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In the wake of its early twentieth-century civil wars, Mexico strove to present itself to the world as unified and prosperous. The preparation in Mexico City for the 1968 Summer Olympics was arguably the most ambitious of a sequence of design projects that aimed to signal Mexico's arrival in the developed world. In Spectacular Mexico, Luis M. Castañeda demonstrates how these projects were used to create a spectacle of social harmony and ultimately to guide the nation's capital into becoming the powerful megacity we know today.

Not only the first Latin American country to host the Olympics, but also the first Spanish-speaking country, Mexico's architectural transformation was put on international display. From traveling exhibitions of indigenous archaeological artifacts to the construction of the Mexico City subway, Spectacular Mexico details how these key projects placed the nation on the stage of global capitalism and revamped its status as a modernized country. Surveying works of major architects such as Félix Candela, Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, Ricardo Legorreta, and graphic designer Lance Wyman, Castañeda illustrates the use of architecture and design as instruments of propaganda and nation branding.

Forming a kind of "image economy," Mexico's architectural projects and artifacts were at the heart of the nation's economic growth and cultivated a new mass audience at an international level. Through an examination of one of the most important cosmopolitan moments in Mexico's history, Spectacular Mexico positions architecture as central to the negotiation of social, economic, and political relations.

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CHOICE Review

Mexico has been the only country in Latin America to host the summer Olympic Games. Because of the events leading to the 1968 Olympics, which included the killing of hundreds of peaceful protesters, the broader history of this period and, in particular, the relationship between the use of design and the sponsoring government has been largely ignored. Castañeda (Syracuse Univ.) makes an essential contribution by articulating the role that architecture and design, in all of its variants, had in the expression, exertion of control, and propaganda of the midcentury Mexican state. This book shows how the state, its architects, and its designers, immediately prior to the games, developed representations of the nation to simultaneously reflect Mexico's historical legacies and modernization. Shown at international world's fairs and through historical museums in Mexico, these precursors were foundational to the massive building, urban redevelopment, and cultural campaigns put in place for the Olympic Games. Castañeda addresses not only the design of important venues, subway transportation, and the Cultural Olympiad but also the unified visual campaign aimed at the mass media that reinforced Mexico's cultural specificity while promoting its modernization. Summing Up: Recommended. All readership levels. --Luis E. Carranza, Roger Williams University

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Luis M. Castañeda is assistant professor of art history at Syracuse University.