Kevin Witherspoon's Before the Eyes of the World: Mexico and the 1968 Olympics is a reading of a global event in a watershed year. Witherspoon's work is not specifically about the student movement and Tlatelolco massacre nor is it about Tommie Smith and John Carlos. Instead, it is a synthesis of the politicisation of the 1968 Olympics and the controversies that continue to swirl around the international competition and the year. A transnational history is difficult, but Witherspoon does a fine job.

The study opens with the Mexican delegation dancing a conga line when they are awarded the games. Situating the surprise victory of Mexico in the selection to host the games demonstrates the controversy that marked the beginning of the XIX Olympiad. Since the 1920s, Mexico evolved as a site for international sports events but also as artistic and cultural hub. Witherspoon astutely asserts that the health of the nation became tied to sports and fitness by the 1930s, which led to the country hosting regional and international competitions. By the early 1960s, President Adolfo López Mateos, a charismatic populist president, sought to position Mexico on the global stage. Therefore, Witherspoon analyses how the Mexican delegation demonstrated their political savvy by beating the French and the United States delegations through showmanship and nationalism. Mexican Chairman Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, an architect, understood the importance that spatial arrangements and aesthetically pleasing and tasteful displays, combined with a heightening of Mexico's socialist traditions, added to their appeal among Eastern bloc members of the committee. Using this strategy, the Mexican delegation outfoxed their competitors despite their glitzy presentations. In turn, Ramírez and his colleagues used Mexico's festive and artistic reputation as a place of culture to showcase a nationalism that swayed the Olympic Committee.

In Chapter Two, Witherspoon outlines the history of controversy surrounding the modern Olympics games. He considers three areas: Mexico City's environment due to its altitude; the struggle over amateurism and professionalism; and lastly the issue of apartheid. The latter serves as the central theme in Chapter Three ‘Image Tarnished’ in which Witherspoon examines how apartheid and racism led to the Olympic Boycott Movement. While this has been studied in greater depth by other historians, Witherspoon's contribution is to relate these events back to Mexico. In the midst of the global protest, Mexicans prepared for a global fiesta settling on the opinion that the IOC rather than the host nation should determine their response. In turn, Mexico appeared immune to the politics of the era. In Chapter Four, ‘Image Shattered: Tlatelolco’, Witherspoon briefly reveals how Mexico was not above the crisis of the year, but in fact witnessed one of the most violent episodes of 1968 ten days before the opening of the games, The Year of Peace. Once competition began, the first highly televised games drew further scandal, particularly the Black Power salute given by Tommie Smith and John Carlos. Although never mentioned, for Mexicans the poignant salute represented the extension of revolutionary ideology as embodied in the Black Panthers as a perceived international organisation rather than a manifestation of the boycott. For the Mexican activists, this exhibited some universal sense of solidarity. Witherspoon suggests that the Olympics were dogged by other controversies that still resonate, such as what is now termed doping. In his final chapter, he reflects upon the shifts in the games that took place in 1968, a heightened politicisation, the economic implications, and the continued demand for social justice among the 1968 student activists.

In places, there are interpretations that may have been too informed by the present rather than the past or from a more US-centric reading of the events. The selection of Norma Enriqueta Basilio and the incorporation of women as hostesses for Mexico's Cultural Olympics were less a sign of gender equality and more a cultural interpretation of modernity. Beyond that, Mexico City was a major city in the late 1960s, but to describe it as chocked by ‘horrible congestion and pollution ‘ is misleading (p. 77). Mexico City in 1968 was still a city of interlocking parks and canals where people fished. The city's residents enjoyed more days of sunshine rather than smog. Its rapid growth had begun but would dramatically accelerate in the 1970s with the end of the economic miracle. In the wake of the events of 2 October, students continued to organise against insurmountable odds; they were not terrified into submission (p. 137), but were rather more cautious and strategic in the strike that lasted until December. Forty years later, the activists of 1968 are still defiant and their voices comprise the most enduring on human rights in Mexico.

This ambitious work is a welcome addition to the growing historiography on Mexico 1968. Written in clear, accessible prose, Witherspoon's contribution connects sports history with the cultural and political ramifications of highly touted international competitions. I recommend the book for undergraduate as well as graduate students. It offers an array of points of departure for further study and inquiry, and I welcome those future explorations.