Soviet Domination - A Red Dawn story

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March 1985: Mexico

Guadalajara was the de facto capital of the People’s Democratic Republic of Mexico. This Mexican city which lay west of where the Mexico City – still the de jure capital remained – had once stood and was the centre of power for the regime led by Tirado López. History had been rewritten when it came to the Second Mexican Revolution and Guadalajara had a significant role in that. The city was honoured as the birthplace of that revolution and the whole revolution itself was officially written around that. The specifics of the economic collapse, the falling apart of law-&-order, the civil war and foreign outside intervention had a different history now. With the latter, that foreign intervention was significantly downplayed when it came to Tirado López and his initial emergence. It was no longer referenced to any significant degree. It had all been about Mexicans themselves, the history said, rather than the efforts undertaken by Nicaragua, Cuba and the Soviet Union to bring about all what happened. American intervention against the communists was overplayed and the lengthy civil war was blamed on them. Moreover, the war which Revolutionary Mexico was currently fighting was the sole fault of the United States too, all leading back to where they had acted against the Mexican people for centuries and then launched a nuclear attack upon Mexico City.

The regime made Guadalajara a model city for the revolution. This was for show at home and to the watching world too. Extreme measures had been taken to do that. The social and economic changes in the city from how it was before the revolution and now during wartime were striking. There had been ‘redistributions’ of wealth, people and power. The number of people who had called Guadalajara home had dropped early in the revolution yet grown significantly after a time. Across the Mexican countryside, people had left – of their own free will or encouraged to do so – to go to cities such as this one. There was work in the cities. There was food. There was order. It had been a bad choice for many. Revolutionary cadres from the regime’s internal security force had been trained up and organised by foreigners to be used to keep the regime in power. They were doing a very good job. The last flames of resistance to the new order had long ago been extinguished. Only in parts of the countryside was there active opposition to the regime and that was patchy at best. Elsewhere, informers yet also the very real threat of a violent death kept people in line. They were fed lies, intimidated and had their emotions whipped against the gringos. On the domestic front, the regime of Tirado López was effective and wasn’t going to be toppled by any internal force.

Guadalajara was a city at war like the rest of the country. American air attacks had been made against it. The frequency and intensity of these had increased since the New Year. From afar, missiles had been fired and there had also been a couple of overhead raids when FB-111s flown by the US Air Force had conducted low-level strikes. Regime targets – government buildings – had been hit and so too had military facilities around Guadalajara. Communications links and the power supply had too been bombed. This all helped the regime and their propaganda. When the power was out, when food rations were cut once again and all of their promises made for this bright new future which Mexico had yet to come, that could all be blamed on the war and here was the proof of that. That future which the promises made from Guadalajara said was one which would only come when the war ended. Full employment, full stomachs and a full restoration of all ‘rightful’ Mexican territory (that north of the Rio Grande) would come then. Meanwhile, the many sacrifices had to be made. The city was devoid of military-aged men not in uniform. They were all off fighting for their nation… or dead somewhere with their families being unaware of their fate. That war was a war being won: half of the United States was apparently occupied and the hated country to the north about to collapse any day now. The people had a leader which was fighting for them though to make that all come about. A personality cult around Tirado López had started slow but exploded in recent months. He was the hero which Mexico needed, the propaganda ran, and the only man who could give them what they needed. It was said that he personally had fired the first shots of the revolution and commanded it single-handedly to the victory which had come. Tirado López had authored the country’s constitution, one of the most progressive and liberal in the world (in theory) which gave so much to Mexico’s people – its women and minorities had legally-assured fantastic rights – and would deliver them their dignity. Foreign interest from around the world came to Guadalajara to see this despite the country being at war. The city was home to a dozen plus embassies and almost two dozen more unofficial representations (trade missions, cultural offices etc.) and there were visitors to the city to see this Revolutionary Mexico which was here and apparently thriving.

Guadalajara was thriving… right up to the very second it was eliminated in nuclear fire at ten o’clock in the morning of March 25th 1985. Six other Mexican cities, all full of civilians, suffered the same fate.


There had come intelligence information to the US Government back in February about the activities of Revolutionary Mexico inside Texas and New Mexico when it came to how they were treating civilians. Many, many outrages had occurred beforehand on American soil with the troops of all of those foreign armies killing civilians in anti-guerrilla operations, unorganised massacres and such like. There hadn’t been a deliberate and organised targeting of civilians who posed no danger nor interfered with military operations though. There hadn’t been the time to do that nor the motivation by the Soviets, the Cubans nor the others. They had a war to fight and the United States retained its nuclear arsenal. Revolutionary Mexico had its troops sent north controlled fully by the Soviet high command. They used such men with abandon to undertake suicide missions on the attack and in defence. A lot of them were gassed when chemical weapons were used as well, many caught up by Soviet nerve agents when the wind went the wrong way too. Throughout the rear, Revolutionary Mexico troops were used extensively as well. The Soviets relied on them for security duties as well as physical labour. It freed them up to concentrate on the fighting they were doing at the far end of an extraordinarily long supply chain. There wasn’t meant to be an independence shown by Tirado López’s regime when it came to his troops operating on American soil yet this had gradually occurred. Revolutionary Mexico was remarkably adept at getting away with many things it did while their busy allies looked the other way. It was always a slow, steady process. First there were all of those ‘Mexican traitors’ shot when caught – all refugees who’d fled the civil war and thought they had found safety in the United States – and then came the organised looting came done on an industrial scale. Any American civilians in the way were mistreated: they were beaten, robbed, raped and killed. The killings especially targeted Hispanic-Americans where they were often declared to be more of those ‘Mexican traitors’ despite it being very clear they weren’t. Complaints had been made against this behaviour from Soviet military officers yet also Cubans, Guatemalans and Nicaraguans. Very few of these people were the cartoon character villains in current American propaganda. They objected to what they saw on a personal level yet also because it only fueled the resistance. They did many horrible things themselves but this was different. The complaints weren’t listened to from above. The KGB was instrumental in making sure that Revolutionary Mexico did what it did. They had their reasons for this and none of those were for the long-term future good of Mexico. It helped to have ‘real’ bad guys around.

Tirado López had been in San Antonio back in January. When inside the city, despite all of the security around his visit, his party had been shot at with bullets killing a couple of his flunkies. He took this rather personally. Instructions were given upon his return to Guadalajara that the security situation in both Texas and New Mexico was to be corrected. Once the war was over, the intention was that those two states would join Revolutionary Mexico as new and fully-integrated parts of that nation. The KGB had assured him of that whereas from Moscow and Havana there had been neither denials nor confirmation of such a future. Tirado López believed he would get both though, hopefully more from a collapsed United States too. There could be no resistance allowed there. As was the case back in his own country, resistance was dealt with by bringing people into the cities and out of the countryside. They would be easier to control once together. On this, that ignored that he had been shot at when inside a city yet such contradictions in his logic weren’t something that anyone in his regime dared to politely point out to him. American civilians were herded into the cities and big towns. The security situation in rural areas, which his army was responsible for, improved with this. Success came in that. Tirado López had the intention of then doing something with all of those people, the millions of American civilians in Albuquerque, Austin, Brownsville, El Paso, Houston, Laredo, San Antonio, Santa Fe and others. What that was, he hadn’t gotten around to deciding yet. One thing it wasn’t was an organised slaughter of them nor purposely starving them to death. The Americans saw these civilians being penned in the urban areas though. They witnessed the people dying from hunger and disease. From looking at aerial pictures and from the debriefing of Green Beret teams deep in occupied territory, all that came was the sight of the people dying with many more soon to follow. President Glenn had asked for proof that Revolutionary Mexico actually intended to kill these people.

Then he received it. NISS intercepted Soviet communications where this was discussed. The military and intelligence services of the Soviet Union were aware of the forced concentration of people and they believed, just as the Americans did, that these people were going to be killed on purpose. This was reported up the chain-of-command and onwards to Moscow. American interpretation of what they heard was that the Soviets were saying it was happening, not speculating on this. It was a matter brought to the Kremlin and the Defence Council in the end where warnings were made that Tirado López was going too far with this but the Americans didn’t know of that. All they knew was that the Soviets were saying this was true. It was brought to Glenn. Still, the president wanted more. There was only one response which could be made in his eyes and that of the rest of the very top of the US Government and to do that required more proof. Tirado López’s regime was making use of the diplomatic services offered by the Swiss to several countries at war who had no official contact with the other. Switzerland had a Mexican Interest Section with its own Permanent Mission to the United Nations’ offices in Geneva (the UN was making much use of Geneva plus Vienna alongside the HQ in New York due to the position of the latter in the American’s de facto capital) and contact was made by the Americans with them there. Answers were demanded and accusations called upon to be denied. The response was rather undiplomatic: included within the swearing was refusal to respond. One member of the diplomatic party for Revolutionary Mexico there in Geneva spoke to the Americans aside. He knew he was risking his life but he did so because he retained his humanity. He unintentionally put the lives of millions of his countrymen in his own hands too. The Americans were told that this was the intention. It wasn’t a lie from the man involved, he was just as mistaken as the Soviets were. Tirado López was considered by many of his countrymen to be the epitome of evil. When telling the Americans, the diplomat believed that his actions would see that stopped. He was ever-so tragically correct.

With agreement from his Cabinet, the National Security Council and the very top of the Congressional leadership, Glenn ordered that planned action to be taken. America would stop the killing of millions of its own civilians by killing millions of civilians of Revolutionary Mexico. It didn’t have to make sense to everyone: it made sense to those in New York. They were thinking beyond the response from what was left of that country they were about to drench in nuclear warheads and to their already nervous Soviet allies. There was more to this that just stopping the genocide against trapped American civilians.

This was about eventually bringing the war to an end.


Seven Minutemen ICBMs flew southwards from the Malmstrom AFB missile fields spread across central Montana. Each carried a trio W78 thermonuclear warheads with a blast yield of 350 kilotons.

Guadalajara was the target of one of those missiles. The six others struck the cities of Chihuahua, Hermosillo, Leon, Morelia, Puebla and Saltillo. Two warheads didn’t reach their targets to explode above them but the other nineteen did as advertised. All seven targeted cities were obliterated with no warning coming ahead of that. The Mexico Massacre counted among its many victims Tirado López himself when he was caught in one of the three Guadalajara blasts.

Three more cities had each been initially selected for likewise destruction. Monterrey, Torreon and Veracruz all escaped when at the last-minute, Glenn opted to not fire upon each. This wasn’t for a humanitarian reason concerning Mexican civilians. The Soviets had major military activity around Monterrey and Veracruz while recent intelligence showed the presence of many American military captives in Torreon. Last September had seen the United States kill their own people when Americans were caught up in Mexico City – illegal volunteers for the civil war taken prisoner & brought to Mexico City plus many misguided people who’d chosen to visit the then-heart of the Mexican Revolution for political reasons – and they didn’t want to repeat this. Torreon’s people were spared due to POWs in their thousands bring transported through there. Not blowing apart Monterrey and Veracruz meant not killing thousands of Soviets using weapons of mass destruction.

These nuclear detonations across Mexico devastated the country. The death toll from immediate and after-affects would be estimated afterwards to be between five and eight million but the true figures would never be known. Condemnation came worldwide yet also from inside the United States too: in the latter, no matter what was going on, this was all too much for many when they were told. The KGB had the Peace Committee in El Paso make much out of this too. It was too late for any effect on that issue though. Governments worldwide had already protested at nuclear attacks, chemical warfare strikes, invasions of neutral nations and all of the conventional fighting ongoing. This was something different… but even then, the Mexico Massacre was still put into context among many other events such as the China War and the now ongoing Euro-Soviet War, those two separate conflicts from the American/Allied vs. Soviet conflict. All of that attention worldwide missed what happened in Torreon. No one there knew they had been on and then taken off that target list for a nuclear strike. Revolutionary Mexico started to collapse all around them yet dedicated officers on the ground, enraged and eager for revenge, conducted a forced march of the captives in their hands. American POWs numbered twenty-eight hundred: a number far lower than NISS had told the president there were there. Outside of the city, another massacre took place. Each and every prisoner – taken in battles won and lost by several armies yet all in Revolutionary Mexican hands – was shot and dumped in a mass grave. Elsewhere through the country, similar but smaller events took place where retribution came.

The regime of the now vaporised Tirado López was falling though and that was what was of greatest importance in regards to the war.