The National Security Archive at George Washington University, Outlook for the Lopez Portillo Administration Bureau of Intelligence and Research, secret intelligence report.

The report I chose is titled Outlook for the Lopez Portillo Administration Bureau of Intelligence and Research, secret intelligence report which was published by the State Department on January 6th of 1977. In it the State Department assesses the presidency of Portillo’s predecessor Echeverría and what impacts this will have on Portillos presidency and what they should be on the lookout for. This is important because it shows that the United States is very closely watching  what is going on in Latin America, and making sure that everything is under control and going as they want it to go; Meaning the United States is fulfilling the role of the puppet master and all the nations of Latin America are their puppets. It can be argued that this policy of US intervention in Latin America began in 1823, when the Monroe Doctrine was issued and ever since then the United States has maintained some level of interest and interventionism in Latin America. This is clear to see in the assessment written by the State Department because it goes into deep and specific detail onto what Echeverría accomplished and did not accomplish, it then goes on to theorize how this would affect Portillo’s presidency and in turn affect the United States as well. The key takeaway from this report is that during the Echeverría presidency, US and Mexico relations were strained as a result of Echeverría’s actions as a result of this Mexico suffered economically due to the fact that US tourism to Mexico greatly decreased during this time as well as US investment into the country. This is something the US did not approve of and were very wary of; this however would change when Portillo came into presidency because he saw the harm of Echeverría’s actions and saw it as his priority to fix US-Mexico relations which is what he did, the report acknowledges this and is in favor of this. This report is important because it shows us how the United States kept track of what was going on in all these Latin American countries because they wanted to avoid what had happened in a country like Cuba; they don’t want to repeat the same mistake. This can be seen in chapter X of the textbook Problems in Modern Latin American History: Sources and Interpretations when it states, “Fidel Castro (Cuba)—United States Government personnel plotted to kill Castro from 1960 to 1965. American underworld figures and Cubans hostile to Castro were used in these plots and were provided encouragement and material support by the United States” (252). This quote shows us that following the Cuban Revolution and the emergence of Castro, in which the United States failed to stop this from happening; the United States did not want this to repeat itself in the rest of Latin America, and therefore increased their surveillance and enforcement of the rest of Latin America in order to maintain their interests. 

 Wood, James A., and Anna Rose Alexander. “Chapter X The Cold War .” Essay. In Problems in Modern Latin American History: Sources and Interpretations, 5Th ed., 252. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019.