Abstract
The Aztecs discovered petroleum in Mexico and used it before the arrival of the Spanish in 1519. They burned it in tribute to their gods, caulked their canoes with it, smeared it on their bodies as a medicine, and utilized it as a dye and a glue. Over three centuries elapsed before an effort was made to turn black gold into cash. Ten years after Edwin L. Drake drilled his famous well near Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859, a group of Mexicans unsuccessfully attempted to produce oil on the “Furbero” hacienda near Papantla in Vera Cruz state. It was not until May 1901 that Edward L. Doheny, a wily product of the rough-and-tumble American oil industry in which he had amassed a fortune, struck oil in Ébano, a jungle region of San Luis Potosí. Another pioneer in the development of Mexico's petroleum industry was Weeman Pearson, later Lord Cowdray, a Yorkshire entrepreneur who formed the fabulously profitable Mexican Eagle (Aguila) Company after discovering the “Golden Lane” fields in 1908 (Bermúdez, 1963; Sampson, 1975: 83-85; Grayson, 1978a).
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