In revisiting Mexico's ’68 Movement, the government response to which has left a yet-to-be-healed wound for middle-class Mexico City society, George Flaherty has utilised an imaginative range of sources to offer an interesting re-reading of the political and cultural context from which the movement emerged. Choosing an innovative and ambitious blend of material – art, architecture, film and written texts – he offers fresh insight into the cultural history of Mexico City in the twentieth century. Using the Hotel de México (which itself has a chequered history) as his focal point, Flaherty explains: ‘A hotel is a compelling metaphor for modernising authoritarian states like Mexico: although featuring some alluring (if often elusive) amenities, it is never intended to become a home; and so the roles of host and guests are never supposed to be reversed’ (p. 15). ‘Mexico's largest hotel’, he continues, is its ‘single-party authoritarian state that claimed the role of absolute host and treated most of its citizens as mere guests, with only limited rights and a few alternatives. This Hotel Mexico presumed to represent all Mexicans and care for them biopolitically – with or without their consent’ (p. 99). While this may be a little over-stated at times, Flaherty nonetheless convincingly sustains the metaphor in each chapter; indeed, his choice is particularly apt for a 1960s Mexico that was seeking to emphasise its stability and achievements on the world stage in order to increase its nascent tourist industry, while all the time becoming increasingly authoritarian towards its own citizens.

There is already a wealth of literature about the events of 1968 in Mexico and, as the fiftieth anniversary of this infamous, tragic and poignant episode in Mexican history approaches, we will undoubtedly see a considerable increase in output. Yet the ‘truth’ of the Movement's violent end, at Tlatelolco, Mexico City, on 2 October 1968, is highly unlikely to emerge. In placing the ’68 Movement into a wider historical context, Flaherty's work is in keeping with more recent studies, most notably by Eric Zolov's Refried Elvis: The Rise of Mexican Counterculture (University of California Press, 1999) and Jaime Pensado's Rebel Mexico: Student Unrest and Authoritarian Political Culture during the Long 1960s (Stanford University Press, 2013), which emphasise that the Movement was part of a much longer process of demand for political change from several sectors of society. An important observation is that although many of those who insisted on having a greater voice were young people, not all of them were students and not all of Mexico's increasing student population were involved in protests. Furthermore, Flaherty accurately points out that, ‘the Tlatelolco massacre was not an exceptional event’ (p. 196).

His précis of the Movement in his Introduction presents a summary of the more recent scholarly material on Mexico 1968, which students of this period will find very useful. Where this work differs is in the range of sources that are analysed and contextualised, which together reveal, as Flaherty puts it, ‘the special dimensions of the ’68 Movement and its afterlives’ (p. 19). This book goes far beyond the ’68 Movement to encompass an analysis of hitherto neglected aspects of the social and cultural climate of Mexico's ‘long 1960s’.

One of the book's strengths is the attention given to film: the analysis of the 1989 docu/drama Rojo amanecer works well alongside Elena Poniatowska's better known and widely acclaimed La noche de Tlatelolco (1971). Similarly the protestors’ footage that comprises the compilation documentary, El grito, is very effectively juxtaposed with the 1967 drama Los caifanes. As Flaherty points out, 1960s technology in the form of the Super 8 was a considerable asset: ‘A camera in the street in Mexico, not in the hands of the mainstream media, was intensely political’ (p. 177). It has also provided enduring testimonies that complement those in the print media.

Architecture is another of the book's interesting analytical perspectives. Particularly effective is the detailed attention Flaherty gives to the Palacio de Lecumberri, which was both an important location for members of the ’68 Movement and later, as Mexico's National Archive, housed some of the sources from which this book was written. Underlining their incarceration in Lecumberri, Flaherty offers a perceptive insight into the work of David Alfaro Siquieros, José Revueltas and Luis González de Alba. The creation of the Ciudad Universitaria, the home of Mexico's Autonomous University and of the Instituto Politécnico Nacional's Zacatenco campus, is also given deserved consideration. The discussion of the history of the site that would become Nonoalco-Tlatelolco is particularly well done. As he points out, the complex would be damaged by earthquakes in 1979 and 1982 and ‘was disproportionately hit’ in the devastating earthquake of September 1985 (p. 208). Charges, articulated through Elena Poniatowska in her book, Nada nadie, las voces del temblor (Ediciones Era, 1988), suggest that engineers were encouraged to cut corners in the construction of Nonoalco-Tlatelolco in order to save money. As a result, the buildings did not conform to safety standards. While this may not have caused the collapse of these buildings, it is an issue that could have been raised to augment the narrative of the planning and construction of the buildings on pp. 196–202.

Unfortunately the book appears to be poorly edited. There are a number of typos and some repeated text (note 7, p. 260). There are several well-chosen images to illustrate the book, but these are not always sign-posted within the text. These publishing issues need to be corrected in subsequent editions. These minor criticisms notwithstanding, Flaherty's Hotel Mexico: Dwelling on the ’68 Movement is a welcome addition to the growing scholarship on Mexico 1968.