Soviet Domination - A Red Dawn story

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July 1983:

Among the core group of remaining Sandinistas, those who had fought the long fight and were still alive in post-revolutionary Nicaragua, there was a Mexican national named Victor Manuel Tirado López. Tirado López was a committed communist and someone to whom the Mexican government was unfriendly towards. Only last year, pushed by the DGI and against the objections of Borge, the Ortega brothers had sent him up to his native land using a different identity. His trip had been to assess the political situation there. Upon his return, Tirado López had told the Ortegas that there had been no real change in Mexico. The country was in no way ready for a revolution nor armed conflict to push Mexico towards one. He had only reinforced his own opinion in what he had seen, but that still didn’t mean that he didn’t return with the truth. Mexico wasn’t fertile ground for anything like what had happened in Nicaragua & Guatemala in previous years and what was occurring now in El Salvador & Honduras. Only a fool would think otherwise. The economic situation wasn’t desperate for the poor and the government wasn’t overtly oppressive. Mexico’s leaders showed no sign of turning the people against them. None of the factors which created the civil wars in Central America were apparent up in Mexico. He would like his native land to see justice, freedom and everything else that communism could bring, but that wasn’t to be. It was just impossible. The report from Tirado López which was sent onto the Cubans was read by the KGB too; the feeling in Moscow was that any sign of serious trouble in Mexico would rain down fire and fury from across the Rio Grande too. It would be a country too far, Andropov had said, and a serious geo-political error. The beliefs of Andropov and the observations from Tirado López would stand in stark contrast to what was about to happen. Andropov would be pushing up daisies before the end to that story came while Tirado López himself would be in Mexico City ruling over a nation up in arms. That was in the future though, the short-term future yes, but not what was going on right now.

The economic crisis started to bite home hard across Mexico. The problems moved from the (destroyed) financial centre down to the workers, especially those in the cities and big towns to where so many Mexicans in recent years had moved to find work. The lay-offs continued and the price of food skyrocketed. From the government, when criticism in the media started to get too strong, blaming not just President García Paniagua but the PRI party as a whole for decades of foolishness, there came a crackdown there with newspapers, radio and television muzzled. Big announcements were made that things were going to be fixed. None of that stopped the protests which took place from those made unemployed and with families to feed. It didn’t stop the strikes by government workers (directly or indirectly employed) about the coming lay-offs and the immediate wages cuts to them too. There was rioting in places which came with the protests and the strikes and things got out of hand in a few instances. The police, national and local forces, were ineffective in following orders coming straight from the top to put a stop to those. They were in the same position as those whose heads which they were supposed to bash: caught up in this economic crisis which was now affecting all Mexicans. Mexico City was gripped by a massive riot which spun out of control and spread from the slums to the very centre of the capital city. García Paniagua decided that the only thing to do was to call upon the military where the police had failed. The Mexican Army had well-trained and numerous military police detachments and they brought and end to that riot with García Paniagua pleased at the results… he pretended that he didn’t hear the casualty numbers because he was more focused on parts of the city burning. Where elsewhere there was trouble too with rioting, coming from protests which seemed to fast lose all sense of purpose – it was about jobs and food but became an orgy of destruction –, the president decided that only military force would be effective. He saw the resignation of several of his ministers in response to this fateful decision but firmly believed he was doing what was best for Mexico. How could foreign capital and investment be persuaded to return to Mexico if the country was alight?

The Mexican Army was small but in the absence of a serious foreign threat to the country nor any worldwide commitments, that size was long deemed suitable for Mexico. The majority of the professional and mobile units of the army, including most of the military police units, were based around Mexico City though able to deploy nationwide from there. The brigades of infantry were always designed to reinforce smaller, local units in times of trouble: such was the military deployment structure in the country. This had recently been done with the army’s brigade of paratroopers joining another two of infantry in going down to Chiapas and the Guatemalan border area and staying there to work with locally-based forces to enforce order in that southern region. Further units from around the capital, including almost all of the military police detachments, were now deployed in presidential orders nationwide as rioting continued throughout the country. Murders and deliberate arson had taken place across cities such as Chihuahua, Guadalajara, Monterrey, Juarez and Puebla. Reliable military units from the Mexico City area, joined by local forces, would move in to put an end to this. Orders from the government were just the same as those which had been issued in the capital: civilians were to be detained and the violence ended, there was to be no unnecessary shooting of the people. As had been the case in Mexico City, that was all fine in theory but not in practice. Soldiers carrying live weaponry sent into unfamiliar areas where there is chaos and enraged population never mix well.

This mix saw massacres take place. None of it was intentional. It was preventable though. The soldiers should never have been sent on such missions. Many of them lost their lives too, killed by the mob when they were dragged away from their comrades during urban conflict. The worse of the violence came in Guadalajara and Puebla where things really got out of hand. In addition, when the soldiers came under attack and responded with reasonable force to maintain law and order (the official line), there was some interference from the local police in several instances where shots might or might not have been fired at the soldiers from those who also had weapons but refused to use them against their fellow civilians. Details on that were fuzzy, a lot had been going on. Overall though, the Mexican Army had fought against the people. The anger in response, by those who knew their history of oppressive governments in the past especially, was widespread throughout the country. García Paniagua refused to listen to the pleas from others in his broken and demoralised government to pull the soldiers back. He alone commanded the Mexican Army. He declared a state of emergency and vowed to put down what he deemed ‘insurrection’. He would save Mexico, from itself if necessary. A senior Mexican Army officer, a man known as el coronel (the colonel) despite now being a general officer – he’d long been legendary in that former rank –, put a stop to that madness. He put a bullet in the head of García Paniagua.


El coronel took power in Mexico for what was supposed to be a short period. He would restore order and punish those responsible for what had recently gone on. When he addressed the Mexican people on television, dressed in his full military regalia and surrounded by his fellow generals, the country’s supposed interim leader promised justice. There would be food, there would be jobs and there would be no more violence. Elections would be coming soon as well, fair ones at that. Cynics at home and abroad asked themselves whether any military cabal which had taken power forcefully from a civilian government had ever willingly and fast handed power back to civilians before. There was a promise from el coronel that such a thing was to happen though… once the mess created in the past few months had been sorted out.

The image of a general taking powering in a violent coup d’état, where the country’s civilian president had been killed, didn’t go over very well up in Washington. Latin America was full of military governments and none of them were personally liked by Kennedy. The president was informed by Mondale – who spoke with el coronel when Kennedy refused to on a point of principle – that Mexico’s new leader was appealing to the United States for help. What help did he want? Financial help, lots of it. Like García Paniagua before him, el coronel was begging for money from the American taxpayer. Hell, no. Kennedy was opposed to such an idea on more than just principle: he knew that the American people wouldn’t stand for that. Images on the evening news and reports in the big newspapers had come of the violence in Mexico where soldiers had reported killed hundreds, maybe thousands. The fact that a general had now seized power by killing a civilian president to put a stop to his soldiers killing civilians didn’t play well at all. Kennedy wasn’t going to do it. Next November and his re-election was still some time away, but he was no dummy on an issue like this. He saw it coming back to haunt him next year. Mexico could sort this issue out for themselves. It was an internal Mexican affair. He had been briefed that there was no foreign interference in what had gone on in Mexico and it was all a problem of the Mexican’s own making. The country could and would have to deal with its own mess. There would be no bailout from Washington and no help in other areas until civilian rule, legitimate civilian rule at that, was restored in Mexico City. Kennedy also had other more important matters on his mind following is return from the peace deal he had been behind in the Middle East. Now was the time to deal with a real United States reaction to the ongoing and verified Soviet troop withdrawals from Eastern Europe. The time was coming to respond to that good faith shown by Moscow with good faith coming in return from the Kennedy Administration. He knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but Kennedy believed he was ready for the backlash from those who didn’t see the big picture like he did.