This book investigates competition in diplomacy, cultural matters, and propaganda between the Vichy and Free French governments to win influence with Mexico during the first three years of World War II. Denis Rolland, professor of contemporary history at the Ecole Normale, studied under Professors François Chevalier, Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, François-Xavier Guerra, and Frédéric Mauro of the University of Paris. His book is related to a larger project that will examine Spanish and French relations with Latin America.
Rolland notes that Franco-Mexican relations were rather distant and inactive in 1939, yet the Mexicans were shaken and incredulous when the European war broke out. Initially, however, the French government’s position on responsibility for the war was aided by two groups of European colonists in Mexico.
The Mexican government had accepted 450,000 Spanish refugees after Barcelona fell to General Francisco Franco’s forces in 1939. These Spaniards were determined foes of Nazi Germany and fascism. In addition, six thousand French people, led by the French consular official and military attaché in Mexico, Jacques Soustelle, and the sojourning professor of hispanic studies Gilbert Médioni, resided in Mexico when the war broke out. The two Frenchmen led a propaganda and political campaign to counter Vichy activity and to align Mexico with the Free French movement of General Charles de Gaulle. Mexico did not break relations with the Vichy government, but in an ironic twist, it became possibly the first non-European state to protect the citizens of a European state in another European country when it assumed responsibility for Spanish refugees in France in 1941.
After Pearl Harbor, Mexico severed relations with the Axis powers; yet the French in Mexico had to counteract a campaign by U. S. officials to discredit de Gaulle’s movement, because the U.S. government maintained relations with Vichy. Only after the Vichy government broke ties with the United States, shortly after U.S. troops landed in North Africa in November 1942, did the Mexican government also break with the Vichy regime.
Rolland asserts that Free French propaganda contributed to the creation of a climate of national unity in Mexico, and that Mexicans found collaboration with the Free French more desirable than with the Anglo-Saxons, especially the United States. Although Franco-Mexican cultural relations rested at the base of the bilateral ties, Rolland argues that Mexicans did not (and do not) perceive France as a great country of science or technology, or as the principal country of culture, but rather as the leading country for the history of culture.
Interspersed throughout the text are photographs, documents, and cartoons. This book was not, however, finished with care. In my copy four pages were missing—pages 87, 199, and 311 in the text and page 423 in the index. The bibliography and index contain too many errors. Several U.S. scholars are listed alphabetically by their middle name (for example, Appleman Williams, William); some entries are duplicated; Greenleaf (Richard) is alphabetized between Renouvin, Pierre, and Ross, Stanley. The bibliography cites scores of Mexican and U.S. archival, printed primary, and secondary works, but the notes diminish the impression of exacting scholarship. Only a few Mexican printed sources find their way into the notes, and just two English-language works are cited. Rolland lists interviews with Jacques and Georgette Soustelle, Médioni, and numerous other French people who resided in Mexico between 1939 and 1942, but he cites an interview only once.
Rolland has, however, exhaustively examined the French foreign ministry archives, making his work valuable to scholars who wish to learn about Free French activities in Mexico and the role of French and Spanish immigrants in Mexican foreign affairs. The book’s value is enhanced in that few monographs have been published on French relations with Latin America, even though France was a major player there in the nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries.
