus which accompany this book are meant to provide historians, specialists in communication studies, and researchers in general with certain sources of information - unedited in many cases - which will allow for an analysis in greater depth than I have attempted in this more generalized treatment.  In addition to this academic resource, I have sought to present a readable work which will be accessible to the widest public.  The reader will note, nevertheless, an evident disequilibrium in the content of the book.  Both in quantity and quality, the information concerning the United States far exceeds that of any other protagonist acting in Mexico during the two world wars.  This disproportion can be explained by three reasons.  First, the extraordinary facilities and the abundance of information which the North Americans make available to investigators, in contrast to many other countries, including Mexico.  Second - and most importantly -, the concordance with what has happened to what is happening.  No other country has developed a propaganda network comparable to that of the United States in extent, keenness, human resources, organization and logistics in the short and long term.  Third, the consequences for Mexico today of the North American intervention of that period which offers innumerable opportunities for future study.