This thesis analyzes Mexico's foreign policy regarding Cold War era developments in Cuba and the United States' response to said policy. It finds that while Mexico oftentimes defied the anticommunist agenda the United States pushed on to Latin America during this period, it did so not as an immediate affront to the United States, but rather to keep a fragile balance among a broad domestic coalition vital to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The United States - though initially upset by the foreign policy of Mexico - eventually understood and accepted the domestic considerations behind its neighbor's foreign policy, as it secured the hold of the PRI in Mexico and thus excluded communists from holding significant political power in that country.