CIA Conspired with the Right on the Eve of Mexico's '68 Massacre

Declassified U.S. documents reviewed by independent researchers show the CIA funded and ran at least five programs over two decades aimed at shaping student leadership in Mexico, providing money and covert support to right-wing groups that opposed communist and pro‑Cuban student currents. The agency used front organizations such as the Institute of Social and Economic Research to publish anti‑communist material and backed the University Movement of Renewing Orientation (MURO), which the CIA credited with violent harassment campaigns and the removal of leftist rectors at multiple universities. Internal CIA evaluators warned by 1967 that continuing to empower militant right‑wing operatives risked polarizing student politics, yet support persisted into the late 1960s and beyond.

The records also document U.S. sponsorship of Mexican security figures, notably funding training for Miguel Nazar Haro and coordination with Federal Security Directorate leaders, who mobilized students for demonstrations and ran intelligence operations against dissidents. Significant sections of the agency’s official history remain censored, leaving key details about clandestine collaboration in the run‑up to the Tlatelolco massacre unresolved. The compiled evidence leads researchers to conclude the CIA at minimum intensified student polarization and plausibly played a more direct role in events that culminated in the October 1968 bloodshed, prompting calls for an uncensored release of the records.