Yixin Tian

Research Topic

The Last Revolutionary Mirage? Third Worldism, Counterinsurgent Violence, and US Power in Mexico, 1970–76

Supervisor: Eduardo Posada-Carbo 

My interests in history lie in the intersections of twentieth-century diplomatic and political histories of the United States and Latin America (mainly Mexico). I am especially drawn by how various iterations of US power were projected and perceived by Latin American actors, and how Cold War encounters with the United States shaped the region's collective memory of the Dirty War. 

For my DPhil research, I delve into recently declassified and under-researched sources from the United States, Mexico, and China to piece together an international history of Mexico during the rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Focusing on the presidency of Luis Echeverría Álvarez (1970–76), my thesis unravels the tangled internal and external conflicts unfolding in Cold War Mexico. It examines how international anti-imperialist and revolutionary currents—embodied by China, Chile, and Vietnam—served as both tools of the Mexican regime and forces for social change amid Mexico’s burgeoning student movements and counterinsurgency politics. A key aspect of my thesis revisits the hidden role of the United States, whose anti-Communist anxiety and backstage interventions tacitly supported the consolidation of Mexico's dictablanda (soft authoritarianism) state. Looking beyond a purely Cold War prism, my research also factors in the wider climate of East-West détente, Third Worldism, and Mexican (presidential) internationalism. 

Before coming to Oxford, I completed an MPhil in American History at the University of Cambridge (2022–2023) and a BA at the Institute of the Americas, UCL (2019–2022). Additionally, I spent the summer of 2023 as a research assistant at the Institute of American Studies, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences in China.