Abstract

The 1926 Games were a turning point. Mexicans had held what they considered to be their own Olympics, and they had seen many of their countrymen receive the laurels of Olympic victories. Mexico was now firmly committed to international participation in sport, sending a delegation which included Tarahumara runners to Amsterdam in 1928, and winning their first Olympic medals in Los Angeles in 1932. Mexican sport leaders were among those who met in Los Angeles and later in Berlin in 1936 to lay the groundwork for what was to be the greatest of American's sport festivals, the Pan American Games, which Mexico hosted in 1955 and 1975. Mexico's national Olympic organization and their programme of athletic development became well established, and a Mexican, General Jose de J. Clark Flores, served as Vice President of the IOC (1966-70). Finally, the grandest outcome of Mexico's entry into the international arena with its first Olympic team in 1924 and its Central American Games of 1926 was the selection of Mexico City for the games of the XIXth Olympiad. In 1968 Mexico City, site of the first IOC- recognized regional games in the Western Hemisphere, became the only Latin American host city in Olympic history. Eaton