Made in Mexico: Regions, Nation, and the State in the Rise of Mexican Industrialism, 1920s–1940s

Abstract

Made in Mexico is a very important book that fills a number of gaps in the literature on postrevolutionary Mexico by tracing the national and regional development of the country’s industrial sector. The book, which explores the conflicts among industrialists and labor leaders as well as state and federal policy makers over statist industrialism, is well written, thoroughly researched, and rests firmly on materials from Mexico City’s national depositories as well as the state archives of Jalisco, Nuevo León, and Puebla. According to author Susan Gauss, the postrevolutionary Mexican state sought to reconcile class interests in order to advance industrial capitalism. Federal policies were “shaped not only by dependent development and radical revolutionary ambitions, such as working-class mobilization, but also by regional resilience generated by shifting local alliances of industrialists, labor, and politicians” (p. 17). In spite of the many problems faced by federal officials, Gauss concludes that statist industrialism was a “flexible nationalist political project” that was able to “appropriate, tolerate, or marginalize alternative regional industrial paths and the rival visions of political rule and modern social relations attached to them” (p. 21).Gauss smartly debunks some lingering revisionist arguments regarding the rise of a leviathan state and the hegemonic collusion that existed between Mexico’s ruling party and its national bourgeoisie. She rightly shows that Mexico’s political and economic elite were often divided over questions regarding industrialization, with the state sometimes siding with workers against employers for political ends. Miguel Alemán’s administration, for instance, refused to grant machinery import permits to Puebla’s textile industrialists because, although said imports would have modernized an antiquated industry, the new machinery would have reasserted management’s authority over local labor, weakened the latter’s collective contracts, and undermined the corporatist relationship between workers and the official party, which was critical to the power of both the central state and the ruling party.On the other hand, because of the federal government’s limited power, Mexico City could not always impose its agenda on the country, and occasionally it yielded to the demands of regional manufacturers. In Gauss’s opinion, Mexico’s path to protected industrial development “was contested and erratic.” Even groups that supported statist industrialism — and many in the larger agricultural sector did not — were divided over federal policy. Technocrats across a broad range of state agencies, including the Offices of Industrial and Economic Research, along with the Secretariats of the Treasury, Industry, Labor, Presidency, and National Economy, frequently disagreed and “struggled to coordinate their efforts, especially when facing economic crisis, dependency, and the regular sexennial transitions in federal administrations that often subordinated economic planning to politics and precluded designing or implementing comprehensive economic policies” (p. 244). Consequently, Mexico’s federal officials were unable to build a viable bureaucracy that was “capable of defining, coordinating, or implementing planned industrial development” (p. 16).Besides the state sector, divisions over public policy also existed between factory owners and among private sector commercial associations, including the National Chamber of Manufacturing Industry (CANACINTRA), the Confederation of Industrial Chambers (CONCAMIN), and the Mexican Employers Association (COPARMEX). As for the former group, regional identities, personal rivalries, and diverse political proclivities and attitudes toward local rule and modern social relations divided industrialists and affected how they responded to state policies over import licenses, quotas, tariffs, foreign loans, aid and investment, domestic price controls, federal financing, tax breaks, subsidies, and labor rights, among other issues, many of which were connected to import substitution industrialization.The primary strength of Gauss’s work is that she paints a very messy picture of industry, labor, and the state that varies between economic sectors, regions, political administrations, and historical eras. As is often the case, heterogeneity characterized the day. Like many postrevolutionary scholars, Gauss illustrates the complexity and contradictions of her topic and smartly avoids lumping actors together. Although the book’s breadth is worthy of praise, it remains an elite history that sometimes exists in a historical vacuum. For example, while labor leaders are well studied, little attention is given to the everyday lives of industrial workers, either inside the factories or in their communities. Had Gauss documented the impact of the political, industrial, and labor elites’ policies on workers, and had she given rank-and-file workers a voice in her narrative, readers would have gained a fuller understanding of Mexico’s midcentury industrial development and read a more interesting story. Additionally, the historical evolution of mexicanidad as a postrevolutionary cultural product that Gauss claims justified federal industrial policy, especially during Alemán’s presidency, warrants more thorough analysis than is presented here. These criticisms aside, those interested in modern Mexico and Latin American industrialization will benefit greatly from this fine study.