Mexican astropolitics and scientific diplomacy,1958–1977

Astropolitics and science diplomacy

Over the last 20 years, the history of outer space has begun to include both new geographical regions and analytical interpretations. The mold of traditional space history has begun to break as research with more nuances and fewer formulas integrates global perspectives into extant modes of thinking about outer space during the Cold War (Geppert, 2012). Through a plurality of disciplinary lenses, scholars have begun to map out marginal cartographies of space exploration, particularly in latitudes that are more suitable for rocket launching (namely equatorial countries).

Unsurprisingly, these terrestrial sites of outer space overlap with postcolonial spaces. Siddiqi (2016) and Sharma’s (2022) work on Indian space programs have contributed to this geographical and analytical broadening of the history of outer space. They have shown how the Indian National Committee for Space Research took space as a path to modernize India (Sharma, 2022; Siddiqi, 2016). Space in the Tropics (Redfield, 2000) highlights how space exploration is intertwined with imperialism in French Guiana in both a penal colony that operated from 1852 to 1953, known as Devil’s Island, and in the Kourou spaceport, established in 1965. The link between outer space and politics in developing countries has been addressed by Joshua Barker (2005) in his work on Palapa, Indonesia’s national satellite system. Barker shifts the focus from the builders and developers of the successive generations of satellites towards the Indonesian people who promoted the system and ascribed it political meaning. Through an ethnographic approach, Sean Mitchell (2017) shows how the construction of a space port in Brazil set into motion land conflicts whose intertwinement with ethnic identity exacerbated inequality in the Alcantara region. Finally, Anne Johnson’s (2023a) work analyzes Mexican imaginaries of outer space and extraterrestrial aspirations.

These works that add to the existing canon of space studies demonstrate that governments of diverse countries saw space as a means for modernizing and integrating their nation. However, in some cases, building this terrestrial infrastructure for space technoscience has come at the cost of deeply altering the landscape and violently plundering postcolonial societies, forcibly relocating communities already subject to racial and economic inequality for the sake of technical and scientific advancement. More often than not, non-spacefaring societies are forced to make way for the exploration and use of outer space. In such contexts, scholars often understand space projects only discursively, examining how they reinforce or are incorporated into existing projects of meaning-making and identity building.

A common – but, as I will highlight below, somewhat limited – category for understanding how governments use outer space is ‘astropolitics’, a neologism referring to a government’s set of policies relating to outer space. The most widespread definition of the term is that of the US-American Everett Dolman, for whom astropolitics refers to “the extension of theories of global geopolitics, mainly from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to the vast context of the human conquest of outer space” (2001: 1). However, political geographer Fraser MacDonald criticizes the category for justifying and promoting militarized control of outer space, using the category “anti-astropolitics” to call for a deeper public debate on the uses of outer space (2007: 607).

Astropolitics and anti-astropolitics constitute divergent interpretations of how humans might (co)exist outside terrestrial confines. Astropolitics, inspired by classical theories of international relations, undoubtedly has colonialist, nationalist, ethnocentric and teleological overtones. Anti-astropolitics invites engagement with feminist, postcolonial, and deconstructive interpretations of geopower (MacDonald, 2007). This article heeds MacDonald’s call for histories of outer space that steer away from tropes of conquest and colonization. I use the term astropolitics (stripping away the “anti-” suffix) to refer to the set of institutions, laws, decrees, and policies related to the use of outer space for political purposes through technoscience, while adopting anti-astropolitics’ critical perspective.

Science diplomacy is at the foreground of astropolitics in countries without independent launching capacities such as Mexico. The category accounts for the multidirectional influences between politics and science in the exercise and consolidation of power, both on a national and international scale (Adamson and Lalli, 2021; Balbi and Fickers, 2020; Ito and Rentetzi, 2021; Robinson et al., 2023). It also allows us to account for the forms of power embedded into technological artifacts and practices, on either the national or international scale, as scholars of techno-diplomacy and techno-nationalism have called for (Balbi and Fickers, 2020; Edgerton, 2007; Hecht, 2011). With regard to outer space, science diplomacy encompasses the evolving set of practices employed by governmental institutions, international organizations, individual scientists, and engineers to leverage space technoscience in shaping and influencing international relations. These practices, in turn, are reflected in national and international technoscientific space agendas.

Independent space projects in Cold War Mexico were developed either through poorly-funded government institutions or seeking aid from readily available government personnel who were not trained in space technoscience. Although import substitution industrialization focused on developing the country’s technological and industrial capacities (Gómez-Galvarriato, 2020), space technology was hardly a priority within this economic policy. Furthermore, Mexican space endeavors were of a decidedly civilian nature, which meant that military funding was unavailable to the programs – unlike other Latin American countries such as Argentina, Chile or Brazil (Blinder, 2015; Froehlich et al., 2020; Huntley, 2011).

Lastly, Mexican technoscience, as well as bilateral and multilateral scientific diplomacy, was deeply imbued in the revolutionary nationalist rhetoric of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), which was founded on the principles of liberty, constitutionalism, sovereignty, and social justice. By the 1960s, PRI was committed to advancing social justice through economic development and industrialization, particularly by strengthening the oil industry and improving infrastructure for communication, transportation, electricity, and hydraulics (Hernández, 2015), in which space efforts might have fit in nicely. However, the party faced increasing political pluralism, constraints on sustainable economic growth, and growing surveillance and pressure from the United States for democratic stability in a region energized by the Cuban Revolution of 1959 (Loaeza, 2005; Zolov, 2020).

How government institutions forged ahead with ambitious projects that either failed or were thwarted, or pivoted toward space as a terrain for diplomacy over terrestrial matters, helps us to imagine astropolitics more capaciously; crudely put: a lack of large-scale space technoscience projects reflects an overlooked aspect of the astropolitical (namely, the pursuit of the promise of outer space) rather than its absence. In the following sections, I will illustrate how the Mexican state apparatus navigated the Cold War’s demands for technoscientific and legal expertise in outer space. This exploration unfolds on three distinct scales: first, on the multilateral stage, where Mexico sought to assert its presence in international space governance; second, in its intricate relationship with its northern neighbor, the U.S., as they collaborated on uneven ground on a US space initiative; and finally, within the realm of internal politics, where the need for specialized institutions and expertise became increasingly evident.

COPUOS: Mexico’s seat at the table of science diplomacy

It might not be obvious why Mexico, a non-spacefaring country, was a founding member of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, established in 1958. This body was established with the objective of regulating the exploration and use of space for the benefit of all humanity under the principles of peace, equal sovereignty of all nations and international scientific cooperation. ¹ It became a permanent organ of the General Assembly in December 1959. In 1961, it was endowed with a legal subcommittee (LSC) and a technical-scientific subcommittee (TSSc), which instituted a dynamic of constant information between the legal and scientific practices of knowledge development and its application.

The Commission was instrumental in creating a body of law governing activities in outer space in the first decades of its exploration. ² However, reaching agreements proved to be a challenge for COPUOS, starting with its own composition at a moment when space powers such as the USSR and the U.S. were disputing one another’s influence over the political and economic organization of various regions of the globe. During initial debates regarding the establishment of the Committee, the inclusion or exclusion of certain Latin American, Eastern European or Commonwealth countries was discussed according to their membership in or assumed allegiance to one or the other geopolitical bloc. ³ Reaching for the stars through international scientific collaboration proved to be easier said than done.

During its early years, COPUOS succeeded in laying the foundations of international space law that made outer space a nuclear weapon-free environment in the 1960s. In 1962, the General Assembly adopted the Declaration of Legal Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Uses of Outer Spaces, a ‘soft’ regulation formulated as an instrument of voluntary acceptance prohibiting national appropriation of outer space and celestial bodies (Mason-Zwaan and Cassaar, 2019). Hard (mandatory and binding) laws relating to outer space were issued by the United Nations in 1967, beginning with the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (commonly known as the Outer Space Treaty, hereafter OST). ⁴

It was also around this time that the Cuban Missile Crisis spread terror throughout the Americas and activated diplomatic networks to consolidate denuclearization efforts. By this time, Mexico had shown tolerance for the socialist course taken by the Cuban Revolution and with a tendency to proclaim its independence of criteria from the United States (Bobadilla, 2008). However, the Mexican government strongly opposed the installation of nuclear warheads in the region.

Lawyer Francisco Cuevas Cancino, a graduate of Mexico’s Escuela Libre de Derecho, was appointed as Mexico’s representative to the LSC on 18 May 1959. Since 1963, another prominent Mexican lawyer and diplomat, Luis Padilla Nervo, who studied at the Escuela Nacional de Jurisprudencia during the tumultuous period of the Mexican Revolution, worked diligently to promote Mexico’s denuclearization agenda within both COPUOS and the Disarmament Commission (Robinet, 2023). Padilla Nervo raised critical concerns regarding the potential deployment of missiles equipped with nuclear warheads in orbit, emphasizing that both fixed and mobile space bases would exacerbate global insecurity, particularly for major powers. He argued that such developments would represent a military measure incompatible with the establishment of denuclearized zones and efforts to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons, stating that they would further fuel the arms race. ⁵

Mexico’s position on the denuclearization of space was aligned with that of other non-aligned nations, such as Brazil, India, Pakistan, and the United Arab Republic. At the 1963 COPUOS meeting, the delegate of Brazil expressed a similar desire to legislate on the denuclearization of space, underscoring the growing international consensus on this issue. Mexico demonstrated its commitment to global peace and security during a period of heightened Cold War tensions, highlighting the important role that middle powers can play in shaping the international discourse on critical issues such as nuclear disarmament and the peaceful use of space. ⁶

Although Mexico could send to COPUOS lawyers who were well-informed about the risks of nuclearization on earth and in space, and who pushed against them through legal and diplomatic pathways, finding a Mexican representative for the technical and scientific subcommittee proved to be a much more difficult task. ⁷ Reporting on one of the early meetings regarding the composition of COPUOS, the Mexican Ambassador to the UN, Eduardo Espinoza, informed the Office of Foreign Relations that “the Mexican delegation would be at a positive disadvantage if a Mexican scientist specifically designated for the case does not come to perform these functions”. ⁸ The U.S. government also wrote to the Mexican delegation in May 1959 to inquire which Mexican scientist would represent the country in COPUOS, perhaps in hopes of amassing hemispheric support. ⁹ This shows that international scientific cooperation involved not only the need for domestic expertise, but also external pressure from Mexico’s powerful neighbor to the North of the Rio Grande.

Who could these new space science diplomats be? Ideally, they would be scientists “familiar with the principles and techniques related to the use of space, especially in their application to meteorology and communications”. ¹⁰ The Mexican delegation at the UN asked the government in 1962 to appoint “researchers, scientists, or technicians from the National Autonomous University of Mexico or other similar institutions” to represent Mexico in COPUOS. However, the country’s first academic department for outer space studies was founded in 1962, depending almost solely on the theoretical work of physicist Ruth Gall and her undergraduate students. By that point, some rocket experiments had been made by engineering and physics students at UNAM and Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí, but no systematic institutional space engineering programs emerged from them (Morán and Martínez, 2020). Furthermore, the first Space Law Chair at UNAM was created in 1962 (Gall, 1987). In the early 1960s, experts in space law and technoscience were yet to emerge in Mexico. COPUOS faced Mexico with a challenge that triangulated ambitious national interests of modernization, a lack of academic development in the space sciences, and the geopolitical landscape of the Cold War.

Not obtaining an appointee directly from the office for Foreign Affairs, the Mexican representation at the UN directly reached out to the Secretariats of Agriculture and Livestock and of Communications and Transport in late April of 1962. They asked both offices if they would be willing to send to New York an expert in space meteorology and telecommunications whose expenses would be borne by their home Secretariat. ¹¹ The Secretariat of Agriculture turned down the offer due to an alleged lack of funds; the Secretariat of Communications accepted the task but did not send any representatives to New York that year. This shows how the different offices of the Mexican government scrambled to find, within their own ranks and to no avail, either funds or specialists qualified to defend the country’s stances on space technoscience on a multilateral platform.

Diplomat Francisco Cuevas Cancino conveyed his unease regarding the absence of Mexican representation at the TSSc to the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs in January 1963. He hoped that some measure could be taken to “avoid a repeat of possible criticism motivated by the absence of a representative of Mexico in such Subcommittee, as happened last year”. ¹² Representation in the TSSc was by then a matter of maintaining national pride on an international stage and not merely of participating in the work of a committee for which the Mexican government apparently had no experts or interest.

Cancino’s statements coincided with the establishment of CONEE, the country’s first space commission; perhaps this is why, the following year, Mexico had not one but two representatives in COPUOS’ technical and scientific subcommittee: Jorge Suárez Díaz – an engineer from the Escuela Superior de Ingeniería Mecánica y Eléctrica who participated in the Bilateral Commission that gave rise to the Empalme-Guaymas Station – and Carlos Núñez Arellano, Head of the Department of International Affairs Department of the General Directorate of Telecommunications of the SCT (Gall and Álvarez, 1986), both members of the newly established Outer Space Commission. Although 1963 and 1964 seemed promising for the Mexican delegation at the TSSc, the United Nations Yearbook shows the subcommittee’s irregular representation during subsequent years. ¹³

Given the lackluster circumstances surrounding science diplomacy within Mexico’s delegation to COPUOS, the nation’s early involvement in the Committee largely fell to legal experts. Building on their diplomatic experiences dealing with the denuclearization of Latin America, these individuals opposed the militarization and nuclearization of outer space, instead championing the establishment of frameworks for international cooperation.

The Mexican delegation, mainly composed of lawyers, welcomed the adoption of the OST while critically appraising its content. In 1966, lawyer Alfonso García Robles, president of the Preparatory Commission for the Denuclearization of Latin America and Mexico’s representative at the United Nations’ General Assembly, said that the aforementioned OST was encouraging in two ways: the first showed that, despite the prevailing international tension, negotiation was possible if there was a genuine will to reach a solution. It was also encouraging, he said, because of the readiness of nuclear powers to enter obligations with respect to outer space, the moon and other celestial bodies would certainly help in finding solutions for denuclearization on Earth. ¹⁴

However, in García Robles’ view, Article IV, which stated that no nuclear weapons should be put in orbit, needed revision. García Robles suggested that the article be amended to provide a more precise definition of outer space, prohibit the establishment of military bases, installations and fortifications; the testing of any type of weapon; and the conduct of military maneuvers not only on celestial bodies but also throughout outer space. ¹⁵ He concluded his intervention by stating that the OST was an important step toward disarmament, particularly toward denuclearization.

The delegate said that the example of the denuclearization of Antarctica and outer space should help the Latin American states reach an agreement on the permanent denuclearization of their own continent at their meeting in January 1967, which would be consolidated in the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean (also known as the Treaty of Tlatelolco, 1967). This treaty, deemed as Padilla Nervo’s most important achievement, established the denuclearization of Latin American and Caribbean territory (Velázquez and Ochoa, 2023; Lajous, 2012; Niccolini and Cobaleda, 2023). ¹⁶ For his consistent efforts toward denuclearization, García Robles received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1982.

Amidst nuclear anxieties, COPUOS did manage to promote international cooperation in space exploration and the use of space technology applications to meet global development goals. In 1964, COPUOS began examining desirable locations for building international bases for launching rockets such as the one opened in Thumba, India, a year prior (United Nations, 1964). Later that same year, Cuevas Cancino informed the General Assembly that the Mexican government was considering the possibility of participating in the project of international rocket launch facilities for equatorial probes. ¹⁷ He took the opportunity to highlight the efforts of the Mexican Government in the field of space, informing the General Assembly that his government had by then established the National Commission on Outer Space (discussed in the last section) to organize the country’s contribution to international space activities and to use its results to promote Mexico’s own development. However, the plans did not come to fruition, and Mexico thus lost the possibility of acquiring international funding to build space infrastructure.

Having established Mexico’s involvement in shaping international space law through COPUOS, we now turn to its bilateral collaboration with the U.S. on the Empalme-Guaymas tracking station.

Empalme-Guaymas: A rocket ride with the U.S.

It was Project Mercury (1958–1963), a U.S. space program that aimed to put a human into orbit and bring him back to Earth, that first brought space technologies to Mexico. The project began in 1958, but the construction of a ground station in Mexico was only settled in 1960, through the agreement of the Mexico-United States Commission for Space Observations Relating to Project Mercury (Grimwood, 1963). To command, track and communicate with U.S. instruments in orbit, Project Mercury required the strategic establishment of a network of sixteen tracking stations around the world (Suárez Díaz, 1962). To ensure the construction of a station in Guaymas, in the western Mexican state of Sonora, the US government used one of its main tools of scientific and technological diplomacy: NASA.

The agreement for the installation of the Empalme-Guaymas station was signed by U.S. Ambassador Robert C. Hill and Mexican Foreign Secretary Manuel Tello, an agreement that emphasized the Mercury Project’s non-military character. Scientists from both countries, alongside the Ambassador and Foreign Secretary, formed a Bilateral Commission that would implement the project. The Empalme-Guaymas station married the civilian image that NASA promoted with Mexico’s nationalist and self-determination-oriented diplomatic stance, a pillar of its foreign policy since the 1930s (Tello, 1961). This is striking, given that the station was constructed during a strained moment in inter-American relations, namely the US intervention against the government of Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala in 1954 and the Cuban Revolution of 1959.

As Gisela Mateos and Edna Suárez have shown, President Adolfo López Mateos had a deep-seated conviction “that national sovereignty would not arise from development projects dependent on a US model” (2015: 249), such as that of nuclear energy or, in this case, space technology. Instead, the Mexican government had opted for economic protectionism and industrialization through import substitution, which made scientific and technological communities dependent on the government’s capacity to ensure autonomy (Cueto and Cañízares-Esguerra, 2007).

In a tense inter-American political atmosphere, the Mexican government had to weigh its fierce defense of national self-determination against the US’s history of intervening in the region. Such interventions sidestepped the US’s own Good Neighbor Policy, established by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 (Gleijeses, 2021; Loaeza, 2016); thus, Mexican suspicion towards their northern neighbor was heightened from the outset. This scenario illustrates how Mexico navigated its foreign relations during a tumultuous time, balancing the need for technological advancement and cooperation with the preservation of national sovereignty. The establishment of the Empalme-Guaymas station can be seen as a strategic move by Mexico to assert its independence while engaging in scientific collaboration, reflecting a nuanced approach to international relations that sought to leverage U.S. technological capabilities without compromising its own political principles.

The costs of materials and equipment, and of constructing, installing, and operating the Empalme-Guaymas station, was to be borne by the United States, while Mexico would pay for road construction. The station was provided with an S-Band radar to establish contact with the capsule in orbit, a transmission trailer, recording instruments and an antenna for tracking and transmitting information to and from the capsules (see Figures 1 and 2) (Tello, 1961). This technological equipment entered Mexico from the U.S. duty-free, demonstrating the diplomatic efforts deployed for the movement of artifacts of knowledge for outer space (Mateos and Suárez, 2019; NASA, 1963).

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Figure 1.

Left: Empalme-Guaymas tracking station, Sonora, México (CONEE, 1970); right: Mercury control center as viewed from the observation room at the Goddard Space Center, Cape Canaveral, USA (NASA, 1963).

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Figure 2.

CONEE’s Logo (CONEE, 1975).

The Mexican part of the Bilateral Commission for the Empalme-Guaymas station was led by scientists and engineers from higher education institutions in Mexico’s capital. It was directed by engineer Ricardo Monges López, who, in 1938, founded the Faculty of Sciences at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (National Autonomous University of Mexico, UNAM), and, in 1953, UNAM’s Faculty of Sciences (Tsiao, 2008). Monges López was a promoter of scientific management and the creation of scientific institutions in Mexico. The team included engineer Eugenio Méndez Docurro, Director of the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN), and Jorge Suárez Díaz, an engineer who had previously held Docurro’s position and formed part of the Advisory Council of the National Nuclear Energy Commission (Domínguez, 2000). These three members had all graduated from Escuela Superior de Ingeniería Mecánica y Eléctrica, which had no specialization in space technology.

Tsiao (2008) states that the composition of the Mexican part of the Commission reflects the project’s scientific – that is, apolitical – face. However, her argument overlooks the fact that most members were engineers who had participated directly in the creation and management of institutes of higher education and government agencies focused on science and technology. Many of these members – who we might call “scientific caudillos (strongmen)” – were implicated in the Mexican state’s efforts to establish new institutions after the Revolution (Bartolucci, 2000: 250).

The Empalme-Guaymas station faced opponents who advocated the maintenance of Mexico’s Cold War position of neutrality and non-cooperation, and were skeptical of Project Mercury’s civilian character (González, 2012). However, both the leaders of the project and the media insisted on the station’s “lack of importance from the military point of view”. ¹⁸ At its inauguration, Monges López said that the station represented the beginning of space research in Mexico under the direction of “its own technicians and its own equipment”, and that although its activities were inscribed within Project Mercury, the station had “no secrets because the data obtained will be provided to our country”. ¹⁹

Gloria Martínez Maytorena worked as a translator at Empalme-Guaymas for a year and a half since its opening. She fondly recalls that she was served “pollo en su coco [chicken in its coconut]” at the station’s inauguration; the meal was meant to resemble an astronaut in their capsule, rendering outer space familiar and edible (Gorman, 2019). The station employed, by her approximation, 35 American technicians – some from companies such as General Electric, Bendix and General Dynamics – who rotated among the ground stations that composed Project Mercury’s worldwide network. ²⁰ She also remembers the rumors that surfaced around the station:

They started saying that [the U.S. Americans] were going to invade Mexico. There was no army; it was all lies. They said that the whole town [of Empalme] spoke only English, that you had to enter the station with special permission. But all of that was lies! All the universities were invited to send people, and nobody wanted to go!” ²¹

When asked, Martínez Maytorena says both communities near the tracking station and printed national media promoted this scuttlebutt.

Martínez Maytorena’s testimony shows the role that rumor and fear played in how Mexico received and understood U.S. space technology. Such rumors illustrate that the Guaymas station was interpreted as an inconsistency in the non-aligned, nationalist, anti-imperialist and neutral stance that federal governments maintained throughout the early years of the Cold War – and showed that, while the project was allegedly civilian, concerns about domination and secrecy still prevailed. They also speak of the generalized suspicion that the U.S. might use the station’s operators to penetrate Mexican culture and the US-Americanization of Mexicans through language. Martínez Maytorena’s evaluation coincides with that of UNAM scientist Román Álvarez who, in his historical account of the tracking station, stated that “[a]s often happens in similar situations, the media and some government officials tend to consider these events with an almost triumphalist character that distorts their real dimension” (Álvarez, 1986: 119). Empalme Guaymas, in retrospect, was believed to have had little impact in developing space technoscience in Mexico.

The station was repurposed for the Gemini project, which began in 1964 and ended with US astronauts’ landing on the Moon in 1969. Afterwards, the station was dismantled and returned to the United States (Álvarez, 1986; World Wide Space Activities, 1977: 125). Román Álvarez (1986: 120) pointed to the lack of evidence that the station left “any scientific or technological benefit to the country”. For Álvarez, “at best it can be said that it was an act of friendly collaboration on the part of Mexico, but that it in no way promoted space technology in Mexico” (Álvarez, 1986: 120). This, he lamented, showed the difficulties of achieving long-term benefits from technoscientific diplomacy between developed countries and those lacking space expertise and resources.

The Empalme-Guaymas experience shows how Mexican space technoscience was drawn toward the US both by the geographical proximity and strategic location of its national territory, and by NASA’s ability to use space technoscience as an instrument of diplomacy. However, for many people south of the border, the project could not be stripped of the suspicion and fear of surveillance that surrounded the early days of the space race. Furthermore, the station failed to achieve what Monges López so desired: a NASA-inspired institutionalization of space technoscience in Mexico, and access to the geophysical data obtained by the new American satellites.

CONEE – Mexico’s first National Space Commission takes off

Following the global trend of creating national agencies specialized in space affairs, and likely in response to the growing international and regional pressures to have a highly-trained and critical group of experts on space matters, President Adolfo López Mateos established the first Mexican CONEE on 31 August 1962. CONEE was a part of his broader and ambitious national communications and transportation program (Hernández, 2015). CONEE became a dependency of the Secretariat of Communications and Transport with the character of a specialized technical agency responsible for controlling and promoting all activities related to research into, exploration of and use of outer space for peaceful purposes.

The founding decree of the CONEE was reportedly drafted by Walter C. Buchanan, the Head of the Secretariat for Communications and Transportation (SCT), along with Antonio Francoz Rigalt, a lawyer and General Subdirector of Civil Aeronautics at the SCT, and Carlos Núñez Arellano, also from the SCT (Gall, 1987). These engineers from the SCT later played significant roles in the administration of CONEE; throughout its 15-year existence, the Commission’s director consistently came from within the ranks of the Secretariat. Notably, all directors of both CONEE and the SCT were graduates of the Escuela Superior de Ingeniería Mecánica y Eléctrica. This pattern suggests the existence of a small, exclusive engineering elite emerging from this institution, which held significant influence over the development of space technology in Mexico.

The CONEE’s advisory council, on the other hand, was made up by scientists from different public institutions who were tasked with developing work programs, and doing and promoting research. Its initial members were Guillermo Haro (National Observatory of Tonanzintla), Manuel Sandoval Vallarta (National Institute of Scientific Research), Ruth Gall (National Institute of Nuclear Energy and UNAM’s newly created Department of Outer Space), Enrique León (Director of the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the IPN), Manuel Zorrilla (Director of the Telecommunications and Meteorology Commission of the SCT), and Eduardo Díaz (President of the Mexican Society for Interplanetary Studies). The structure of the council reflected a highly centralized geography of outer space expertise in the country, since most of the members were a part of institutions based in Mexico City, as well as its mainly male membership.

The civilian character of CONEE was distinctive of the scientific and technological policy that Mexico had adopted in the postwar period, exemplified in the National Nuclear Energy Commission (CNEN), which had been founded in December 1956 by President Adolfo Ruiz Cortines. CNEN’s non-military character distinguished it from other national nuclear energy programs in Latin America, including those of Brazil and Argentina (Mateos and Suárez, 2014). The same principle applied to the space programs, which, in Brazil, Argentina and Chile, were developed within the military.

CONEE was intended to promote research on the peaceful uses and exploration of outer space. It was CONEE’s task to advise the government on liaising with national and foreign institutions of the same specialty through the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs. No specifications were made regarding CONEE’s budget; however, government records show that in 1973 the commission was assigned a meager 5.2 million pesos of the Secretariat of Communications and Transport’s 722.4 million. Investment in space technoscience – spent mainly on meteorological rockets, radiation registers and high atmosphere studies – thus paled in comparison to that of telegraphs (114 million) and the postal service (48 million). ²²

CONEE’s programs

In the second half of the 1960s, CONEE implemented three programs, whose objectives and applications were expected to contribute to the understanding of the Earth. The first was a sounding rocket program; the second a meteorological station that used Automatic Picture Transmission (APT); the third dedicated to the remote sensing of natural resources.

The first two projects were established in agreement with the U.S. government in 1965 as part of the Agreement on Scientific Cooperation for the Peaceful Applications of Space Technology agreed to by CONEE and NASA on 27 February 1965. ²³ Through this Intergovernmental Executive Agreement, the United States and Mexico agreed to participate in a meteorological rocket program, a remote sensing project and the establishment of an APT station in Mexico.

In the early years of Mexico’s space program, the sounding rocket represented the most appropriate means to measure atmospheric characteristics and advance space sciences. CONEE’s first program focused on developing sounding rockets capable of transporting payloads to the highest areas of the atmosphere (CONEE, 1970). These instruments would make it possible to study atmospheric structure, charge densities in the ionosphere, ultraviolet radiation and X-rays and radiofrequency waves from the sun and outer space, the Earth’s magnetic field, and cosmic particles and rays, thus advancing the space sciences in Mexico.

The 1970 report detailed the development of the MITL I, a solid-propelled single-stage rocket capable of reaching an altitude of 55 kilometers, HULTE I: a two-stage rocket designed for atmospheric research at 55 kilometers. Furthermore, the CONEE informed of the development of the MITL II, formed by combining the single stage of MITL I and the first stage of HULTE I, planned to send payloads of up to 4 kilograms to an altitude of 230 kilometers. Finally, CONEE was developing a sounding rocket, which consisted of a solid-propelled stage that could reach a height of 55 kilometers (CONEE, 1970). Notably, ‘mitl’ means ‘arrow’ in Náhuatl, while ‘hulte’ means ‘javelin’ in Maya, suggesting the imprint of the ethnic-historical ideology of mestizaje – fundamental for the postrevolutionary state’s legitimacy – in Mexican space technoscience (Gall, 2001).

CONEE’s second project, the APT system, was designed to operate with the United States’ NIMBUS and ESSA satellites, capturing photographs of cloud cover every 208 seconds. This allowed for the identification of atmospheric conditions, cyclones, estimation of hurricane and typhoon wind magnitudes, and tracking variations in tropical cloud systems such as temporary and intertropical convergences (CONEE, 1970). The images were distributed daily to both civilian and governmental organizations, including Compañía Mexicana de Aerofoto, S.A., the Navy, the Secretariat of Hydraulic Resources, and Radio Aeronáutica Mexicana, S.A. In 1971, CONEE reported the installation of a new APT station manufactured by the Société Lannionnaise d’Electronique, stating that the information obtained through this station enabled the recording of 23 cyclonic disturbances in the Gulf of Mexico, the Mexican Pacific, and the Caribbean Sea (CONEE, 1970). ²⁴

CONEE, 1970 CONEE’s third program focused on remote sensing for the detection and rational utilization of natural resources, stemming from a scientific and technical cooperation agreement with NASA established in February 1965. ²⁵ This program operated until its dissolution in 1975 under President Luis Echeverría. Its research projects encompassed a wide range of applications, including locating aquifers, improving irrigation systems, managing hydrological basins, detecting leaks in dams, selecting and enhancing farmland, identifying mineral deposits and geothermal sources, conducting topographic surveys, locating fishing banks, delineating coastlines, studying environmental pollution, and surveying arid zones. ²⁶

CONEE’s remote sensing program in Mexico in the late 1960s and 1970s involved extensive collaboration with NASA. Technicians received training at NASA facilities and on “Mission 91” flights over test areas proposed by CONEE and NASA. ²⁷ Mexico acquired aircraft (an Aerocommander 500 B) equipped with cameras, thermal mappers, radiometers, and magnetometers, as well as instruments for electronic and photographic laboratories. Within the Mexico–US cooperation plan in remote sensing, CONEE used two US satellites: the Technological Satellite for Earth Resources Studies (ERTS) and the Manned Space Laboratory (SKYLAB). The data obtained from these satellites, along with those of remote sensing aircraft, were integrated into a database available to national researchers. Those who made use of these data had to submit a copy of the technical reports derived from their analysis for integration into the CONEE Library. Founded in 1963, this library – despite CONEE’s (1970) claim that it held more than 8000 specialized, publicly-available texts about space – and the resources it once housed have vanished. In fact, beyond CONEE’s 1970 report, there is little evidence it existed at all.

CONEE engaged in public outreach activities alongside its scientific programs, notably participating in the 1968 Cultural Olympiad during the Olympic Games in Mexico. They organized an Exhibition on Space Knowledge, featuring displays from Canada, Germany, the United States, Great Britain, Mexico, and the Soviet Union, showcasing models, replicas, images, and videos of their space activities. The exhibition highlighted a metal sculpture by French artist François Baschet (Figures 3 and 4) and included the U.S. Thor-Agena rocket from the Gemini project. While the Soviet Union focused on a historical overview of its space achievements, Mexico showcased its research in astrophysics, telecommunications, and meteorology, including a model of the satellite communication ground station in Tulancingo, which relayed Olympic broadcasts, and the Tláloc rocket. This event illustrated the growing trend in satellite development for telecommunications and space technology. ²⁸ Cinema played a large role in the exhibition, as illustrated by the Canadian and British pavilions.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 3.

Art exhibition by the French sculptor François Baschet at the Exhibition on the Knowledge of Outer Space (L’olympiade Culturelle, 1969: 684).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 4.

Art exhibition by the French sculptor François Baschet at the Exhibition on the Knowledge of Outer Space (L’olympiade Culturelle, 1969).

As seen in the Cultural Olympiad of 1968, space technoscience, along with nuclear and genetic technoscience, was viewed as the pinnacle of scientific modernity in the late 1960 s. Mexico aimed to align itself with first-world countries, and hosting the Olympics provided an opportunity to showcase this ambition. The Exhibition on Space Knowledge symbolically positioned Mexico alongside nations advancing space science and technology, including two space superpowers. Additionally, the construction of facilities for broadcasting the Olympic Games enhanced telecommunications in Mexico. However, as Eric Zolov (2004) has noted, student protests and their violent repression undermined hopes that the Games would present a modern image of Mexico, exposing the country’s economic inequalities, social unrest, and political authoritarianism to the world.

After the Cultural Olympiad, CONEE collaborated with public universities and research institutes, primarily in Mexico City. It worked with UNAM on photovoltaic cell experiments for solar power storage and conducted static tests of rocket engines. Additionally, CONEE partnered with the Institute of Geophysics at UNAM to study the ozone layer and night glare, essential for understanding upper atmosphere physics and solar-terrestrial interactions (CONEE, 1970). CONEE also organized talks on remote sensing at the Institute of Geography and presented papers at an international conference. To further public outreach, CONEE offered a remote sensing course from September to December 1968, aimed at training Mexican professionals in advanced techniques, with 23 students from various scientific backgrounds participating, including physicists and engineers. ²⁹ The program featured lectures from notable Mexican engineers, such as Manuel Cerrillo Valdivias, a PhD holder from MIT who in 1968 was working at the same institution’s Radiation Laboratory.

When the CONEE came under the direction of engineer Eugenio Méndez Docurro in the early 1970s, a new project for a launching base was developed and construction began in El Tomatal, Oaxaca. “El Tomatal” was part of the 39,336 hectares owned by the communal members of Santa María Colotepec. ³⁰ In October 1973, Engineer Méndez Docurro requested the expropriation of “137–80-00.00 hs” (approximately one hectare) of communal lands belonging to the town of El Tomatal for the purpose of establishing a sounding rocket launch base. ³¹ Méndez Docurro’s request detailed that the launch base was part of the High-Altitude Research program. ³²

Survey engineer Homer Calderón pointed out that “the residents of the ranchería ‘EL TOMATAL’ also have no opposition to ceding said land, but they requested our assistance in intervening with the CAPFCE (Administrator Committee of the Federal School Construction Program) to have schools built that are essential for them”. ³³ In addition, the residents of El Tomatal asked government representatives to complete the potable water works initiated by the state government, as well as a road that would allow transit to and from the town, which was often interrupted by the rising waters of the Colotepec River during rainy seasons. ³⁴ As we can see, in response to CONEE’s intentions for expropriation for the development of a launching base, the communal members strategically mobilized to request infrastructure projects that would improve conditions in their community. However, the file does not indicate whether these requests were implemented.

These requests from the communal members reflect their politicization towards negotiating with a state that did not address their infrastructure needs. This situation is comparable to the construction of the Alcântara launch base in Brazil, where land was expropriated in the 1980s; there, the project led to land conflicts, ethnoracial transformations, international intrigues, and a prolonged inequity for the region’s inhabitants (Mitchell, 2017). In Oaxaca, communal members effectively mobilized a negotiation discourse in response to CONEE’s expropriation request, supported by the SCT.

Progress on the construction of the launch base was slow and faced numerous challenges. Financial shortfalls, delays, incomplete survey data, and insufficient initial funding all hindered the timely completion of the project. The access roads leading to the base were in poor condition, complicating transportation to El Tomatal and often requiring the use of small boats. Despite Alcoe Construcciones S.A.’s failure to meet deadlines and their requests for additional funds during the first phase, they were awarded the contract for the second phase without addressing these ongoing issues. ³⁵ These difficulties show the material challenges in the movement in technology, revealing the intricate nature of the different types of networks, contacts, and operant flows that this task involves (Mateos and Suárez, 2019). These complications suggest the difficulty of CONEE’s senior officials – all engineers – in imagining what it would take to build a launch base in rural Mexico, far from the modern roads and services of the urban nuclei of the country. The delays also reveal the contingencies and localized resistances encountered by a technology with universal and standardizing foundations, characteristically modern.

Despite the delays in the construction of the base, the Secretariat of the Presidency of Luis Echeverría authorized $1,000,000.00 more Mexican pesos to continue the work. This amount would be used to pay for the second stage of the project, still delayed in August 1975. ³⁶ The contract was renewed with the same company that had spent thousands over the original budget, Alcoe. ³⁷ Finally, El Tomatal was completed three months before CONEE’s dissolution in 1977.

President Luis Echeverría dissolved CONEE under the pretext of redistributing competencies and eliminating administrative redundancies. The decree emphasized that studies of the national territory would remain under the Secretariat of Programming and Budget, and CONEE personnel would be reassigned. ³⁸ The following year, Eugenio Méndez Docurro was arrested on charges of fraud. Along with accomplices, he was accused of embezzling $19 million MXN intended for equipment for the Tulancingo ground station. ³⁹ This scandal linked Mexican space technoscience with corruption and fraud, delivering another blow to the country’s fledgling space efforts.

The dissolution of CONEE and the Méndez Docurro scandal marked a significant setback for Mexico’s aspirations in space science and technology, which had shown promise through CONEE’s sounding rocket program, remote sensing projects, and public outreach initiatives in the 1960s and early 1970s. The loss of institutional support and the taint of corruption severely hampered Mexico’s ability to maintain momentum in this strategic area of scientific and technological development.

Ruth Gall, a former advisory board member of CONEE, later stated that the scientific council had little impact on the organization’s space policy. Gall identified several critical mistakes made by CONEE, including the lack of a national space policy aimed at self-sufficiency, poor administrative organization, limited resources, and dependency on a single state secretariat (Secretariat of Communications and Transport), which polarized its activities (Gall and Álvarez, 1986: 116). She lamented that the development of rocket technology effectively ceased with CONEE, which she viewed as its only significant achievement (1986: 116).

Conclusions

The Mexican governments of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s initiated a series of ambitious projects that can be categorized under the term “astropolitics”. These initiatives sought to leverage outer space for national interests by assembling a cadre of legal, technical, and scientific experts that would oversee their implementation. These projects responded to a blend of external pressures and internal aspirations: on one hand, by the late 1950s and early 1960s there was a compelling demand for Mexico to engage in the formation of an international legal framework for outer space, as promoted by COPUOS. On the other hand, the United States exerted diplomatic pressure for Mexico to participate in bilateral technoscientific collaborations, despite the stark disparities in expertise between the two nations. Simultaneously, Mexico recognized the necessity of establishing a nationally-oriented organizational structure focused on effectively using outer space to impulse the developmental projects through which the federal government sought to materialize the revolutionary nationalist principle of social justice. This combination of international obligations, external influences, and domestic needs ultimately laid the groundwork for the development of Mexico’s space policy-making framework, which was embedded in logics of State production and application of knowledge prevailing in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s.

Despite its efforts, Mexico’s pursuit of membership in the select club of spacefaring nations yielded limited success. Initiatives such as the Empalme-Guaymas station, the establishment of the National Commission of Outer Space (CONEE), and participation in multilateral science diplomacy through COPUOS faced significant challenges. Alleged funding shortages, a lack of trained specialists, and inadequate resource management hindered the fulfillment of these projects’ original goals. However, this lack of success does not negate the existence of astropolitics in Mexico. The country grappled with a double-bind: maintaining its territorial sovereignty while seeking access to the economic, technological, and technical wealth of the United States.

The eventual closure of the Empalme-Guaymas Station and its failure to catalyze a thriving space technoscience sector in Mexico can be understood through the lens of NASA’s role as a form of soft power. After the Second World War, NASA became a tool for U.S. foreign policy, sharing knowledge and technology in collaborative projects that reinforced American hegemony in space technology while curtailing purely national efforts in partner countries. This dynamic inhibited the development of a robust space technoscience industry in Mexico following the Guaymas project.

The 1977 report from the U.S. Library of Congress’ Science Policy Research Division expressed dissatisfaction with Mexico’s CONEE, noting that Mexico maintained a highly nationalistic approach to its space program. A Mexican space official’s statement from 1964 highlighted a desire to develop domestic talent and technology rather than relying on foreign equipment (World Wide Space Activities, 1977: 126). The US’ report stated that this approach to space had

slowed that country’s progress […] Despite the grand plans of the Mexican space organization in the early 1960s little has been accomplished. They have been in the process of establishing a sounding rocket range near Puerto Angel on the southwest coast of Mexico since 1969, and their sounding rocket vehicle, TLALOC, has only reached the prototype stage. (World Wide Space Activities, 1977: 126)

Such geopolitical factors form the conditions of possibility for Mexican space science – and the double-bind that shaped the nation’s astropolitical projects.

Mexico’s participation in COPUOS was similarly uneven, hampered by the same lack of resources and expertise that affected the Guaymas station and CONEE’s remote sensing initiatives. While Mexico had legal experts to engage in dialogues about establishing a legal regime for outer space, timely and consistent appointments of representatives for the Technical and Scientific Subcommittee were rare. Nevertheless, Mexican delegates utilized space diplomacy to advance terrestrial political aspirations. In this context, outer space served not merely as an extension of earthly politics but as a platform from which Mexico could assert its national interests and advocate for regional cooperation in Latin America. Despite limited resources and technoscientific expertise, Mexico effectively employed outer space and science diplomacy as astropolitical tools, driven by commitments to non-alignment and denuclearization.

As the U.S. and USSR pursued aggressive technoscientific advancements, the United Nations emerged as a vital forum for nonaligned nations. Mexico aimed not only to participate in discussions about outer space at the UN but also to secure financial support for building international launching bases and fostering networks of scientific and technological cooperation. While nuclear power programs were not inherently astropolitical, the intersection of space technoscience and nuclear arms development provided a crucial avenue for advancing denuclearization efforts. In a context where Mexico lacked the resources to engage in large-scale technoscientific projects, space diplomacy assumed a more prominent role, with astropolitics serving as a means to pursue terrestrial political objectives.

By examining the nuances of Mexico’s modest astropolitics, this article enriches existing studies of the intersection between outer space and politics, advocating for a localized and differentiated approach to astropolitics in Latin America. While analyses of space projects like NASA or the Russian Space Forces have established parameters for understanding astropolitics, they should not be applied universally. The inability of Mexican space programs to achieve their goals does not diminish their astropolitical significance; rather, it illustrates how astropolitics can manifest in contexts where ambition and creativity exist, but expertise, infrastructure, and resources are lacking.