Jaime Merino: The oil cacique of Poza Rica, Veracruz, 1941–1959

Abstract

This article discusses the tenure of oil engineer Jaime Merino as superintendent of the Mexican Petroleum (Pemex) Poza Rica branch in the 1950s. Historians agree that in the decades following the revolution of 1910–1920 the Mexican state was fundamentally weak due to internal corruption, labor and peasant discontent, and lack of centralized power. The federal government counteracted such weakness by controlling people’s access to subsidized food staples, housing, health care, and workers’ benefits through state-sponsored powerbrokers—industrial caciques and union bosses. From his post in Pemex, Merino worked well as this type of broker for almost twenty years. However, changes in government practices in the beginning of president Adolfo López Mateos’s tenure and an increase in regular citizens’ attempts at participating in the democratic process, made Merino’s style of control in Poza Rica untenable. This text analyzes the reach of Merino’s political opposition in Poza Rica viewed through the lens of the new relationship that the federal government developed with local strongmen in the mid to late-1950s. The conclusion is that Merino’s fall was the result of the government’s top-down intervention, but also by a shift in the sociopolitical order and labor relations of Poza Rica that came from the bottom-up.