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Mexico's Ability to Transform its Transport

There were finite and frustrating limits to Mexico's ability to transform its transport and communications infrastructure rapidly in the 1870s. Both government and domestic private entrepreneurs lacked the institutional means to mobilize the large volumes of capital that rail construction required. The Mexicano still comprised over 40 percent of the country's scant 667 miles (1,073 kilometers) of rail in 1880, while another 10 percent consisted of a mule-powered tramway between Veracruz and Jalapa. Some 40 years earlier, this grid would have constituted a significant transport improvement and might have served as the initial foundation for a policy of gradual rail construction and economic betterment on the basis of domestic resources alone. By the standards of 1880, however, it simply symbolized atraso (backwardness). Denouncing the disappointingly high rates charged by the Mexicano, one Puebla agriculturalist called it a monstruoso monopolio. Doubtless, the Mexicano took advantage of its exclusive position to charge Mexican shippers more than they wanted to pay, yet these costs were appreciably lower than those levied by pre-rail transport. In 1877, for example, the passenger fees of the Mexicano were one-third to one-half of the pre-rail stagecoach, and domestic freight charges ranged from one-fifth to slightly more than one-half of wagon and mule rates. Exports paid only 9 to 30 percent. The truth was simply that one railroad could not transform the Mexican economy. If the domestic and world market demands for the commercialization of Mexico's resources were to be met, the country would need a gran empujón (big push) of rapid rail construction that could come only from foreign investment.