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Industrial workers, not just peasants, played an essential role in the Mexican Revolution. Tracing the introduction of mechanized industry into the Orizaba Valley, Aurora Gómez-Galvarriato argues convincingly that the revolution cannot be understood apart from the Industrial Revolution, and thus provides a fresh perspective on both transformations

Industrial workers, not just peasants, played an essential role in the Mexican Revolution. Tracing the introduction of mechanized industry into the Orizaba Valley, Aurora Gómez-Galvarriato argues convincingly that the revolution cannot be understood apart from the Industrial Revolution, and thus provides a fresh perspective on both transformations.

AbstractUntil the nineteenth -century tortilla production was carried out by women through rudimentary methods. New technology for corn milling spread during the 1910s, coinciding with the Mexican Revolution. The analysis of nixtamal corn mills and tortilla shops in Mexico City in 1924 shows that the mechanisation of milling led to masculinisation and an increase in the gender wage gap. However, since tortilla-making remained unmechanised, it allowed hundreds of women to establish tortilla shops that mostly hired women. Their entrepreneurship can be considered a survival strategy of women confronting a technological change in an era of political, social and economic turmoils.

RESUMENLa industria textil moderna apareció en México tempranamente y creció de forma continua a lo largo del siglo XIX. Sin embargo, esto no se tradujo en un proceso de industrialización exitoso como resultado de altos costos de transporte y fragilidad institucional: concepto que incluye la incertidumbre, la debilidad y la fragmentación institucionales. La fragilidad institucional generó una política arancelaria capturada que otorgaba bajos niveles de protección efectiva a la industria, un mercado financiero atrasado que limitó los recursos disponibles al crecimiento industrial, y un crecimiento en los costos de transporte debido a las alcabalas. Los altos costos de transporte fragmentaron el mercado nacional y como resultado generaron una industria geográficamente dispersa.

Revolutions have important social, political, and economic consequences with which entrepreneurs have to cope to keep their businesses going. This may involve high transaction costs due to the violence that emerges as a result of armed conflicts. In this article we examine the effect that the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) had on the banking sector and ultimately on bank clients, since revolutionary policies forced most banks to close their doors from 1915 to 1921. By focusing on a major textile firm, the Compañía Industrial Veracruzana, S.A., we observe that companies used nonchartered banks, which spread in the absence of government regulation, and foreign financial institutions, so that daily business operations could continue amidst the revolutionary upheavals.

This article studies the evolution of business in Mexico from the Revolution (1910–1920) to the early 1980s, a period when the state played a major role in the economy and undertook nationalistic policies. It explores the development of distinctive features that characterize business in Latin America: the importance of family-owned diversified business groups and immigrants, the prominence of illegal business, the central role of the entrepreneur, and the greater need to forge ties with government agents for company success. We argue that while some of these features had existed earlier, during this era they took the form that has prevailed until the present day.

ABSTRACTThis study builds the first internationally comparable index of real wages for Mexico City bridging the 18thand the early 20thcentury. Real wages started out in relatively high international levels in the mid 18thcentury, but declined from the late 1770s on, with some partial and temporal rebounds after the 1810s. After the 1860s, real wages recovered and eventually reached 18th-century levels in the early 20thcentury. Real wages of Mexico City's workers subsequently fell behind those of high-wage economies to converge with the lower fringes of middle-wage economies. The age of the global Great Divergence was Mexico's own age of stagnation and decline relative to the world economy.

AbstractThe new trade data used here document the significance of industrialisation in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico after 1870. By 1910 Brazil and Mexico, in particular, led most of the poor periphery in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. While some of this impressive industrialisation was due to fast productivity growth in manufacturing, perhaps yielding some catch-up on their competitors in the United States and Europe, this article argues that there were even more powerful forces at work. Much of the industrialisation that occurred in Latin America was due to a cessation in the seven-decade rise in its net barter terms of trade, trends that reversed the deindustrialisation and 'Dutch Disease' forces that had dominated Latin America for almost a century. Equally important for Brazil and Mexico was favourable policy in the form of higher effective rates of protection for manufacturing, and a depreciation of the real exchange rate. These policies were missing in Argentina and Chile, and industrialisation suffered there as a consequence. Changing market conditions and policies seem to have been more important than changing fundamentals in accounting for Latin American industrialisation after 1870.