Yevgeny Yevtushenko's Latin American tour (1968). Mexico. “The victory was complete”

This is a continuation of the series of articles dedicated to Yevgeny Yevtushenko's big Latin American tour in 1967—1968. After Chile, Uruguay and Colombia, the poet travelled to Mexico. The Mexican part of Yevtushenko's report for the USSR Writers' Union, which we are now publishing, is an excellent source for studying the literary and political climate on the eve of the Prague events in August and the Tlatelolco massacre in October 1968, the circumstances of rapprochement between Mexico and the USSR, and the tensions between the Soviet Union and Cuba. However, it is replete with inaccuracies and omissions regarding the movements and actions of the traveller himself, so in the introduction we have focused on the reconstruction of this visit. We have been able to establish that the poet stayed in Mexico from about 8 March to 12 April. He gave two large concerts in Mexico City and several smaller ones in other cities, travelled around the country with the writer Carlos Monsivais, met with the artists David Alfaro Siqueiros and Ricardo Martínez, participated in conversations with listeners, dinner parties, communicated with President Díaz Ordaz, and even went to the Lecumberri prison to visit the journalist Victor Rico Galán.