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Transport in Mexico

At the time of Independence, large numbers of Mexicans traveled from one place to another by horse or donkey, and even more simply walked. Wealthy Mexicans could employ a private coach if road conditions permitted or they might pay for a litera or litter, a type of enclosed couch mounted on two poles borne by mules front and behind. Despite the opposition of arrieros, freight and passenger travel began to attract investors such as Manuel Escandón, a prime example of the domestic entrepreneurs of the postIndependence years who loaned money to cash-strapped governments and used their connections with public officials to gain business concessions. In 1833, Escandón squeezed out a group of North American investors to gain control of a stagecoach service between Mexico City and Veracruz that used carriages constructed in Troy, New York. Escandón and other merchant-investors soon branched into freight hauling by ox- and mule-drawn carts and wagons. By the middle of the century, passenger and freight service covered most important highways in the central and northern regions of Mexico. In return for their exclusive concessions, transport contractors were obliged to undertake road repair, carry mail for the federal government, collect tolls, renovate port facilities, and operate inns en route. These new levels of freight service represented an appreciable improvement over the experience of British investors in 1825-26, whose machinery took the better part of a year to journey from Veracruz to the Real del Monte mines in Hidalgo.

Nevertheless, geographical, climatological, and institutional factors limited the impact of improved road transportation in nineteenth-century Mexico. Tropical lowlands and mountainous terrain continued to exclude some areas from the savings that could be obtained through the use of carts and wagons on improved roads. Freight traveling on the Veracruz road, for example, could employ wagons only in upland areas between Mexico City and the cities of Jalapa and Orizaba. Two-thirds to four-fifths of the shipping costs between Veracruz and Mexico City derived from less than one-third of the journey, the difficult passage across the lowlands of the Gulf and the ascent of the Sierra Madre Oriental, where only mule trains could be used. The rainy season from May to September drastically slowed travel and regularly made roads impassable to such an extent that it is possible to speak of two systems of domestic trade, a more extensive "dry" system and a more restrictive "wet" one that left regions relatively isolated for months at a time. Instability and localism greatly increased the costs of travel and transport. Banditry was endemic along the principal transport routes, in some parts of the Republic exercising a virtual control over the movements of goods on highways. Everywhere, mules and other transport equipment were subject to sudden requisition by military authorities, leaving civilian commerce without immediate recourse. Shipping costs were augmented by the expenses of paying escorts and the innumerable taxes to which longdistance commerce was subject: road tolls, municipal fees, transit licenses, and the alcabala, the internal customs tax that served as such an important revenue source for state governments.