Thoughts.com Blogs - Transport and Communications: 1821-1910

View Blog

Transport and Communications: 1821-1910

Transport and communications powerfully shaped the historical formation of Mexico's economic underdevelopment between 1821 and 1910. The initial dearth of relatively efficient transport and communications bolstered the local character of economic activity and political power after Independence, resulting in decades of institutional instability, stagnation, and international vulnerability. From an economic standpoint, it is hard to disagree with historian Daniel Cosío Villegas's view that Mexico "achieved its independence under the worst historical conditions." As the nations of the North Atlantic experienced an industrial revolution, Mexico's per capita income dropped from approximately one-half that of the United States to around one-tenth by 1877. Trapped within an economic depression that had begun under the Bourbons, Mexico suffered a 30 percent decline in its real per capita gross domestic product from 1800 to 1860.

Although real per capita earnings improved almost 20 percent between 1860 and 1877, it was not until the railroad began to have a significant impact on Mexican transportation that economic activity grew rapidly. In real terms, Mexico's economy expanded three and one-half fold between 1877 and 1910, while its per capita income more than doubled. Yet this sudden new growth proved highly dependent upon foreign capital and technology, particularly from the United States, at the same time that it geographically and socially marginalized significant numbers of Mexicans. Ultimately, the material gains brought by the railroad did not bring stable progress but instead contributed to the Revolution of 1910.

The economic trends of the early nineteenth century cost Mexico any potential historical opportunity that might have existed for a more autonomous economic development. As a legacy of the colonial period, Mexico lacked an institutional environment conducive to productive capital investment and economic innovation, a condition further compounded by the years of political instability and war that accompanied Independence. Capital flight, the decline of the mining industry, and limited domestic markets all constituted major obstacles to sustained economic progress. Mexican leaders regarded improved transport and communications as vital to material betterment and national stability. Guadalupe ( 1824-28), Victoria, the country's first president ( 1824-28), told Congress that funds for road building would exercise an "eternal influence on the promotion of the wealth and the prosperity of the Republic." Since Mexico's population and economic life were heavily concentrated in interior upland valleys and plateaus far from the sea, coastal maritime traffic could only exercise a limited influence at best on the national economy. While some canoe traffic still continued on the remnants of the old lakes and canals of Mexico City, the lack of natural inland waterways deprived Mexico as a whole of the relative ease of communication afforded an extensive system of rivers and canals.