Sports diplomacy and national projects through the Formula 1 Mexican Grand Prix, reflections on a global sport

Abstract

While sporting activity has the capacity to be filled with meanings, as well as its multiple phenomenological expressions, we can speak of an important complexity. Thus, sport affects even the construction of the socio-political narratives of modern societies. The sporting spectacles of the twentieth century are a fertile field for understanding these historical and socio-political processes, as well as its subsequent influence through the institutionalization of sport and the consequent proliferation of narratives that reflect global and national projects in interaction.
On time, the proposal revolves around the global figuracional analysis of the periods in which the Formula 1 Mexican Grand Prix was held: 1962 to 1970, 1986 to 1992 and 2015 to 2019. Each of these periods is considered in conjunction with historical processes that, as has been traced, intervene in its constitution: the "Mexican miracle" of the sixties, the development of neoliberalism in the 1980s and democratization in the second decade of the 21st century.
The objective of this exercise is to explore, through a review in the specialized hemerography of each historical moment, the ideological constitution towards the interior and the exterior of the Mexican Nation-State through sports expression, as well as the interaction with the global order proposal mediated by spectacle sport and a global modernization model focused on the figure of the automobile. The reflection around each period and its intersection with the mentioned historical junctures is carried out through two analytical elements: the construction of national projects and sports diplomacy. In conclusion, it is possible to think of different national projects exposed from Mexican motorsport, with limited scope and clear objectives in terms of diplomatic expression, which was largely oriented towards the approach to global hegemonic blocs.