1968 Games in Mexico City are recalled in a new book

As the 2008 Olympic Games heat up in Beijing, China in August, it’s educational and extremely important to look back and see how other Olympic Games fared. That’s why the new book from Kevin B. Witherspoon is so important. It’s aptly named Before the Eyes of the World: Mexico and the 1968 Olympic Games. It reminds me how edgy countries can be when they take the international stage and host the games. In 1972 in Munich, the Germans botched security and allowed a disaster to ensue when Israeli athletes were held hostage and ultimately killed by a Palestinian terror group. The Germans did not know what to do, and even restarted the games in the face of a hostage crisis. Mexico in 1968 had its serious problems as well, and Witherspoon, a professor of history at Lander University in South Carolina, highlights the intersection of sports held on an international stage with the historical, political and social climate of 1968.

The “Mexican miracle” of the previous twenty years came to a screeching halt in Thatelolco, a neighborhood in Mexico City where riot policeman gunned down hundreds of peaceful student demonstrators in cold blood. These protests were part of an international student movement for peace and reform, and Mexico’s President at the time, Gustavo Diaz Ortiz, was determined to stop the protests at all costs. It gives pause to think if the government of China today might not stop at mass murder to allow the games to go on without a seeming hitch. Appearances can be deadly, and the desire for apparent normalcy in the games, and the idea of the splendor of the host country can reach proportions of sheer mania. Reading Witherspoon’s account of what happened in Mexico will offer valuable perspectives.

Racism took center stage in Mexico when award-winning American Olympic runners Tommie Smith (gold metal) and John Carlos (bronze metal) raised their black-gloved fists in the Black Power salute while on the Olympic stand. This gesture galvanized the Civil Rights movement and became a lasting symbol of struggle of African Americans for their freedom and self-determination. Smith poignantly recounts the backlash and death threats he received after the protest in his cool autobiography from Temple University Press called Silent Gesture, written with David Steele, a sports columnist for The Baltimore Sun. This simple act has become an iconic image in Olympic history.

Witherspoon recounts how the cold war between the USA and USSR was played out at the Mexico games, and various machinations that took place. There were protests over whether South Africa should be allowed to compete because of their policy of Apartheid. In addition to this, the pollution in China today that is reported to possibly threaten to mar the games and affect the athletes ability to perform, is recalled in the Mexico games because of the high elevation and thin air in Mexico City. The 1968 games were also the first to introduce drug testing of athletes. All in all, we have a fascinating history of the 1968 games, and Allen Guttman, sports history expert and professor of English at Amherst College, calls Witherspoon’s book, “one of the best books I have read on Olympic sports.”

Enjoy the games, but take an instructive look back with Witherspoon’s excellent history and come to know what transpired beforehand. The book is published by Northern Illinois University Press in De Kalb.