Theme:
A country which had the bad luck of becoming Europe's first overseas colony to produce enormous income for its owners--where the colonists maintained the longest and most stubborn control--and which (because it was seen to be "successful" from the beginning) had its political and economic institutions frozen in a nearly medieval mold for almost four centuries. And where, after the colonists were ejected with great violence, the country was left with neither the experience nor the institutions to govern itself, nor the machinery to develop or distribute its enormous riches. Where its northern neighbor repeatedly intervened from its first decades of independence, tearing away territory, invading at will, deepening both insecurities and resentments. And where, as a result, a good share of the country's modern energies have been wasted in murderous civil wars, and in searching for ways to exploit the country's great natural wealth. And where--just as the country began to show signs of economic and political strength--it found itself in a deadly race to keep up with exploding population and environmental degradation. Meanwhile, the country has served as a metaphor for Latin America's hopes and greatest fears. Current discussions with the United States and Canada over forming a North American Free Trade Area are a case in point.
A catalogue of troubles: a quick survey of some bad things that have happened to Mexico--and left permanent political and geographic scars
-- The Spanish Conquest (1519-21) as a murderous precedent
-- The fate of Mexican Indians: haciendas and mines as instruments of slavery
-- Peninsulares and criollos
-- The War of Independence (1810-21) and why it was worse than many similar wars in Latin America
-- The failure of "native" government: Santa Anna
-- Napoleon III, Maximilian, and the abortive French empire
-- The long dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz; the role of the United States
-- The Revolution (1910-1917) (etc.) and what it means; more American intervention
-- The PRI and Cardenas' following of Rooseveltian policies; nationalization of the country's patrimony -- oil and land.
-- Rise of the "new Mexico." The ultimate question: will population growth ruin Mexico's hopes of social and economic success in the 3rd world? Or will free trade with US and Canada rescue it?
The Spanish heritage: backdrop for tragedy.
-- How it all began: Cortes, and why it mattered that it was a Spaniard, and why it particularly mattered that he was a 16th Century Spaniard. The Conquistadors and where they came from. -- The Aztecs: The enormous importance of Aztec forms of government. How the Spanish moved in.
-- What the Spaniards found: a quick look at the physical site of Mexico
-- Climate. A review of analogues. The Mexican Plateau as essential highland tropics. Why the Spaniards found the Plateau attractive, and why they found both northern and southern Mexico hard to handle. -- Landforms and geology, and why they mattered (and still matter): the extraordinary difficulty in climbing the Sierra Madre Oriental or the Sierra Madre Occidental. The near absence of coastal plain. Volcanoes and volcanic soils. Gold, silver, and where they were found. The off-center location of oil.
-- The combined result. The Mexican Plateau as oasis. Mexico City as "primate city." The resemblance between Mexico and other Latin American republics, in patterns of population and transportation.
Spain's political and economic ambitions, and how she manipulated the geography of Mexico to meet those ambitions--so that even today, modern Mexicans are compelled to cope with Spanish institutions, some of which were invented 400 years ago.
Extractive economy, absentee owners, lack of concern for the poor by the rich.
Transportation, and why it was so overwhelmingly important to Spanish ambitions and the long-term destiny of Mexico
(1) Overseas transportation. How and why Spain arranged to control overseas shipping lanes. Strategic bases in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. Havana, and the role of Florida. Spain's obsession with concentrated transport. The annual convoys. The special importance of certain ports: Vera Cruz and Acapulco as examples. Deliberate suppression of development in unapproved places.
(2) Internal road systems and what they were supposed to do. The overland silver convoys. Relationship between centralized transportation and centralized government. The gulf between city and country.
Mining and what it did.
Gold, silver, and the government. The royal fifth. Effect on economic development of Spain's preoccupation with Mexican silver. Labor demands and Indian exploitation. The overwhelming importance of a very few places. Neglect of other places.
Agriculture's role in Spanish administration
Spanish attitudes toward land-owning and manual labor. (Cf. discussion of the Reconquista). Haciendas: who owned them, and how they were run. The gulf between owner and worker. Corn, and the ruination of soil. The vicious circle of poverty, ignorance, and isolation. The extraordinary role of land-ownership in Mexican politics, and especially revolutionary politics.
Wars, Revolutions and their geographic effects: some invidious comparisons between Mexico and the United States.
(1) The War of Independence (1810-1821). Why the Mexican war of independence differed so profoundly from that of the U.S.--in motivation, in the way it was fought, and in its ultimate results. Why the revolution failed to trigger long-run social change.
(2) The U.S.-Mexican War (1848). What Mexico lost, and why (for a long time) the losses made so little difference.
(3) Juarez (1859-1872) and the French intervention (1861-1867). What Juarez tried to do, and why he failed.
(4) Porfirio Diaz and the American connection (1876-1910). The Porfirian peace, and foreign investments. How economic conservatives paradoxically laid the foundation for Mexico's most violent social and political revolution. Railroads, oil, etc.
(5) The Mexican Revolution (1910-1917 [?]), watershed in Mexican history. Memories of violence, and counter-revolutionary Americans. The Constitution of 1917 and how it is designed to change Mexican geography. New law for land and natural resources.
(6) The continuing revolution. The critical role of Cardenas (1934-40). Expropriation of oil fields in 1938, and the amazing American reaction, courtesy of FDRs presence in the White House.
The new Mexico and its new geography: why Mexico is often perceived as a leader of Third World nations (especially in Latin America), but why her successes exhibit signs of danger.
-- The new infrastructure: basis for optimism: roads, cities, industry. The shift to the North. Booms in desert agriculture. The huge new border cities: Tijuana, Mexicali, Ciudad Juarez, et. The Maquiladora economy. The free trade area with US and Canada (NAFTA).
-- The ominous signs: five examples
(1) Mexico's new industry, and its subsidiary function in American economics. Assembly plants of the Rio Grande valley as examples.
(2) Reliance on tourism for foreign exchange. Why tourism is an uncertain business and geographically inequitable. Acapulco vs. the rest of the state of Guerrero as examples.
(3) The growth of population and what it portends. The 125th million Mexican? Problems of underemployment and rising expectations, especially with urbanization. Emigration to the United States as an uneasy answer.
(4) Neighbors: closure against Mexicans to the North, by Mexicans to the South.
(5) Old Patterns of Patronage, Politics, and Corruption -- 1994 assassinations and the linkages to the PRI structure and the governing elite, drug politics, and the 1994-95 "currency crisis" as a replay.
-- Oil, and its possible effects on Mexican well-being; the lesson of Venezuela? or of Iran? Oil and debt.
Summary: why Mexico is worth watching. Mexico as bellwether.
News items and miscellanea
"Down Mexico way," The Economist 18Ap92 talks of problems of environmental degradation in the fast growing industrial maquiladora belt on the US border. This is about Mexico but the problems are near universal to our south.
"Global change and Mexico," Earth and Mineral Sciences, Vol 60. This report by Dr. Diana Liverman of Penn State's geography department talks about the impacts of the natural environment on Mexican agriculture and economy and prospective impacts of such changes as global warming.
"Voting plummets in Mexico: a gesture of no-confidence," NYT 4Ap91, p.8 could have been printed in 1992 also. While nominally democratic and with regular elections for over 60 years, Mexico, like many of its counterparts to the south has a somewhat different form of democracy than we are used to.
"Guatemalan refugees' homeward trek is delayed," NYT 15Ja93, p.a3. Refugees who have been in southern Mexico for 10 years have begun returning to Guatemala as part of negotiations aimed at ending an insurgency/guerrilla war. About 40,000, almost all Indians, were supposed to have left the country.