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Before The Eyes Of The World : Mexico And 1968 Olympic Games

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Before the 1968 Olympics, the world was in chaos. Countries had internal and external problems that were carried on to the Olympic stage. Issues like the Cold War, South Africa apartheid, and the Civil Rights movement took part in forming the games and taking the stage. However, the host of the Olympics, Mexico, was in for a rude awakening. First, they had to prove to the world that they were capable of hosting the games. Second, they had to handle the worlds issues and their own too. Mexico’s problems consisted of the effect of high altitude on athlete’s performance and student protests. These concerns are all discussed in Kevin Witherspoon’s book, Before the Eyes of the World: Mexico and the 1968 Olympic Games. Witherspoon argues how global and internal disputes were able to impact Mexico in how they handled the most watched event. Witherspoon organized his book into six chapters. Within the chapters, he provides different subtitles that correlate with the main subject of the chapter. Chapters one through four are significant topics that are controversial to the Olympics; Civil Rights movement, Tlatlolco, and the South Africa apartheid dispute. It is not until chapter five where readers are able to see the triumphant outcome of the ‘68 Olympics. The last chapter focuses on the many accomplishments of the first Latin America country to host the Olympics, while demonstrating the internal and external obstacles it faced in order to proceed to host the extravagant Olympic

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