Les États-Unis et le Mexique: Histoire d'une relation tumultueuse (The United States and Mexico: History of a tumultuous relationship)

Abstract

At a time when scholarship on U.S.—Latin American relations has been enriched by cultural approaches and ambitious archival research, Isabelle Vagnoux has produced a history of relations between the United States and Mexico resolutely focused on high politics. The result is a compact overview of major events that will be useful to nonspecialist Francophone readers, followed by a sensible discussion of contemporary issues, such as immigration policy, the North American Free Trade Agreement (nafta), and the border economy, based on published sources. The first two chapters present a political narrative of nineteenth-century conflicts between the two countries, with special attention to the role played by increasing U.S. investments in the Mexican railroad, mining, and agricultural sectors up to the Mexican Revolution of 1910–1917. Vagnoux argues that U.S. policy toward Mexico was driven by the determination of successive presidential administrations to protect such investments; for the rest of the twentieth century, U.S. leaders sought to integrate Mexico into the North American economy as an indispensable provider of cheap labor on both sides of the border, while Mexican leaders sought to obtain what advantages they could within an asymmetrical framework that permitted them limited autonomy.