Most of them Conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of former US President John F. Kennedand they were refuted. Kennedy was not assassinated by a gas device activated by aliens or by actor Woody Harrelson’s father.
But the Speculation about Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas, continues, fueled by secret documents, bizarre ballistics and the claim by murderer Lee Harvey Oswald – who was later murdered on live television while in police custody – that he was “just a scapegoat.”
Several experts on the JFK assassination, such as former New York Times investigative reporter Phillip Shenon, see Mexico is considered the best place to find answers to a possible conspiracy and who was behind her.
Just over a month before Kennedy’s assassination Oswald took a bus from Texas to Mexico City. According to U.S. and Mexican intelligence, he arrived on Friday morning, September 27, 1963, and left very early on Wednesday, October 2.
Was Oswald this kind of person? Rebel James Bond, who went south of the border as a partner with communists, Cuban revolutionaries and spies – or just a deranged murderer?
I explored this question while reviewing my book on conspiracy theories in Mexico, and I think I found something everyone else missed: a Hole in the same man’s story which sparked a persistent conspiracy theory about Oswald’s trip to Mexico.
Communist Mexico City
Mexico was a Cold War flashpoint in the mid-20th century, a refuge for Soviet exiles, American leftists fleeing the anti-communist persecution of McCarthyism, and sympathizers of the Castro regime in Cuba. All communist and democratic countries had an embassy in Mexico City – the the only place in the Western Hemisphere where these enemies coexisted more or less openly.
According to witnesses of the Cuban and Soviet diplomatic missions, Oswald repeatedly visited their embassies on Friday and Saturday. He desperately searched for visas for countries that Americans were banned from visiting.
When I was told that such documents would take months to process, Oswald had a heated argument with the Cuban consul Emilio Azcué. Oswald also forced the cancellation of a KGB volleyball game on Saturday morning when he pointed 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 increased its operations in Mexico to monitor communist activities, even hiring 200 Mexican agents to assist. Also the Mexican secret service, whose files from Mexico from the 1960s were recently declassified He retraced Oswald’s steps after the assassination.
However, Oswald’s whereabouts were unknown for three and a half days.
A conspiracy theory is born
A conspiracy about it Oswald’s undocumented time in Mexico City He comes into contact with dangerous characters from the left side of the Cold War.
This story originated in March 1967 when the American consul in the Mexican coastal city of Tampico, Benjamin Ruyle, was buying drinks for local journalists.
One of them – Óscar Contreras Lartigue, a 28-year-old reporter from The sun of Tampico – Ruyle said he met Oswald in 1963 when he was a law student at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
Contreras said he was in a pro-Castro university group and that Oswald had asked this group to help him obtain a Cuba visa. According to Contreras, Oswald spent two days with these UNAM students and met them again a few days later at the Cuban embassy.
Contreras was obviously afraid for his life and didn’t want to say much more to Ruyle. He said that himself had traveled to CubaHe knew people from the Castro regime and had blown up a statue of a former Mexican president on the Mexico City campus. Contreras feared persecution because of his political activities.
However, Contreras said this is not the first time he has shared his story.. After JFK was shot, Contreras told Ruyle that he had told his editor that he had recently met Oswald.
The Contreras question
Contreras’ story suggested as much Suspicious and previously unknown connections between Oswald and communist Cuba which were created shortly before JFK’s assassination.
His story was, according to a memo later sent from CIA headquarters, “the first solid investigative lead we have on Oswald’s activities in Mexico.” U.S. government officials needed to determine whether Contreras was a reliable source.
Three months after Ruyle’s Happy Hour, a CIA officer from Mexico City He went to Tampico to interrogate Contreras. During the six-hour interrogation, Contreras still refused to go into details, but said that although Oswald never mentioned the assassination, he repeatedly said that “he has to go to Cuba.”
In 1978, an investigator for the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations named Dan Hardway was appointed He traveled to Mexico to investigate the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Despite several attempts, he was unable to interview Contreras, but in an influential report he warned that his story should not be dismissed.
New York Times reporter Shenon, the interviewed Oscar Contreras for a 2013 book about the JFK assassination and also found Contreras’ story credible. Shenon wrote that Contreras – whom he calls a “prominent journalist” – “went much further” in his interview than the CIA, claiming “much more extensive contacts between Oswald and Cuban agents in Mexico.”
Dan Hardway, now a lawyer in West Virginia, still believes in Contreras. After reading Shenon’s book, he reiterated in 2015 that Lee Harvey Oswald may have been part of a larger Cuban intelligence network.
The hole in history
Óscar Contreras died in 2016so I couldn’t interview him.
But according to my research, a small one A detail of his biography caught my attention – a seemingly overlooked contradiction that could undermine his entire story.
According to Contreras’ story fled the UNAM campus and moved to Tampico around 1964. However, Contreras also told his editor about his meeting with Oswald after Kennedy’s assassination in 1963.
Student newspapers are not common in Mexico and Contreras was properly enrolled. How could there have been a publisher in 1963?
His hometown newspaper, El Sol de Tampico, may have the answer. When I searched the archives, I discovered that in the early 1960s the newspaper published a Sunday gossip column called “Crisol.”
Óscar Contreras began signing the column on June 6, 1963 and did so every week in September and October of that year.
While Lee Harvey Oswald was in Mexico City, Contreras was 500 kilometers away in Tampico. In the faded copies of this year you can read the prose full of meringue. With prose full of meringue, he told of lavish wedding receptions, XV. Birthday parties and yacht cruises for Tampico’s high society. All while bragging about being a revolutionary student in the nation’s capital.
Three dark days
I believe that the archives of El Sol de Tampico They discredit Contereras’ story.
A political correspondent may live far away from where his newspaper is published. But for a gossip columnist that would be a dereliction of duty.
This revelation Oswald’s trip to Mexico in the fall of 1963 is plunged into darkness.
There are other conspiracy theories, including that Oswald had a Mexican lover who took him to a party of communists and spies.
However, it is more likely that Mexico no longer has any hidden clues to the JFK assassination.
Conspiracy theories promise depth and closure, to solve the greatest mystery of the 20th century. But from what we know about what Oswald did and didn’t do in Mexico City, he was an erratic, disorganized loner who couldn’t even keep up with his visa applications.
The JFK assassination is an increasingly explosive case. And in Mexico there are only sold out titles.
This article was translated by El Financiero.
Gonzalo Soltero, Professor of Narrative Analysis, School of Higher Studies, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original.
