Past and present
The murder of Rubén Jaramillo caused a brief international sensation in 1962. Jaramillo was a veteran of Mexico’s revolution, which lasted from 1910 to 1920. Yet by the 1940s, he had become the leader of a regional protest movement in Mexico that, after being stymied by the government, wavered between legal and violent tactics. Although he had been issued an official pardon by the Mexican president, Jaramillo, his wife, and three sons were subject to a gruesome execution by assailants who were never formally identified. Beyond the headlines surrounding this grisly event lay a deeper story: How had a revolutionary who had fought to establish Mexico’s government become an enemy of the state? And why were armed guerillas fighting in an otherwise placid country, such as postwar Mexico? To MIT historian Tanalís Padilla, the answers lie in recognizing that midcentury Mexico, known for its one-party state and economic growth, was a different...