Technicolor 1968

Political shakeups in the Rector’s office at UNAM (the National Autonomous University of Mexico) resulted in a boon of talent for Publications. In the early 1960s, the group of young writers producing the university’s magazine were part of the country’s cultural vanguard, but Gastón García Cantú, the right-hand man to the new University president, resented the magazine’s international focus. He slandered one of the writers for being homosexual and advocated a more nationalistic and conservative editorial agenda. The leaders of the university’s publications resigned and migrated to the Olympic Committee’s Publications Department.

Trueblood made Huberto Batis, the former head of UNAM publications, the editor-in-chief for Spanish language texts. “Ramírez Vázquez needed people to do the work,” Batis recalls, “and he didn’t care where we came from.”

The new crop of writers was not made up of sports junkies. They were meant to cover what Trueblood calls “Ramírez Vázquez’s finest idea”, the Cultural Olympics. Poetry readings, art expositions, an international film festival, and folk dancing filled the agenda. African and Russian ballets, Arthur Miller’s plays, and Duke Ellington all took the stage at Bellas Artes.

The Cultural Olympics began in January, ten months before the Games. Ricardo Verdoni, a Mexican who had been working at Time-Life in New York, arrived to be the Production Chief. He made it all run on time—whether that meant sleeping in his car at the printers, organizing the staff to work around the clock in shifts, or just exuding serenity around writers looking for inspiration on deadline.

To get promotional materials done on time, the staff had to “kidnap” performers at the Mexico City airport and whisk them away for a photo shoot before they were carried away by the Olympic pandemonium.

After their arrival, it was learned that it was customary for the Senegalese ballet to perform topless. The uproar that preceded the show led the dancers to suggest a compromise: they agreed to not dance topless if Mexico’s prima ballerina Amalia Hernández would dance bare-chested when she performed with them. The matter was quickly dropped, and the show went on with the Senegalese in the buff.

As the Games drew near, Mexico City was draped in Olympic colors. Streets and highways were decorated with flags. Inspired by the Mexican Easter tradition of papier maché Judas effigies, gigantic figures were posed at the arenas representing the athletes of each particular sport. Huge balloons honoring the beloved Mexican globo hung from window displays along Paseo de la Reforma, festooned the press centers, and eventually flew over each sports venue.

As opening day drew nearer, the Department of Urban Design handed out paint to the people who lived near the airport so they could brighten up the facades of their houses in order to make a good first impression on arriving visitors.

All the billboards in the city were on loan to the Olympic Committee; the Olympic dove was everywhere, as was one of the Games’ official slogans: “Todo es posible con la paz."--"Everything is possible with peace."

Protests and Tlaltelolco

A few months before the Opening Ceremonies, the Identity Program staff moved from the rooftop offices in Jardines de Pedregal to a building on Avenida Universidad, near the wooded Viveros de Coyoacán park. The new office was just up the road from UNAM’s Ciudad Universitaria campus, home to the Olympic Stadium and the fountainhead of the student protest marches that began to flood the streets in July.