Article

Antonio Sotomayor and Cesar R. Torres, eds., Olimpismo: The Olympic Movement in the Making of Latin America and the Caribbean (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2020).

Abstract

Olympic scholars studying Latin America have largely focused their attention on the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. Appropriately so. Mexico City was the first Latin American city to host the Olympics, and Mexico the first Spanish-speaking nation to do so. Not only were the Olympics a quintessential exercise in nation-building for Mexican leaders, but they also became embroiled in the international diplomacy of the Cold War and controversies over the thin air, amateurism, doping, and gender testing. Those Olympics featured the most memorable medal-stand protest in the history of sport, Tommie Smith and John Carlos’s raised fists following the men’s 200-meter sprint. And, most tragic, just ten days before the opening ceremonies, Mexican police and military officials opened fire on a crowd of peaceful protestors, killing an estimated 200–300 people in one of Mexico’s pivotal events of the late twentieth century, the Tlatelolco Massacre. As a final note, having occurred some…