Industry and Underdevelopment

Industry and Underdevelopment
Author: Stephen Haber
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 1995-01-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0804765553

The recent economic troubles of Mexico should have surprised no one, for the Mexican economy is an unhealthy one whose basic problems extend back to the nineteenth century - that is the major theme of this study of the formative years of industrialization in Mexico. The author focuses on the forces - economic, political, and technological - that have thwarted Mexican efforts to become a competitive member of the international economic community. Unlike most previous studies, which have relied on aggregate data published by the Mexican government that lump together all industries and all firms, this study is based almost entirely on new material concerning individual companies and individual entrepreneurs. This approach enables the author to examine a wide range of new questions. What were the social origins of Mexico's industrial entrepreneurs? What was their relation to the government of Porfirio Diaz? How profitable were the major manufacturing companies? What effects did the Revolution of 1910-1917 have on the nation's physical plant and on investor confidence? What strategies did firms follow to protect their markets and to prevent competition? The author argues that the roots of modern Mexican industrialization are not to be found in the restructuring of the Mexican economy associated with the Revolution (indeed he contends that the Revolution's effect on the economy has been exaggerated) or in the economic growth stemming from World War II. Rather, he sees the Porfiriato as the decisive era in Mexico's industrialization. By examining the economic constraints on large-scale industrialization during the Porfiriato, he explains the factors that led to an industrial sector marked by concentration of ownership, oligopoly and monopoly production, the inability to compete in international markets, and the need for constant government protection and subsidies.

Made in Mexico

Made in Mexico
Author: Susan M. Gauss
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 189
Release: 2015-09-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0271074450

The experiment with neoliberal market-oriented economic policy in Latin America, popularly known as the Washington Consensus, has run its course. With left-wing and populist regimes now in power in many countries, there is much debate about what direction economic policy should be taking, and there are those who believe that state-led development might be worth trying again. Susan Gauss’s study of the process by which Mexico transformed from a largely agrarian society into an urban, industrialized one in the two decades following the end of the Revolution is especially timely and may have lessons to offer to policy makers today. The image of a strong, centralized corporatist state led by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) from the 1940s conceals what was actually a prolonged, messy process of debate and negotiation among the postrevolutionary state, labor, and regionally based industrial elites to define the nationalist project. Made in Mexico focuses on the distinctive nature of what happened in the four regions studied in detail: Guadalajara, Mexico City, Monterrey, and Puebla. It shows how industrialism enabled recalcitrant elites to maintain a regionally grounded preserve of local authority outside of formal ruling-party institutions, balancing the tensions among centralization, consolidation of growth, and Mexico’s deep legacies of regional authority.

Development and Growth in the Mexican Economy

Development and Growth in the Mexican Economy
Author: Juan Carlos Moreno-Brid
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2009-04-23
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0199707855

This book is the first comprehensive and systematic English-language treatment of Mexico's economic history to appear in nearly forty years. Drawing on several years of in-depth research, Juan Carlos Moreno-Brid and Jaime Ros, two of the foremost experts on the Mexican economy, examine Mexico's current development policies and problems from a historical perspective. They review long-term trends in the Mexican economy and analyze past episodes of radical shifts in development strategy and in the role of markets and the state. This book provides an overview of Mexico's economic development since Independence that compares the successive periods of stagnation and growth that alternately have characterized Mexico's economic history. It gives special attention to developments since 1940, and it presents a re-evaluation of Mexico's development policies during the State-led industrialization period from 1940 to 1982 as well as during the more recent market reform process. This reevaluation is critical of the dominant trend in economic literature and is revisionist in arguing that, in particular, the market reforms undertaken by successive Mexican governments since 1983 have not addressed the fundamental obstacles to economic growth. Development and Growth in the Mexican Economy also details the country's pioneering role in launching NAFTA, its membership in the OECD, and its radical macroeconomic reforms. Carefully argued and meticulously researched, the book presents a wide-ranging, authoritative study that not only pinpoints problems, but also suggests solutions for removing obstacles to economic stability and pointing the Mexican economy toward the road to recovery.

Industry and Revolution

Industry and Revolution
Author: Aurora Gómez-Galvarriato
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 419
Release: 2013-06-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0674074351

The Mexican Revolution has long been considered a revolution of peasants. But Aurora Gómez-Galvarriato’s investigation of the mill towns of the Orizaba Valley reveals that industrial workers played a neglected but essential role in shaping the Revolution. By tracing the introduction of mechanized industry into the valley, she connects the social and economic upheaval unleashed by new communication, transportation, and production technologies to the political unrest of the revolutionary decade. Industry and Revolution makes a convincing argument that the Mexican Revolution cannot be understood apart from the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution, and thus provides a fresh perspective on both transformations. By organizing collectively on a wide scale, the spinners and weavers of the Orizaba Valley, along with other factory workers throughout Mexico, substantially improved their living and working conditions and fought to secure social and civil rights and reforms. Their campaigns fed the imaginations of the masses. The Constitution of 1917, which embodied the core ideals of the Mexican Revolution, bore the stamp of the industrial workers’ influence. Their organizations grew powerful enough to recast the relationship between labor and capital, not only in the towns of the valley, but throughout the entire nation. The story of the Orizaba Valley offers insight into the interconnections between the social, political, and economic history of modern Mexico. The forces unleashed by the Mexican and the Industrial revolutions remade the face of the nation and, as Gómez-Galvarriato shows, their consequences proved to be enduring.

The Mexican Economy, 1870-1930

The Mexican Economy, 1870-1930
Author: Jeff Bortz
Publisher: Social Science History
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2002
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780804742078

Studying the interaction of political and economic institutions in Mexico during the period of 1870-1930, this book shows how institutional change can foment economic growth.

Working Women in Mexico City

Working Women in Mexico City
Author: Susie S. Porter
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2003-11
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780816522682

The years from the Porfiriato to the post-Revolutionary regimes were a time of rising industrialism in Mexico that dramatically affected the lives of workers. Much of what we know about their experience is based on the histories of male workers; now Susie Porter takes a new look at industrialization in Mexico that focuses on women wage earners across the work force, from factory workers to street vendors. Working Women in Mexico City offers a new look at this transitional era to reveal that industrialization, in some ways more than revolution, brought about changes in the daily lives of Mexican women. Industrialization brought women into new jobs, prompting new public discussion of the moral implications of their work. Drawing on a wealth of material, from petitions of working women to government factory inspection reports, Porter shows how a shifting cultural understanding of working women informed labor relations, social legislation, government institutions, and ultimately the construction of female citizenship. At the beginning of this period, women worked primarily in the female-dominated cigarette and clothing factories, which were thought of as conducive to protecting feminine morality, but by 1930 they worked in a wide variety of industries. Yet material conditions transformed more rapidly than cultural understandings of working women, and although the nation's political climate changed, much about women's experiences as industrial workers and street vendors remained the same. As Porter shows, by the close of this period women's responsibilities and rights of citizenshipÑsuch as the right to work, organize, and participate in public debateÑwere contingent upon class-informed notions of female sexual morality and domesticity. Although much scholarship has treated Mexican women's history, little has focused on this critical phase of industrialization and even less on the circumstances of the tortilleras or market women. By tracing the ways in which material conditions and public discourse about morality affected working women, Porter's work sheds new light on their lives and poses important questions for understanding social stratification in Mexican history.

Confronting Development

Confronting Development
Author: Kevin J. Middlebrook
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 648
Release: 2003
Genre: History
ISBN: 0804745897

Since the 1980s, Mexico has alternately served as a model of structural economic reform and as a cautionary example of the limitations associated with market-led development. This book provides a comprehensive, interdisciplinary assessment of the principal economic and social policies adopted by Mexico during the 1980s and 1990s.

The Manufacturing Sector in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico

The Manufacturing Sector in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico
Author: Juan Eduardo Santarcángelo
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2019-01-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3030047059

Using a heterodox perspective, this book discusses the real possibilities of Argentina, Brazil and Mexico ever achieving economic development through industrialization. Through their discussion of the three most industrialized countries of Latin America, the contributors compare trajectories and critically analyze the transformations, challenges and development prospects of the sector at the beginning of the 21st Century. Focusing on the historical evolution of each country’s industrial sector, as well as their productivity, structural transformation, and degree of external dependence and international integration, this book will appeal to those researching the political economy, economic history, industrial organization and economic development in Latin America.

Revolution in Development

Revolution in Development
Author: Christy Thornton
Publisher: University of California Press
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2021-01-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520297164

Revolution in Development uncovers the surprising influence of postrevolutionary Mexico on the twentieth century's most important international economic institutions. Drawing on extensive archival research in Mexico, the United States, and Great Britain, Christy Thornton meticulously traces how Mexican officials repeatedly rallied Third World leaders to campaign for representation in global organizations and redistribution through multilateral institutions. By decentering the United States and Europe in the history of global economic governance, Revolution in Development shows how Mexican economists, diplomats, and politicians fought for more than five decades to reform the rules and institutions of the global capitalist economy. In so doing, the book demonstrates, Mexican officials shaped not only their own domestic economic prospects but also the contours of the project of international development itself.

Gender and Welfare in Mexico

Gender and Welfare in Mexico
Author: Nichole Sanders
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 184
Release: 2011
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0271048875

"Examines the political and social influences behind the creation of the postrevolutionary Mexican welfare state in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s"--Provided by publisher.