Photographers Reconstruct Mexico's Cold War Espionage History

By Marcus Bennett

Mexican photographers Valeria Arendar and Eleana Konstantellos have spent years reconstructing a hidden chapter of the Cold War: the espionage networks that operated inside Mexico between the 1950s and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Their ongoing project, The Dice Was Loaded from the Start, combines archival images, forensic still lifes, staged photographs and unfamiliar surveillance apparatus into a fragmented visual history of intelligence work in a country that hosted both the CIA and the KGB.

The project is grounded in hard archival fact. Mexico City held embassies of both the United States and the Soviet Union, making the country a crucial node in the two superpowers' intelligence work. The CIA ran a covert operation there called LITEMPO. According to the artists: "It is even said that all Mexican presidents who were in charge of the country between 1958 and 1988 were recruited by the US Intelligence Agency (CIA)."

What does the archive actually contain?

The backbone of the work is the extensive records of the Dirección Federal de Seguridad (Federal Security Directorate), Mexico's secret police, now held at the Archivo General de la Nación. The agency was created with the support of the CIA and operated for more than 35 years.

"There are millions of records, most of them ridiculous and registering people's daily routines," says Arendar. "For example, if you travelled to Cuba… you were automatically labelled a communist, a subversive, and needed to be under surveillance. I think the accumulation of all these seemingly innocuous files created an atmosphere of paranoia within Mexico's so-called democracy."

Arendar and Konstantellos first encountered this history while researching political events of the 1970s and 1980s. Both artists build their individual practices on the history and politics of 20th century Latin America, rooted in their own family histories. Arendar's heritage is Russian, Argentinian and Mexican; Konstantellos' is Greek, French and Mexican. An image depicting their families' passports quietly acknowledges these intertwined stories.

How do the artists work with the files?

The duo takes two main photographic approaches. The first stages visual interpretations of the contexts surrounding the archival records, presented in dialogue with historical images. Combining sharp humour and play, they reflect on the Mexican government's obsession with tracing its citizens. In one photograph, a young man smokes in a business suit while his height is measured with an L-shaped ruler.

"We approached the project as a kind of game, and that's really what's behind the practice," says Konstantellos. "The staging, the fiction, dressing up and stepping into different roles, as a way of trying to understand the gaps in the official histories – and, in a sense, filling them."

Elsewhere the artists let the archive speak for itself. "A lot of the files might seem overwhelming and make you wonder, what did they use them for?" says Konstantellos. "Often, the information in them turned into torture, disappearances, and a whole host of things that are much more intense – things that we often omit, that we don't quite know how to handle within the project, because they are very delicate."

One image shows a student killed during the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre. In the lead-up to the Mexico City Summer Olympics, non-violent demonstrators protested authoritarian rule, political repression and social inequality. President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz framed the movement as a 'communist conspiracy'. Soldiers and police opened fire on unarmed civilians.

Why photograph the gadgets?

The second approach focuses on espionage kit. Combining analogue photography technology with research into the collection of the German Spy Museum, the artists have created a catalogue of surveillance tools that might have been used by the KGB in Mexico.

"Photography is a fundamental part of espionage," says Konstantellos. "It is direct proof that someone entered a house at a particular time, or that an exchange of information took place. Photography is always a secondary character in espionage, and we realised it would be interesting to incorporate the medium itself, to create a kind of meta-project through analogue photography and all its different components."

Set against cold, sterile backdrops in greyscale, or dramatic scenes lit through chiaroscuro, these images evoke the political tension, secrecy and anxiety of the era.

Where are the women in this history?

More recently, Arendar and Konstantellos have shifted attention from the most familiar features of espionage: gadgets and men.

"After a pause, we returned to the project and decided to focus on the role of women within this ecosystem," says Arendar. "We didn't want to be two women photographing more male spies, as Hollywood has done, so we decided to approach the project through a gender perspective. The structures that made espionage possible included secretaries, receptionists, telephone operators, the wives of diplomats and so on – all roles that remained largely invisible. We call them the unconscious army of espionage."

In the resulting images, women carry briefcases, pass documents, climb staircases, move files, listen in, sit at hairdressing salons and at home. All but one look away. The framing emphasises the secondary role women have occupied in histories of espionage while paradoxically casting them as indispensable. The most effective spies, after all, are the ones you never know about.

"The gradual disappearance of faces accompanies a shift in the project," the artists explain. "Individual identities cease to be the centre of attention, giving way to a reflection on those anonymous presences that sustain the system from the margins."

A further meta-layer emerges: both artists perform for the camera, and their authorship disappears. "Our physical resemblance plays into this ambiguity, and we want this uncertainty to be part of the experience of the images," they say.

What does this change for how we see surveillance?

The project speaks of past events, but also of persisting methods. Konstantellos insists on the contemporary relevance of the subject. "They still raise the same key questions," she says. "Espionage is one of the most current issues we're experiencing, and being able to discuss it from the perspective of the past helps people gain some distance and reflect on it."

The work also implicates its viewers. One photograph shows two women beneath hooded hairdryers, listening intently, fictionalising the possible intelligence roles of diplomats' wives. "We've all gone to the hairdresser and eavesdropped," smiles Arendar. "You don't set out to do it, but it has become normal."

"Another example is on the subway. You glance at the person's phone sitting next to you and see a conversation, then you find out something you shouldn't have. It is interesting how these small acts very much echo espionage."

While photographs are usually interpreted as evidence, The Dice Was Loaded from the Start positions them as tools for speculation and reconstruction, giving visual form to histories the archives cannot fully reveal. "What's interesting about fiction is that it also helps us think about future worlds," say the artists. "In that sense, it helps us to rethink the past to envisage a better future."