[ad_1]
The conversation
JFK’s conspiracy theory debunked in Mexico 57 years after Kennedy assassination
Most of the conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy have been refuted. Kennedy was not killed by a gasoline powered device triggered by aliens or by actor Woody Harrelson’s father, but speculation about Kennedy’s November 22, 1963 murder in Dallas continues, fueled by unpublished classified documents. , bizarre ballistics and assassin Lee Harvey Oswald’s claim. – who was subsequently killed on live television while in police custody – that he was “just a madman”. Several JFK assassination experts, such as former New York Times investigative reporter Phillip Shenon, see Mexico as the best place to find answers about a possible conspiracy and who was behind it. Just over a month before Kennedy’s assassination, Oswald took a bus from Texas to Mexico City. He arrived on Friday morning September 27, 1963 and left very early on Wednesday October 2, according to US and Mexican intelligence. spies – or just a deranged killer? I dug this question while researching my book on Conspiracy Tales in Mexico, and I think I found something everyone missed: a hole in the history of the very man who started a conspiracy theory. tenacious on Oswald. Travel to Mexico. Communist Mexico was a Cold War hotspot in the mid-20th century, a haven for Soviet exiles, American leftists fleeing the anti-Communist persecution of McCarthyism, and sympathizers of Castro’s Cuban regime. Every communist and democratic country had an embassy in Mexico City – the only place in the Western Hemisphere where these enemies more or less openly coexisted. Witnesses from Cuban and Soviet diplomatic missions said Oswald made several visits to their embassies on Friday. and Saturday. He was desperately looking for visas for those countries, which Americans were not allowed to visit at the time. Having said that such documents would take months to process, Oswald had a heated argument with Cuban consul, Emilio Azcué. Oswald also forced a KGB volleyball match on Saturday morning to be called off when he brandished a gun at the Soviet consulate, before bursting into tears and leaving. These events are well documented by the CIA, which in the 1960s had stepped up operations in Mexico to monitor Communist activity, even hiring 200 Mexican agents to help it. The Mexican Secret Service, whose records from the 1960s that Mexico recently began to declassify, also followed Oswald on September 27 and 28, 1963. It is not known, however, where Oswald is for the next three and a half days. A Conspiracy Theory Is Born A main conspiracy over Oswald’s undocumented time in Mexico City puts him in contact with dangerous Mexicans on the left side of the Cold War. This story dates back to March 1967, when the US Consul in the Mexican coastal city of Tampico, Benjamin Ruyle, was buying drinks for local journalists, one of whom – Óscar Contreras Lartigue, 28-year-old reporter for El Sol de Tampico – a tells Ruyle that he met Oswald in 1963 when he was a law student at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Contreras said he was part of a pro-Castro campus group and that Oswald begged that group to help him get a Cuban visa. According to Contreras, Oswald spent two days with these students from the National Autonomous University, then reunited with them a few days later at the Cuban embassy. Obviously scared for his life, Contreras wouldn’t say more to Ruyle. He said he visited Cuba himself, knew people under the Castro regime and blew up the statue of a former Mexican president on the Mexico City campus. Contreras feared persecution for his political activities. Contreras said it wasn’t the first time he shared his story. After JFK was shot, Contreras told Ruyle, he had commented to his editor that he had recently met Oswald. Contreras’ account hinted at suspicious, hitherto unknown links between Oswald and Communist Cuba, established shortly before JFK’s assassination. . US government officials needed to know if Contreras was a trustworthy source. Three months after Ruyle’s happy hour, a CIA official from Mexico City traveled to Tampico to interview Contreras. During the six-hour interrogation, Contreras always declined to go into details, but said Oswald never mentioned the assassination – only that he repeatedly said he ” had to go to Cuba ”. In 1978, a US House Select Commission on Assassinations researcher named Dan Hardway went to Mexico to investigate the JFK assassination. He was unable to question Contreras despite several attempts, but in an influential report he warned his account should not be rejected. New York Times reporter Shenon, who interviewed Oscar Contreras for a 2013 book on the JFK assassination, also found Contreras credible. Shenon wrote that Contreras – whom he calls a “prominent journalist” – “went much further” in his interview than with the CIA, alleging “much more extensive contact between Oswald and Cuban agents in Mexico.” Dan Hardway, who is now a lawyer in West Virginia, still believes Contreras. After reading Shenon’s book, he reiterated in 2015 that Lee Harvey Oswald could have been part of a larger Cuban intelligence network. Hole in the web Óscar Contreras died in 2016, so I couldn’t interview him myself. But in my investigation, a small detail of her biography caught my eye – a seemingly overlooked contradiction that could undermine her entire story. In Contreras’ account, he fled the campus of the National Autonomous University and moved to Tampico around 1964. Yet Contreras also reportedly told his “editor” about his meeting with Oswald after Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. Les University journals are not common in Mexico and Contreras was a law student. So how could he have had a publisher in 1963? I thought his local newspaper, El Sol de Tampico, might contain the answer. Looking through its archives, I discovered that the newspaper published a Sunday gossip column in the early 1960s called “Crisol” or “melting pot”. Óscar Contreras became the journalist for “Crisol” on June 6, 1963 and continued to write the gossip column in September and October of that year. While Lee Harvey Oswald was in Mexico City, Contreras was 500 miles in Tampico. In flamboyant prose, from past issues of the local newspaper, he recounted the lavish wedding receptions, quinceañeras, and high-society yacht tours of Tampico. Three Dark Days I believe the Sol de Tampico archives discredit Contereras’ story. A political correspondent may live far from where his newspaper is published. But for a gossip columnist, that would be a dereliction of duty. This revelation plunges Oswald’s trip to Mexico in the fall of 1963. There are other conspiracy theories, including the fact that Oswald had a Mexican mistress who took him to a Communist party and pawns. But it is more likely that Mexico has no hidden clues to the JFK assassination. Conspiracy theories offer assurances of depth and closure, a promise that the 20th century’s greatest conundrum can be solved. But from what we know of what Oswald did and didn’t do in Mexico City, he was an unstable and disorganized loner who couldn’t even handle the logistics of travel. The assassination of JFK is a cold case. And in Mexico, only the exhausted tracks remain. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Gonzalo Soltero, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) Read more: * Bob Dylan highlights links between JFK’s assassination and coronavirus * What better forensic science can reveal about the assassination of JFK? British Academy Advanced Scholarship.
[ad_2]
Source link