The Quiet Actor

U.S. intelligence assessments of Mexico during the Cold War largely frame the country as a security threat. Using an intelligence agenda framework to identify the nature of a threat, this analysis scrutinizes all the President’s Daily Briefs (pdbs) from 1961 to 1977, revealing that intelligence reports emphasized perceived threats connected with Mexico’s internal affairs nearly eight times more than threats related to Mexico’s connections with strategic rivals. Despite Mexico’s geopolitical significance in the United States–Soviet Union rivalry following the Cuban Revolution, the U.S. government’s focus remained on the threats to Mexico’s political stability under its authoritarian regime. This emphasis likely aligns with the intelligence cooperation established between Mexico and the United States, which aimed at monitoring Cuban activities in Mexico, as well as the operations of the LITEMPO asset program of the Central Intelligence Agency

Astronomy · Cold war · Physics · Political science · Politics · QUIET · Intelligence, Security, War Strategy · Law · Political and Social Dynamics in Chile and Latin America