Abstract

GUILLERMO LOPEZ, CONTRERAS. When the World Turned its Back on a Democracy. Mexican Diplomacy and the Disappearance of Czechoslovakia, 1938-1940. Anu. colomb. hist. soc. cult. [online]. 2012, vol.39, n.1, pp.215-240. ISSN 0120-2456.

The Mexican Foreign Service was very active during the interwar period in Europe, when Mexico attempted to increase the prestige of the administrations following the Mexican Revolution. Historiography has pointed out as an achievement of those administrations their denunciations of aggressions by various powerful countries to weaker ones, for example, the Austrian, Spanish and Chinese cases. However, the position of Mexican diplomacy regarding the Nazi aggression to Czechoslovakia had not been studied and there was no clarity regarding the Mexican position. The article addresses issues such as Mexico's attitude toward the German claim to the strategic region of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, its subsequent transfer to Germany, and the disappearance of Czechoslovakia at the hands of the Third Reich. In order to do so, it analyzes the reports and communications between Mexican diplomats in Europe and the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as the oral and written declarations of Mexicans politicians. The Czechoslovak question proved to be an exception to Mexican foreign policy based on collective security and denunciation of unlawful aggressions.

Keywords : Mexico; Czechoslovakia; diplomacy; Nazis; World War II.

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